Sir, - Eve White writes (May 16th) to ask whether our national broadcaster is called "Ar Tee Ee" or "Or Tee Ee", since her dictionary favours the former, but many RTE announcers use the latter.
I wrote to your paper with a similar query about eight years ago. I specifically asked whether such announcers took the "cor" when it was too "for" to walk. I was subsequently invited to take part in a discussion about pronunciation on Liveline, during which Marian Finucane herself said RTE specifically instructed its staff to say "ar", not "or".
This pronunciation is not limited to employees of RTE, nor indeed to the name of the station. For example, there is apparently a very popular drama series on RTE called "Ee yore" and let's not forget such classic announcements from Or Tee Ee as "The stand-orff at Drumcree - what will be the political corst? But first the traffic - broken lights at Newlands Crorss again. . ." - Yours, etc.,
J.P. McBride, Clondalkin, Dublin 22.