"Incidentally, I have lived in Scotland for over 40 years." So you're not a Scot and you're criticising scots for how they pronounce something? 🤔
"It’s not wrong, so you’d look a bit foolish doing that." Agreed!
"The sly wee digs that Scottish people are somehow stupid are starting to irritate me" DEFINITELY agree!
"Snobbery however is pretty wrong." Yep! As is the arrogance of trying to tell native speakers of an accent/dialect/language that THEY. Are the ones in the wrong. I'm pretty sure at this point you'd be one of those that tries to tell me how to pronounce my own name!
"buscaution your inability to understand doesn’t make it wrong, it makes you wrong." Exactly!
"There is nothing to understand. The Alphabet doesn't have various pronunciations" oh really?! How about aitch and haitch as previously mentioned? Or zed and zee (and zee is used in some parts of uk as well as america), the letter r will be pronounced as arr by some on here and ahhh by others... Doesn't make EITHER wrong just different - you seem to have an issue with people who speak differently TO YOU.
"Again, the alphabet does not have regional variations" see above paragraph!
"Drawer as in drawer in a cabinet is pronounced draw!" Again, not in all accents. I've lived all over U.K., several places inc in England where both syllables would be pronounced.
Point out to me any word in English where the "aitch" sound is used?
"Doesn’t matter where people come from" wow! The arrogance! Of course it matters that's the whole point of dialects and accents!
46 year old Scot here btw (with an English lit & linguistics degree. Thoroughly enjoyed learning how accents and dialects evolved and are still evolving - as are grammar and spelling. Dictionaries simply give them generally accepted use by the majority at the time of writing the dictionary. Some words have had their entire meaning change vastly over the years!)
Lividatdolphins - excellent post re mergers.
Luck-shurry here.