17 JULY 1993, Page 16

Mind your language

I THINK I am beginning to suffer from irritable vowel syndrome.

When people use the wrong vowels it makes me irritable. The symptoms are surprisingly common. A report in the Times announced the publication of sev- eral early poems by T.S. Eliot. 'Despite the tender age at which Eliot wrote the poems, they should not be dismissed as juvenalia,' the report said. Nearly.

Other favourite vowel mix-ups are geneology, benifecent and miniscule, the last more excusable in my book, since it reflects the pronunciation. It is like Augustus Carp's complaint against a girl who spelled her name Nina, but pronounced it as if it were spelled Neena.

Dot Wordsworth