What could be more British than lukewarm bitter beer and kippers? They are on my list of Britishisms that are so wonderful that no other nation has chosen yet to adopt them. This list includes dressing up our barristers with horsehair on their heads, campanology by combinations and permutations rather than tune, trifle and suet pudding, and sending children who are not criminal or insane away from home to boarding school.

Kippers and beer are very old national eccentricities. Their spelling shouts it. We can tell that their names had been borrowed from spoken Latin by the Anglo-Saxons before their migration to Britain. Such very early borrowings by the immigrants of AD449 are found in the earliest Anglo-Saxon texts. They are also found in other Germanic languages.

“Beer” comes from the Latin bibere, to drink. Kippers come from the Latin cuprum, copper. Interesting that kippers evidently looked much the same as they do today. They were named from their colour. And these spellings give clues to the way that Julius Caesar spoke, as well as Hengist and Horsa.

By indirections of spelling we can find directions out. For example, take W. The English “wine” comes from the Latin vinum. Similarly, “wall” from vallum and “pillow” from pulvinus.

What can we deduce from this, Watson? You know my methods: apply them. These borrowings indicate at least that the Latin letter V, at the time that Hengist’s grandfather adopted the word, was pronounced more like the Anglo-Saxon W than like any other sound or letter existing at the time. In fact, the Anglo-Saxons preferred beer to wine anyway: rather too much for their own good, according to some accounts. It used to irritate me when old-fashioned classical texts printed their Vs as Us. But they were actually giving a more accurate account of the ancient pronunciation.

Time moved on, as it does, in spelling, pronunciation and all the other departments of language. Languages evolve to meet the needs of their users. That is why it is a category mistake (“the blueness of lexicography hits until it sleeps”) to talk of languages decaying, or, indeed, improving. By definition, languages are perfectly suited to their users of the day. Otherwise the users change them. Languages die only when people stop using them. In later borrowings the Anglo-Saxons used their letter F (they did not have a letter V) to represent the contemporary Latin pronunciation of V. Hence we get “fan” from the Latin vannus, and “fiddle” from the Vulgar Latin vitula, the ancestor of our viols and violins.

Vowels change as well as consonants. The original Anglo-Saxon A changed to E or AE. (Anglo-Saxon vowels varied according to dialect. They still do.) So the Latin word caseus has been changed into our modern cheese. And Latin strata, paved, has our modern street. Two lions are walking down Main Street (Strata). One says to the other: “Awfully quiet here, isn’t it?”

For full information about the Spelling Bee and how to enter go to timesonline.co.uk/spellingbee.