A 14-year-old girl from Pennsylvania won the 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington Thursday.

Sukanya Roy won the $30,000 cash prize when she correctly spelled a word that means having wavy hair . The Indian-American eighth grader from Abington Township also won a reference library and more than $10,000 in scholarships and other prizes. It was Sukanya's third consecutive appearance in the annual Spelling Bee.

A total of 275 contestants from such countries as the United States, the Bahamas, Canada, Japan, China and Ghana took part in the event, which began Wednesday with a series of preliminary rounds.

Twelve-year-old Laura Newcombe of Toronto came in second place, after misspelling the word that stands for a combination of contradictory arguments .