Sbagliato is not an “impossible to pronounce” Italian word (How the negroni sbagliato took off with the help of Emma D’Arcy and TikTok, 14 October). Millions of Italians pronounce it correctly. I am not Italian, but I can pronounce it correctly. Italian is spelled phonetically; all you have to do is learn the rules, which most British people seem unwilling to do, preferring to pronounce foreign words as though they were English.
David Mansell
Todmorden, West Yorkshire
• Re working from a pub (What’s it like working from the pub? Well, the beer numbs your cost-of-living anxiety, 14 October), when I was at the then HM Customs and Excise department, team “meetings” would sometimes be held in a pub near the office, but productivity was often in inverse proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed.
Ian Arnott
Peterborough
• Please don’t replace the prime minister question for the elderly and confused (Letters, 14 October). On my husband’s first day at a daycare centre, he was given the Daily Mail to look at the headlines. His lip curled as he said slowly: “No thanks. We have the Guardian.” Asked about the prime minister, he said: “She is a disease.”
Jan Jeffries
Brewood, Staffordshire
• My late brother spent his teaching career in secondary education (Letters, 14 October). His favourite assembly announcement, concerning toilet problems, was: “If there’s no toilet paper left, haven’t you got a tongue in your head?”
Mary Pawley
Milton Keynes
• As a five-year-old in the 1950s, what puzzled me was how to sit down and sit up at the same time.
David Humphreys
Carnforth, Lancashire
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