To the Editor,
Forgive me for arriving late to the Swarthmore pronunciation train, but I didn’t get a chance to see the survey until today. I was surprised that no one commented on how the word Swarthmore may be the most difficult word in the English language for a non-native speaker. An S followed by a W? And then an R smack up against a TH? We are asking a lot of our visitors from non-English speaking countries! An elderly Moscow relative could pony up “Svartmore,” but she was greatly relieved when we moved to (the much more pronounceable) Philadelphia.
Laurie Bernstein
Philadelphia