Dates on photographs

Dear Sir,

Please, oh please, Harry Flashman, with your knowledge of photography, have words with the Pattaya Mail Staff on the simple manner in which the day/date imprint found in many of the latest small 35mm cameras can be switched off.

The Photographs taken at the Miss Tiffany contest and published in this week’s paper all tell us that the contest was held on the 27.3.99 and 28.3.99, unless of course this is some very modern camera being used by the Pattaya Mail that prints the vital statistics of the female being photographed and that the figure 3 relates to a part of the anatomy that is not required by these contestants.

Your help in directing the Pattaya Mail staff in better use of their equipment as seen at the Tiffany show (no pun intended) would be appreciated,

Patryck Kilvington

Yet more on the pronunciation of Pattaya

Editor;

Pattaya, as observed by PCB Mitchell, is a polysyllabic word (containing three syllables to be exact). The first is short and written, the second is short and unwritten. Short and long refer to the length of the vowel contained in the syllable. If the rules dictating the tone of each syllable were strictly observed, the first two syllables would be pronounced with a high tone, and the last syllable with a mid tone, i.e., Phat (high) tha (high) ya (mid). However, in most polysyllabic words unwritten short vowels appearing in between the first and last syllables are almost invariably pronounced with a mid tone. Hence the true pronunciation of Pattaya is in fact: Phat (high) tha (mid) ya (mid).

May I also add that the much used transliteration "Pattaya", strictly speaking, is not in fact correct. According to the system used by cartographers nationwide, it should really be spelled: Phattaya.

Yours faithfully:
Richard Palmer

Pattaya rebuttal

Dear Sir,

I am sorry that Neil Spensley does not share my sense of humour or my belief that letters should be short. I only take issue with his final attack on my language. I can assure him that I have the letter I faxed in front of me and "colleague" is correctly spelled. (An Editor’s mea culpa would not have come amiss.)

‘Bye for now as I have to retune my ear to "Andaluz".

Yours faithfully,
PCB Mitchell

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