At the spelling bee, the most common sound is the toughest

The word that knocked runner-up Naysa Modi out of last year's Scripps National Spelling Bee was "Bewusstseinslage" one of those flashy, impossible-sounding German-derived words that make the audience gasp when they are announced.

Naysa believes the seemingly mundane word that knocked her out the year before was just as intimidating, if not more.

For the spellers who will gather starting Monday at a convention centre outside Washington for this year's bee, an unremarkable sound is the cause of their angst, their sleepless nights, their lifelong memories of failure.

It's the most common sound in the English language, represented in the dictionary by an upside-down "e," a gray chunk of linguistic mortar.

To the uninitiated, it sounds like "Uh." Spellers know it by its proper name: the schwa.

"It's the bane of every speller's existence," Naysa said. "It's what we hate."
"You can usually tell when they are testing the kids on the schwa and you can often tell when the kids are taken aback by it," said Remer, 25, who coaches spellers in addition to his day job at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The vast majority of instances where kids misspell is due to the schwa."
"Greek words have 'o,' Latin words have 'i,' but it doesn't always hold up and it adds another layer of confusion," Sylvie said. "It's just kind of a mess."
"People don't like to talk about it," said Anisha, who's 13 and will compete again this year, "but sometimes the best way is just to memorize the word."
"As a general rule, often trademarks and words from unknown languages that might look shorter, might look easier, are actually way hard," Sylvie said. "You're sort of in the dark. You have to do what you can to put it together with very limited information."