Friday, May 25, 2007
By Jonas Fortune
Repository staff writer
PLAIN TWP. Ponerology. It's a word that Manuela Haiduc will never forget. It's also a word many adults have never heard of.
"I misspelled that one in the regionals last year," the eighth-grade spelling whiz from Oakwood Middle School said. "So I was determined to not misspell anything this year."
So after finishing near the top 10 in last year's Repository Regional Grand Final Spelling Bee, Manuela, 14, dedicated herself to returning to the competition and winning.
"It is her dream," said her father, Florian Haiduc. "Last year, she promised herself that she would win."
And win she did, beating 48 participants in this year's competition and earning an all-expenses-paid trip for her entire family to watch her compete in the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee next week in Washington, D.C. The spelldown begins Wednesday.
It took hard work and dedication to get the young speller there. She says she spends nearly two hours a day during the week and three and a half hours a day on the weekends studying.
"I study the word origins and then I just look up the words," Manuela said. "I sometimes have my mom quiz me."
It also doesn't hurt her spelling abilities that she was born in Romania. Although her family had to learn a new language - her father says that Manuela knows English better than they do - the move gave her a leg up on the competition.
"It helped me more because Romanian is closer to other European languages and English is based on other languages," she said.
So, what's the toughest word Manuela has had to spell this year? She says none have been that difficult because she hasn't been given a word yet that she couldn't spell.
Besides studying her spelling words, Manuela says she likes to cook and read. And she has another hobby.
"I like dancing, I don't really do ballet and stuff like that," she said. "I do Romanian dancing at my church."
In case you were wondering, ponerology is the study of evil within theology. Until last year, Manuela said she had never heard of it.
