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Thanks, Paul...

Even though I don't like many of the homophones (aka alleged homophones in many parts of the country), I often manage to ignore them. Even when I don't, can't, I dock the setter a mark anyway for the laziness of the clue. (And some of them have been regurgitated for decades, not a good thing.)

Malone

Yes they sound the same to me. So do

Paw Pore Poor Pour Por
Law Lore Lure Lower Lor
Oar Ore Or Awe O'er

I use very few vowels.

Rossim

Nice to hear from you

Paul

I suppose I am white, male, working class. Only use a few flat vowels.

Don’t know if anyone’s watching ‘The Secret History of Writing’ on bbc4, Mondays at 9pm. Episode 2 tonight. Really interesting would recommend. Anyway, don't knock homophones, without them we might still be using hieroglyphs ;)

a lot of the controversy over homophones is rhotic or non-rhotic pronunciation. as a rhotic speaker, i don't see the point of including an r in the spelling if you aren't going to pronounce it...

I think I've mentioned this before, but we once went on a nature trip to Costa Rica, in which one of the other participants called flowers "flahs", wires, "wahs", and so on. Nonsense!

Well, Chrise, you've been mixing with anybody from upper (middle) class to aristocracy and even royalty. Prince Charles no doubt would call Highgrove 'quite a nice hice'.

I can't remember the exact words of Professor Higgins' song in 'My Fair Lady'. Something like 'The way an Englishman talks absolutely classifies him; the moment he speaks he makes some other Englishman despise him.'

I don't despise any accent unless it is 'put on'. Worst of all are people like Tony Blair and George Osborne who drop their t's for fear of sounding too posh.

You've put your finger on one of my pet hates, paulH - dropping the final consonant off words.

It sort of reminds me of the question "How many Ls are there in Millwall"?

Answer - none - the locals pronunce as MiWah

Hope you`re all staying safe and wearing your marrrrsk !

The only Marske I know relates to several place names in the North Riding.

Book and buck don't rhyme as far as I'm concerned. I don't mind people pronouncing buck as book but I don't like it when they pronounce book as buck. Look and luck are different too. The same goes for words like good and should.

I heard a programme on Radio 4 a few years ago about good books and it sounded as though they were talking about gad baks.

Hi Orson

What about wood and food?

I wonder if other languages have so many anomalies - probably not!