Wow. Maybe Ann Curry was right … this journalism profession really could use more good spellers. And while it's not often that we refer to the Daily News staff as journalists, when reporting on the winning word of a spelling bee, you'd think they would at least attempt to pay extra special attention to the spelling of that word.

Especially since a 13 year old spelled it off the top of her head, with no access to the Internet, a dictionary, or a college degree.

The word, Ursprache, we learn from Gelf, is "a language that preceded a certain set of given languages," or "a system of communication during a stage in glottogony that may not yet be properly called a language." (Did you catch that AC?)

Quoth the Daily News:

Katharine (Kerry) Close, an eighth-grader at the H.W. Mountz School in Spring Lake on the Jersey Shore, outspelled 274 other kids, rattling off "Urspache" to win the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Reportedly, the News eventually went back and fixed the little error. The situation is so terribly hilarious, we're almost afraid to attempt a one-liner here. However, this does seem to validate the rumor that News staffers don't use Google.

It's Like Raine on Your Spelling Bee [The Gelflog]