Your Letters
18:37 UK time, Monday, 9 January 2012
Do you think Becca in Norway (Friday's letters), who is kindly providing up-dates from the future, could kindly let me have next Saturday's Lotto numbers if I give her a name for her next little one?
Rob, Crowmarsh Gifford, UK
No no no! I'm determined to stand by Andy (Friday 30 December's letters) in this one! The discussion is all about phonetic consonants, not orthographic, because the English language is littered with extra little letters that we never say ("ght" has no "gh" in it, although this does usually indicate a lengthening of the vowel). Becca - [th] is a single consonant, in terms of phonetics, so unfortunately twe[l f th] only has three consonants. My inner and outer pedants have had their outing for the day now, time to tuck it up with a nice cup of Horlicks...
Sarah, Coventry
Dave Parker (Friday letters): "Nymphs". Or perhaps, "rivernymphs".
Alexander Lewis Jones, Nottingham, UK
I think Becca and Dave are both missing the point - Andy is discussing clusters of pronounced consonants, not spellings which happen to include compound consonants (like "th") or silent ones (like "gh"). "Sixths" and "twelfths" both have four consecutive pronounced consonants - resepctively k,s,th,s and l,f,th,s.
Knightsbridge and Hampsthwaite are both place names spelled with six consecutive consonants, but only four and five pronounced ones respectively (and then only if you count the "w" sound as a consonant.
Tim, London
I don't want to be pedantic but I was always told and believe that the shortest distance (see Friday's letters) between two London Underground stations was the 0.161 miles which represents Leicester Square to Covent Garden on the Piccadilly line. TFL seems to agree with this (and they should know!) - see . Granted it may only be 180m between the entrances to Embankment and Charing Cross, but the actual track distance from platform to platform is longer. I'll get my Oyster Card (then the journey only costs £2 instead of £4.30...)
Martin, Hemel Hempstead, UK
In this story it would be commendable that the restaurant uses only local ingredients ("no reliance on air transport") except that the benefit is wiped out by customers flying half way around the world to visit.
Rich, Titchfield Common, UK
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