Zahaan Bharmal’s observation on the north-south pronunciation divide (Could we be about to see the end of northern English dialects? My experience – and the science – says aye, 23 September) is neatly corroborated in Rosie Webb’s otherwise delightfully rhyming children’s book Chimpanzees in Dungarees: reading aloud to our grandchildren, my Mancunian partner is forced to southernise the page about “gir-ar-ffes in scarfs”. A dozen miles from Webb’s Bristol base is a place that exemplifies the third, south-western variant: the long “aa” sound. I mean Bath, aka Baaff or Barth. The cities are close, but one is posh, the other not so much.
Tony Benjamin
Bristol
• Please inform Mr Bharmal that up here in t’north as every Yorkshire (and Derbyshire) man knows, kegs can only store beer and the like. But kex is an umbelliferous flower to be seen while strolling through a meadow wearing your keks.
Stuart Garside
New Mills, Derbyshire
• I’ve obviously been away in that there London far too long; when I were a lad in Guiseley, trousers were keks, not kegs. Perhaps that is the joke that Zahaan Bharmal has been sold? ’Appen he’s reet, but as is often said about Yorkshiremen, you can tell one, but you can’t tell him much.
Simeon Gilchrist
East Sheen, London
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