Ursprache is, according to Wikipedia, a protolanguage: either "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." It is also the word spelled last night by 13-year-old Katharine Close to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. And it also seems to describe the system of communication used by the New York Daily News. For surely if it were using an actual language, the newspaper wouldn't misspell the crucial word of a spelling-bee article.

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.

The Daily News did regroup and spell the word correctly later in the article. Sources close to Close say she has crossed newspapers off her list of possible future employers.

Kudos to Gelf spelling expert Alex Tilney for noticing the gaffe.