The letter "February not Febuary" (Jan. 25) casts a pitying eye on "the many who wrongfully pronounce" February as "feb-yoo-air-ee" rather than as the supposedly correct "feb-roo-air-ee," and asks if it wouldn't be a kindness to "throw out the lifeline" to these doomed souls and pull them to safety.

For a variety of historical reasons, the relation between pronunciation and spelling in English is more indirect than is the case in some other languages.

Pronunciation changes over time, but English spelling has been slow to reflect these changes (the initial sound in knight and the final sound in lamb, for example, were once pronounced). The pronunciation of February that troubles some reflects a linguistic process called "dissimilation," in which one sound drops out because another appearance of the same sound is too close to it (compare the pronunciations "paraphe(r)nalia" or "su(r)prise"). The most common American pronunciation of February is in fact "feb-yoo-air-ee" and is so recognized by the Merriam-Webster and American Heritage dictionaries, among others.

Using the pronunciation that hews more closely to the word's spelling is a legitimate choice, but the users of the alternative version ought not to be characterized as in need of rescue and as guilty of a social or even an ethical infraction in their "wrongful" voicing of the word's spelling.