Times readers fight for beloved bywords | Leading article: the Spelling Bee | The Times Spelling Bee Championship

There is no point in pretending that English spelling is easy. But then neither is water-skiing, nor horsemanship, nor playing the guitar, nor doing tricks on a skateboard. And the rewards are curiously similar: precision, communication and aesthetic satisfaction. English words are not dull products of an isolated and narrow monoculture: they reflect the kaleidoscope of history. They are eccentric, wayward and playful, thumbing (with that crazy b in the middle) their nose at dull phoneticists. No vowel sound depends on only one letter: we have peep and leap, weird and police, ski and key and people; we have truth and fruit and tomb and blue.

“Rationalisers” bemoan this, longing for tedious ees and oos, pointing out that learners have to memorise at least 3,700 words with unpredictable spellings and that no other European language has more than 1,000. But be proud of that! Our words have stories behind them, and teachers should celebrate that.

When a child spells “athiest” - a common error - it is not enough to correct it. It is a chance to trace from theos a link to theology, theocracy, pantheism and why Theo Walcott of Arsenal was literally Theo-dore, a gift from God. Then point out how the tiny a-prefix so sharply removes and negates the rest of the word - as in amoral and asexual. They will never forget again. If copyright becomes copywrite it becomes meaningless: there is such a thing as a copywriter, who is not in charge of rights at all. Spell privilege as “privelige” and you mislay the inner meaning of a privilegium, a law applying to one particular person. A queue makes more sense once you get a smattering of French and realise that it is a queue, a tail; whereas a stage cue is (probably) a perversely re-extended abbreviation of the Latin quando, meaning when!

That last word, in turn, is descended from hwaenne - only the “h” moved forward, who knows why? And descend needs its c to join a whole family of amusing relatives, including condescend, in which the hoity-toity move down to the level of their inferiors: descandere: climb down. Move on to scan and scandal, following the snake-trail of meaning, and you find the climbing, springing scansion of poetry, hopping from stone to stone; while its relative, scandal, leads back to the Greek skandalon, a stumbling-block of reputations. Probably. On the other hand, some spellings are plain perverse: anchor shouldn't have an “h” in it at all. It was ancora, related to the city of Ankara, because Ankara is on a bend - not unlike an anchor...

Sometimes all logic is suspended; but we accept gracefully the slow-growing eccentricities of our forefathers, just as we respect their cobbled alleyways and crooked beams. The spelling of tongue is a perverse mystery if you go back to its Old English and Norse tungon and tunga. But then you discover that medieval monks took to substituting “o” for “u” before an “m” or “n”, simply to avoid misreading the letters in their cramped, paper-saving script. Then, to straighten out the confusion, in the 14th century the end of the word got its “ue”. The Oxford English Dictionary says sadly that the result is “neither etymological nor phonetic, and only in a very small degree historical”. But hell, it's not so hard to learn, and it is curiously satisfying to be bamboozled by lazy monks 800 years your senior.

The difficulties faced by dyslexics must not be belittled, but that some people are dyslexic is no reason for everyone to give up. And of course it is wrong to assume that all terrible spellers are ignorant or dim. Yet the pursuit of good spelling is a noble one, and the joy of it is that it comes most easily from wide and happy reading. When I see acomodation, acheive, cemetary or dissapoint I wince - not because I have had my spirit broken by learning long lists of spellings, but because I have read all my life. The eye wants accommodation, achieve, cemetery, disappoint.

I'm not saying that correct spelling is the fount of all virtue and clarity. I'm just saying that it's fun, and elegant. English is a living, growing tree and just because its roots are gnarled doesn't mean it's dead. New words are just as perversely delightful. Do you know why a computer counts in bytes? Short for “binary digit”. The “y” is gratuitous. A digit has been a finger to count on ever since Ancient Rome, when you would dicere - tell numbers - on your fingers; its relatives are dictators because what they say goes. And dictaphones, obviously. And let us not even start on the delightfully intricate connection between microprocessor and procession, each moving its components onwards whether with candles and banners or in silent computation. English is a baggy, accommodating piece of mad-aunt knitting, and we are still making it, hauling in acronyms such as twoc and asbo, commercial inventions such as podcast, and immigrants such as balti and Su Doku. Spelling is history, and history is who we are.

The Times Spelling Bee

The UK's first national Spelling Bee championship for schools is open to 11 to 12-year-olds (Year 7 or equivalent) across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Schools are invited to put forward a team of three pupils (plus a reserve) of their most brilliant spellers and join in live spelling contests with other schools up and down the country. The championship will start in March 2009, when schools go head-to-head in local knockout heats to display their spelling talents. The winning teams will progress to the Regional Finals, which will be staged in May 2009. The climax will be the Grand Final, to be held in London in June 2009.

HOW TO ENTER YOUR SCHOOL FOR THE TIMES SPELLING BEE

Schools can enter the competition by visiting timesonline.co.uk/spellingbee. The deadline for entries is December 19 but schools have until the end of January to provide their team details. Schools are encouraged to hold their own spelling contests in classes to help to identify their best team for the competition, and our website will include step-by-step guidelines on how to go about it.

Coming soon: Online games and activities to make spelling fun for all abilities.

To help get spellers involved and motivated, The Times, with Collins, official dictionary of The Times Spelling Bee, has devised our spelling website, with fun and educational games and puzzles. The games will be available to all schools and those entering the Spelling Bee championship from mid-October, but you can register now to get access to them when they are available. The online games are free to play and can be used to practise spelling in the classroom and at home, allowing students to track their progress and improve their personal-best scores. There will also be free teaching resources available for primary and secondary schools, with inspiring lesson plans, activities and worksheets linked to the national curriculum to help to make spelling fun, and schools can order these now.

The Times Spelling Bee: Key Dates

October 2008:

Launch of online games and activity packs for schools on timesonline.co.uk/spellingbee. Schools can sign up now to receive materials and access to online classroom games which will be available (free of charge).

December 19, 2008:

Deadline for entry to the competition.

End January 2009:

Schools to submit names of their team (plus reserve) for local knockout heats.

March 2009:

Local inter-schools knockout heats

May 2009:

Regional finals

June 2009:

Grand Final in London

Origin of spelling

The concept of correct spelling arrived in Britain late in the 15th century, when printing was introduced. Before then, words were spelt according to regional pronunciation.

Imports

Some of our strangest spellings date from the 16th and 17th centuries, when French, Latin, Greek, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese influences introduced new word endings, resulting in words such as bizarre, brusque, canoe, cocoa, gazette, moustache and intrigue.

Names

Even after spelling began to be standardised, names were written in various ways. More than 80 spellings of Shakespeare's name have been found, including Shaekspeare, Shake-speare, Shakspeare, Shaxberd and Shakespere. He even spelt it two ways in his own will - Shakspere and Shakspeare.

Bad spellers

John Keats, Ernest Hemingway, William Wordsworth, W.B.Yeats and Virginia Woolf were all poor spellers. The original manuscript of Keats's Ode to Autumn reads: “And fill all furuits with sweeness to the core/ To swell the gourd, and plump the hazle shells.” Sir Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein both suffered from dyslexia, as does Sir Richard Branson.

Spelling bees

The term “bee” has been used in the US to mean gathering - for work, pleasure or competition - since the mid 18th century. Spelling contests, originally called “matches”, had come to be referred to as “spelling bees” by the early 19th century.

Why we misspell

According to a study of spelling by the compilers of Collins English Dictionary, we misspell for three reasons: when the pronunciation differs from the spelling (conscience, indict); when the sound of the word leads us to assume the wrong context (sacrilegious from religious); or when the word has a root in a foreign language, eg, broccoli (Italian), lieutenant (French).

Spacing

We did not put spaces between words until the 8th century; untilthensentenceslookedlikethis.

Most often misspelt

Words most commonly misspelt include: address, accommodate, business, definitely, recommend, embarrass, independent, occurrence, separate, weird.

Does spelling matter?

Nearly half of all employers would penalise a job applicant who made spelling mistakes in a CV.

CHLOE LAMBERT

Sources: DCSF; Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary by Vivian Cook; Collins Dictionaries)

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