There are those who positively cringe when seeing misspelt words on billboards and in other public places, while others do so when confronted with punctuation errors like, “First Women Bank”, this latter being a faux pas bequeathed to us by one with a much-vaunted Oxford education.

Meanwhile, Mark Twain, a strong advocate of the simplified American spelling, declared that, “Foreigners [people living abroad and speaking foreign languages] always spell better than they pronounce. For example, they spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchi.”

British English in particular is a prime offender here. So hats off to all those young stalwarts who participate in the Dawn in Education annual Spelling Bee, and to their teachers for their months of dedicated preparation of contestants. It is a contest of immeasurable value in its assistance to literacy, confidence building and other educational values.

Each participating school sends a team of three, including one speller and two helpers, and the contest involves three age groups, 9-11, 12-14 and 15-17. The contest is run according to strict rules, and the team for each session comprises two judges from Oxford University Press, one pronouncer, a moderator-cum-announcer and a recording angel, plus the recording team in case playbacks are necessary to make sure that justice has been done.

Originally, the Spelling Bee included only the main centres, to wit, Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad and Islamabad, but the spell has now been cast nation-wide, with teams braving long distances, traffic jams, inclement weather and so on in order to make it to the venues, the word having been spread far and wide by word of mouth, by direct approach to certain schools, and so on.

Up north, for instance, there are even teams from highly literate Hunza involved, including the noted Al Amyn Model School in the village of Gulmit Gojal, which alone boasts five schools. And of course the influence of the internet is not to be overlooked in terms of communication between Dawn, OUP and possible contenders.

In this respect, the progress of educational facilities available to children of remote lighthouse keepers in New Zealand, and the School of the Air, providing education to children in the Australian Outback comes to mind. Previously they would receive their lessons by correspondence and radio, but now, no doubt, the internet has taken over.

The responsibility, the joys and sorrows of arranging these mammoth events, sit heavily upon the shoulders of the gallant organisers. Apart from all else, there are unforeseen circumstances like the arising of “civil i-strife” — necessitating a lengthy postponement, or the computer system at the venue going down, or the headache of arranging for sufficient capable pronouncers, who may back out at greater or lesser notice — one hour, for instance.

And the very occasional new-chum pronouncer may make a real botch-up of his/her job, causing tremendous delays while many words and their spelling have to be played back. Yet at the same time, it’s amazing how those young geniuses manage to give correct spellings from badly pronounced words.

Then of course, there are the pronouncers who go through fire and water to honour their commitments. For example at this year’s Karachi Regional Finals, a pronouncer for the 15-17-year-old section, for which a substitute is very difficult to arrange, was a lady pronouncer heavily smitten with back pain, yet eager to discharge her duty with charm, compassion and efficiency, who arrived at her post armed with two cushions, and buoyed up by distant Reiki sent by friends in Toronto and Lahore!

Apart from this, some pronouncers may suffer from worse stage fright than the youngsters on stage. So the best advice to them is “To Forget Self and All”, as the 20th century New Zealand poet Allen Curnow said, and once you get involved in the job on hand, this will probably take you out of your ouch crouch, and enable you to proceed more or less smoothly.

But at least the judges from OUP are constant, arriving with a formidable array of dictionaries, just in case. And now and then the pronouncer may miss the alternative spelling of a word, or may mis-hear the spelling, in which case these judges discreetly assist them, sotto voce.

The spellers’ pronunciation of certain vowels and consonant sounds may be misleading, possibly due to habits that go with the pronunciation of Urdu, of other local languages perhaps, or to the influence of American English. So it’s most important to bear in mind that in English, consonant sounds must be crisp, distinct, particularly in the cases of ‘t’ and ‘d’, ‘c’ or ‘k’ and ‘g’, and in the vowels ‘a’ and ‘e’. If we pronounce these correctly on a daily basis, we’ll be well equipped to enunciate them at the Spelling Bee.

Now and then it is said that the use of foreign native speakers as pronouncers is unfair, since their pronunciation is not necessarily what the youngsters are familiar with. Well, what does one say to that? The original preference received was for standard British English, and American spellings were likely to be tossed out unless the judges’ aforementioned dictionaries listed them as alternatives. Even now, the preference is for British rather than American pronunciation. Mind you, now and then a pronouncer may turn up sporting a Scottish accent. Mamma mia!

Another observation concerns the manner of presentation. Most pronouncers will deliver the words as they are generally heard in actual usage, while others, out of the goodness of their hearts give an exaggerated style of delivery, to give spellers the optimum chance. But actually, students should be able to spell words given in the former manner, since the contest is designed to sort out the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goats, the men from the boys. This consideration applies also to the use of native speaker pronouncers.

Then, of course, there was the hapless pronouncer who like many arrived in a thin cotton shirt, and shivered so violently due to the setting of the AC, in spite of careful instructions to operators, that he was afraid his pronunciation would be affected. Always remember that you don’t arrive, like unwary visitors in summer to the Karakorams, in flimsy shalwar kameez and Saleemshahis, but with clothes for all four seasons, to contend with air conditioning and its vagaries.

One of the worst problems for judges and moderators is that at the end of a session, teachers from certain schools may march upon their stronghold, and go butcher’s hook (real, stinking mad) about what they feel were unfair decisions regarding their students. And there is the perennial problem of audience control, the need to remind them not to use mobile phones during the session, not to chatter, and NOT to prompt the spellers.

On a lighter note, three girls accosted me in the Arts Council Auditorium just before this year’s Regional Finals, with, “Oh, Madam, you are our pronouncer. Can you give us any tips, please?” So I mentioned some of the points given above, then asked, “Are you nervous?” “Oh yes, Madam!” “Good!” I replied, and we all laughed, which eased their tension. But jokes aside, all we of the Dawn team have the greatest sympathy for these game and clued-up youngsters, feeling sad on their behalf if they make a mess of their spelling, especially with the most difficult words. I have even heard a judge sigh, saying, “What words!”