It's the way you say it

'He looked down on the illustrious Waugh family on the grounds that they had reduced the end sound of their name to a sad English sigh'

I am very glad to announce the return of Dr Wordsmith to this column, ready as always to answer your searching enquiries about the way we speak today. Take it away, Doc!

Dear Dr Wordsmith, I once met a Scotsman called Harry Waugh who maintained stoutly that "Waugh" was a Scottish name and should be pronounced in the Scottish manner. That is to say, with a spitting sound at the end, like the word "loch" in Scottish, or indeed in German. This is how he pronounced his own name, and he therefore looked down on the illustrious Waugh family of Evelyn, Auberon, Alexander, etc, on the grounds that they had had the end sound of the old name entirely sandpapered away until there was nothing left except a sad English sigh.

I had forgotten all about this until I read about the recent case of the farmer called Bobby Waugh who is thought to have been the cause of the recent foot-and-mouth outbreak, or at least is thought to have been prosecuted on those grounds to divert attention from the Government's monumental inefficiency in that matter. This fellow Waugh hails from Northumberland, and his name is pronounced "Woff" by all the newsreaders. Now, the sound "Woff" is sort of halfway between the grinding Scottish sound and the nothing English sound. Does this mean that the further north you get, the more authentic it gets? And that it actually goes in degrees, and changes every 50 miles?

Dr Wordsmith writes: I have no idea. You may well be right. And the next, please!

Dear Dr Wordsmith, I think the previous letter has an interesting point. When does authentic become unauthentic? You yourself complained the other day that people called machismo "mackismo" when it should be pronounced "machismo". But how would you adjudicate the pronunciation of "masochism"? This particular deviation is named after a Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose name pronounced in German would also have ended with the same sound as the Scottish "loch". Should we therefore say "masochism" with a grinding noise in the middle?

Dr Wordsmith writes: I have no idea. You may well be right. And the next, please!

Dear Dr Wordsmith, I would like to extend this argument further. The Scottish name "Menzies" is universally pronounced "Mingies" in Scotland, as is the newsagent chain of the same name. Down here in the South, I have noticed that Sassenachs all pronounce it as written, as "Menzees". Are they wrong? Are the Scots wrong to insist on their version? If they are both right, is there a no-man's-land near the Scottish border where both pronunciations overlap?

Dr Wordsmith writes: You may well be right. I have no idea. And the next, please!

Dear Dr Wordsmith, In the past, you have often made the point that when a thing has no name, it never gets talked about. I believe one of your examples was the sound made by a pedestrian-crossing to tell blind pedestrians when it is safe to cross. We all know what it is. We never refer to it because it has no name. Well, in the TV coverage of the World Cup, I noticed that whenever we saw a view of the crowd, the crowd suddenly started waving and cheering. This, it turned out, was because the TV pictures were also being transmitted on a giant screen at the ground, so the crowd could always see themselves on telly. The same thing is now happening at Wimbledon – whenever we see the mob on Henman Hill, they immediately explode into celebrations because they can see themselves on the screen. I just wondered if anyone has devised a term for this new phenomenon, because otherwise nobody will ever mention it!

Dr Wordsmith writes: If they have, I have never heard it. And the next!

Dear Dr Wordsmith, While we are on the subject of the World Cup, I am sure I am not the only person who so desperately wants their side to win that they are afraid to watch, out of a superstition that their very watching may cause their side to lose! Conversely, people may feel that the act of watching actually helps their side to win! I wonder if there is any term to describe the conviction that watching a TV programme may affect what is happening on that TV screen?

Dr Wordsmith writes: I have no idea. You may well be right. And the next, please!

We have just discovered that Dr Wordsmith did not come into the office today, but sent in a small tape recorder instead. We're sorry about that. Let's hope he's here in person next time. Meanwhile, keep those questions coming in!