Garbled Gaelic

Mr Alistair MacNeill (Letters, 30 July) is of course right about the pronunciation of the Gaelic word for a drinking cup, cuach.

But when words are borrowed from one language into another they generally change their form – “capercaillie” does not sound very like capull coille, for example – and “quaich” has been a regular Scots word since the 16th century.

And Mr MacNeill will surely agree that “quaich” at least sounds better than the way one English commentator rendered it during a Commonwealth Games broadcast – as “quake”!

Derrick McClure

Rosehill Terrace

Aberdeen