A few months ago, in a funk over text- and twitter-speak, I asked: Is spelling ded? Read Streeters supplied ample evidence (even more here) that we are, in many respects, attending a long-running funeral for English as we know it.

But just when I'm overcome with despair, dozens of  eager contestants in the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee step forward to restore my faith. Kavya Shivashankar, 13, of Olathe, Kansas, won the 2009 event in Washington by spelling "Laodicean," which means indifferent or lukewarm. According to my dictionary, the word is derived from an ancient city in western Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), built by the Seleucids in the third century B.C. The inhabitants were probably the ancestors of modern surfers.

I bet Kavya and her fellow contestants would collapse in laughter if they saw some of the misspellings that have appeared in Read Street comments about Twilight: arguements, dimond, jelous, pshychatic, accusitions, audiance, critizizm. Not to mention the person who, referring to vampire lore, wrote about driving "a steak through the heart."

A side note: The Times of India crowed that Indian-American children have now won the title seven times out of 10. Kavya, whose words included baignoire, huisache and ecossaise, joins fellow champions Nupur Lala (1999), George Thampy (2000), Pratyush Buddiga (2002), Sai Gunturi (2003), Anurag Kashyap (2005) and Sameer Mishra (2008). You might remember Nupur from the documentary Spellbound.

Photo from AP