The revival of the spelling bee has been as marked in Belfast as elsewhere; but there is still one poser upon which even the City Fathers cannot agree.
I met a friend, newly returned from the Athens of the North, yesterday, and his first words were: "How do you spell "inquiries." I told him that I preferred the "i" from personal rather than rather than orthographical reasons, and asked the cause of his question.
He had come straight from the City Hall, where the doors of the Cleansing Department and the Surveyors' Department stand cheek by jowl at the end of a corridor. The Cleansing Department, by the word painted on the door, invited his "Enquiries," while, by the same token, the adjacent Surveyors would consider nothing but "In-quiries".
"Evidently," quoth my friend, "the Corporation has a spelling bee in its bonnet, or, perhaps, this is merely another of our compromises. Maybe the Nationalists on the Council insisted on "Inquiries," and Glengall street would not surrender their "En." In fact, not an Ench."
The Irish Times, January 25th, 1939.