Every year that National Spelling Bee gets a bit of attention on the news. The participants are given a word to spell. “Can you repeat the word?” the young person will ask?” And the gentleman with the deep baritone voice repeats the word with studied diction and distinguished elocution. “Can you use the word in a sentence?” The owner of the voice of distinction uses the word in a sentence. The participant asks for the origin of the word. Again that voice of the unseen orator tells the phonetic genius is Latin, or Greek, or Lower Swavoia in origin.

And then the kid spells the world, crisply, with a determined beat, giving rise to speculation that perhaps he was toying with the purveyor of vocal expression to gain more camera time.

The National Spelling Bee gains our attention annually as the winner is reported on the news. Our attention last approximately five point seventy-two seconds. And then the unnerving tension of the competition is tucked away until next year.

It’s a wonder that he even thought he could write a book about such an event. But James McGuire’s book, entitled, American Bee proves to be unexpectedly fascinating. McGuire’s book chronicles the lives of five young people who competed in the 2004 National Spelling Bee. I discovered an unexpected affinity with these five youngsters. Why, I cannot figure; I flunked out of the competition on the second word I was given back in my local classroom over fifty years ago. i remember to this day the tension in that room. I remember the let down of having failed to spell.

The book is more, however, than a simple chronicle of the competitive process that selects the “best speller” every year. The book has a bit of history tucked inside the pages, a history of the American language.

Noah Webster was what we might call the father of the American dictionary. He had some interesting ideas as to how words should be spelled. Webster found offense at the influence of foreign nations upon our spellings. His was a belief that the “English” that was being developed by the citizens of the new nation should be phonetically crafted. Maybe Noah Webster was just ahead of his time, for much of his spellings resemble the spellings of the rising generation.

Webster felt the word “tongue” should be spelled “tung”. “Trouble,” according to Noah Webster, would be spelled “troble.” “New” would be “nu,” and “catch” would be “cach.”

I don’t think Webster understood the trouble he was getting himself into. He didn’t understand that by and large we Americans want to hang on to our past. To reform spelling too much would be to wipe away part of our cultural memory, and that is not something we are keen to do.

But still we are constantly revising our language. Just the other day Merriam-Webster came out with their new pre-approved words for 2009. Among them: stay-at-home, earmark, staycation, and vlog (a blog that contains video material.)

One word has yet to be approved, but still remains on the trial list. The word is: “prepone.” Prepone refers to the act of arranging for an event to take place earlier than originally planned - the opposite of postpone.

An example would be: “I’m preponing the aches of growing old.”

I’ve got an anniversary coming up in two weeks. But I fret not. I have preponed getting Lynn’s present.