Oh, oh
Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 1 April) has a beautifully simple vision of the way in which words move from one lan- guage to another. He seems to think that if it was a short 'o' in Greek it must be a short `o' in English, and dismissed with his usual `of course' those who pronounce 'homosex- ual' with a long first 'o'.
A moment's thought could have brought the following words to his mind: Homer, programme (and hundreds of others begin- ning with 'pro'), Rhodes, trophy, and (sum- ming up his idea) gonads. Those all have omicron but we pronounce them as if omega. In the reverse direction are words like agnostic, phonology, and somatic. (If phonology came from an omicron, as it sounds, it would mean the study of slaugh- ter.) It is not, 'of course', as simple as Mr Johnson would seem to believe.
Ian Baird
9 Norfolk Crescent, Framlingham, Woodbridge, Suffolk
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