Borscht To a ‘T’

Regarding “Taking a Camp Look at Search for Borscht” (Nov. 12): One of life’s puzzling mysteries for me has been trying to find out why people spell the name of the well-known soup, borscht, with a “t” at the end. This soup, indigenous to Slavic nations, has no “t” in its Cyrillic spelling. Only non-Slavic people stick that letter at the end and it makes absolutely no sense to have it there. If someone pronounces it with a “t”, they are not pronouncing “borshch” correctly.

“Borshch” was originally developed in the Ukraine and there is a basic, classical version of this delicious soup. Like everything else to which the people of Russia have helped themselves, including vodka, which originated in Poland, they labeled “borshch” as Russian. But we know better, don’t we?

JAIME ARAGON

Brea