If you had read my new Faber paperback, Language is Power, more carefully, you would have seen that I expressly mention that the dropping of the “t” sound in the middle of a word is not yet characteristic of Estuary English, unlike the strangulation of “t” at the end of the word (TES, August 22).
Thus your headline, “a be’er bi’ of Engwish”, is doubly inappropriate - be’er is not Estuary,and the treatment of “l” which turns “milk” into “miwk” does not apply to “l” in prevocalic position, as in the second syllable of “English”.
JOHN HONEY
13 Greenlands Red Cross Lane Cambridge
