Sir, – Edward Thornley (May 6th) tells us confidently that there is no Haitch and has it on the authority of his mother that only a lower class of person would presume to pronounce it as so many Irish people do. Are we to conclude that a large percentage of the inhabitants of Ireland have been stumbling blindly through life, unable or worse, unwilling, to get to grips with the English language’s most abundantly right-angle-endowed letter?
I, for one, am not ashamed to be heard to be Irish and to speak as many of the ordinary people of Ireland speak. I have no intention of checking my pronunciation in the Oxford English Dictionary and I refuse to quake in fear of being consigned to the some imagined socio-linguistic dustbin.
Whatever next? Perhaps Mr Thornley will tell us that the letter A must henceforth rhyme with “hay” rather than rhyming with “ass”, as it does, so appropriately, in this case. – Yours, etc,
CORMAC Mc MAHON,
Tweed Street, Highett,
Victoria, Australia.