France: Paris Champs-Élysées hosts mass spelling contest

Paris's astir celebrated avenue was turned into an open-air schoolroom connected Sunday, arsenic astir 1,400 radical took portion into a record-breaking spelling exercise.

About 1,700 desks were laid retired connected the Champs-Élysées for an lawsuit billed arsenic the "largest dictation successful the world".

It consisted of 3 rounds. In each, a substance was work retired and contestants tried to transcribe it without error.

In the first, 1,397 radical wrestled with an excerpt from a abbreviated communicative by 19th Century writer Alphonse Daudet.

That league was recognised by Guinness World Records arsenic the largest specified contention ever, French media say.

French spelling is notoriously tricky and dictations person inspired dread successful generations of pupils from Dunkerque to Perpignan.

However immoderate 50,000 radical applied for Sunday's "Grande Dictée des Champs" and astir 5,000 radical - galore of them schoolchildren - took part.

The 2nd and 3rd rounds were based connected a modern abbreviated communicative and a substance astir rugby respectively.

After the first, a 10-year-old described arsenic a "star pupil" told AFP quality agency: "It was impossible!"

His 42-year-old begetter Adrien Blind, who took the aforesaid test, said it had near him "in a authorities of accent and worry".

But 65-year-old Touria Zerhouni was much relaxed. "I lone made 2 mistakes. I expected it to beryllium overmuch harder," she told AFP.