A schoolboy from Wiltshire has bid “Adios” to competition from 26,000 other budding linguists to become one of the top 100 Spanish students in a national challenge.

Tyler Knight, 12, competed against thousands of other pupils from around Britain as he reached the national finals of a spelling bee.

He had to translate English words into Spanish and then spell them, doing as many words as he could in less than a minute.

Tyler had teamed up with his Spanish teacher, Justin Delap at Clarendon College, to learn 200 Spanish words during lunchtime sessions.

After his accomplishment, the Trowbridge student said: “I was quite nervous before the competition started, but when I was given the first word it was OK and from then on I was fine.

“It goes really quickly, once the clock starts ticking.”

The National Modern Foreign Languages Spelling Bee Final was held in Cambridge last Friday.

Tyler had soared through the South West regional heat two months before.

He had to learn words based on school subjects, days of the week, months, numbers and objects in his pencil case.

Words were then chosen at random by a computer program.

Tyler said: “Words like Olympic Games and United States of America were really difficult to learn.

“I love learning Spanish, because I want to use it when we go on holiday to Spanish-speaking places.

“I tried using it on holiday in Lanzarote with the waiters, just saying ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’, that sort of thing. They really like it when you try and make an effort.”

Mr Delap said: “He has done all the hard work to get this far.

“The amount of effort he has put in has been astonishing.

“He has clearly got a knack for languages and the thing that shone was that he is very clear and very accurate.”