Letter: Are you guilty?

The Great Vowel Shift of the late Middle Ages led to the peculiar spelling of words like “thought” and “bread”. Are we about to see the same thing with the consonant “r”?

For long enough received pronunciation English has done away with it at the end of words – “weather”; “better” etc – but it is now appearing in the middle of words where there seems to be a difficulty in pronouncing two vowels in succession.

On Thursday I heard Jonathan Agnew talking about crows “cawring” in trees at the Test Match in Sri Lanka. How long before the birds stop cawing?

John Henderson

Carnoustie, Angus