Go-don riot

Published on 20/02/2013 19:46

I’m pretty sure that the source of the “Cayngoms”, referred to by Alistair McEwen (Letters, 19 February) is one “Lawna Go-don”, the BBC’s Scottish correspondent for the network news.

Even in these straitened times for the BBC, the BBC Scotland journalist who reports for the Scottish news immediately after the network bulletin is not ­acceptable for Southern ears, presumably because of their use of mispronunciations such as “Cairngorms” and “Loch”.

Unfortunately, for many years now, I have noted an increasing tendency by native Scots to copy their Southern cousins in saving “r” from its wasteful use in such words as “burger” and “order” (two saved in each of these), and parking them on the ends of words that patently don’t need them, exemplified by “idear”.

This habit seems to be most prevalent in west-central Scotland, though sad to say I’ve heard this usage in the North-east from those who should know better.

Ken Gow

Bridge of Canny

Banchory

I AGREE with both Alistair ­McEwen and David Mollison regarding the deterioration of pronunciation on BBC radio and TV.

Perhaps it is not too late to try to get BBC staff to pronounce the name of our current month correctly. I cannot count the number of times I have heard the words “Febuary” or “Febrae” in recent few weeks. The word is FEBRUARY!

David Justice

Kirk Park Road

Elie, Fife

I wonder how your correspondents on the subject of pronunciation would react if English readers were to write in poking fun at Scots pronunciations such as “wurrld” for “world” and “Chesh-yre” for normal English “Chesh-eer”. I’ll wager there would be an outcry about “English arrogance”.

The loss of rolled “r” has occurred not only in received pronunciation but also in related Germanic languages such as Danish and in some dialects of Norwegian, Swedish and German. In other dialects, including Scottish English and Bavarian German, the rolling of “r”s goes on unabated. These are long-term historical processes.

We all have favourite speech-forms and ones that make us wince, and there’s no harm as long as we realise our personal prejudice is just that – prejudice.

Harry D Watson

Braehead Grove

Edinburgh