Sir, – Chris Power asks “what’s the madder with people who refuse to pronounce the ledder “T” in the middle of words?” (July 2nd).
There’s nothing the matter with them; they’re just speaking their own dialect, and that’s a part of the cultural heritage of Ireland. Letters to the editor complaining about “bad pronunciation” have probably never made anybody change what they say or how they say it.
But in phonetic terms, what’s happening here is that people are “leniting” the sound in the middle of a word like “letter”, ie, pronouncing it with less energy. Phoneticians call this “tapping” or “flapping”; the resulting sound is not exactly the same as that usually represented by the letter “d”. For a tap, the tongue makes a very rapid closure against the roof of the mouth.
Tapping usually happens when a "t" sound comes b etween two vowels and the next syllable is unstressed. Most of the words where Chris Power uses the letter "d" to represent this pronunciation ("madder", "ledder", "ladder", "bedder") fit this pattern. But tapping wouldn't be possible in his version of The Irish Times's web address ("irishtimes dod com") because "com" is stressed.
Tapping is a well-known feature of many varieties of English – those of North America, Australia, New Zealand – but also of some varieties in Britain and Ireland. It might be a relative newcomer in some parts of Ireland, but it’s been common, at least in parts of Ulster, for a long time.
Working with colleagues on 19th-century letters from Irish emigrants, we’ve come across spellings that reflect people using this pronunciation up to 200 years ago– “geding”, “potedos”, “Prodestant”, “sadisfaction”, “wriding”. It’s a part of Ireland’s cultural heritage. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN McCAFFERTY,
Rådal,
Norway.