Tamil Nadu-born 9-year-old twins, Harpita and Harpith are making their parents and India proud by giving a tough competition at the Great Australian Spelling Bee. Their confidence and attitude have gained the twins a lot of fans across Down Under.
Clever and confident students of class three, the twins have a vocabulary of 50,000 words and are among the top 12 participants in the spelling competition which is due to be scheduled in 2 weeks.
“The bedtime stories my parents shared with us prompted our interest in words and spellings. We look at the definition and origin of words, the pronunciation and categorise them. For example many French words end with ette,” says Harpitha to NDTV.
The brother-sister duo wants to become doctors when they grow up and want to serve for free. Their parents moved to Australia from Vellore in 2007.
Their father Pandian Annamalai is a software architect. He says, “Give freedom to children, help them to be independent learners. Make it a joy” as an advise for other parents.
Their mother Lakshmi Priya, who is a physiotherapist told that the kids were never given any pressure to perform and that Hapith and Harpitha only spent half an hour daily to practice spellings.
Interestingly, Harpitha’s favourite word is cafune which means, “the act of running your fingers through a loved one’s hair” and Harpith’s favourite long word is, Floccinaucinihilipilification which means, “The action or habit of estimating something as worthless”.
Watch the two confidently talk in this interview video about how they build their vocabulary over the years and even take a short NDTV Spelling Bee contest with the interviewer.
Hats off to their confidence!
News Source: NDTV
