Whopper of a word stumps Norfolk student in bee

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.

James Batten has a history of misspelling the easy words, his mom says, but it wasn't one of those that stumped him Wednesday afternoon.

The word that thwarted James' chance to compete in the semifinals of the 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee was "galjoen."

Before giving the word a go, James, 13, the regional spelling bee winner and a student at Norfolk Christian Upper School, asked for its language of origin, use in a sentence and, a couple of times, pronunciation.

"Umm," he said at one point, struggling to decipher it.

His dad, Frank Batten Jr., leaned forward and watched from his seat in a ballroom in the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center near Washington, where the bee is being held.

Batten Jr., chairman and CEO of Landmark Media Enterprises LLC, which publishes The Virginian-Pilot, just hoped his son would guess right.

But James spelled it "galleoon," and, as he would soon learn, the bee was over for him.

James' parents had helped him study thousands of words to prepare for this week. His mom, Aimee Batten, said Wednesday that "galjoen" (which is from Afrikaans and Dutch) "didn't ring a bell." Said his dad: "I would have never come up with that spelling."

James later said he knew how to spell the word - a fish common along the coast of southern Africa - but he didn't recognize the pronunciation given Wednesday.

James was competing against 274 spellers, ages 8 to 15. Only 41 of them were named semifinalists Wednesday, having scored a minimum 29 of 31 points on a written test and in Wednesday's preliminaries.

James scored 27 points, missing the cut by two. Besides "galjoen" - worth three points - the only other word he missed was "fourteen," misspelling it on Tuesday's written test.

On, Wednesday he said he'd return to the bee.

"I'm going to be back next year, unfortunately," he joked.

Cheryl Ross, (757) 446-2443, cheryl.ross@pilotonline.com