Author’s note: One day I was looking out of an office window and a van pulled up outside the HQ of what is now GlaxoSmithKline, the giant pharmaceutical company. About 9 people jumped out in identical white boiler suits and each with a single large letter on their back. Together the letters spelled “sp animl tn”. The boiler suited protesters then waited for their colleagues to arrive in a second van, presumably so that together they could complete the sentence “Stop Animal Testing”. But they never arrived. After about half an hour of waiting, the rather sheepish group called the van back, embarked and slunk away.
The half completed message reminded me of an SMS message and got me thinking about vowels. So I wrote this. Tom then declared that it was too similar to an article in the Onion, but we were short that week, so it got published anyway, and loads of dreary people showed how clever they were by commenting on the site that the Onion had got their first. Except one girl who asked permission to publish it in her school magazine. Anyway, I was rather pleased with it.
The world lies on the brink of a “massive vocabulary recession” according to a United Nations report leaked today. Huge demand has lead to a “catastrophic vowel shortage” and several languages will become inoperable “within months”
The first signs of the problem emerged in text messages when it was noticed that it was impossible to receive a message containing a single vowel. Further signs were apparent in the world Scrabble tournament with the victory of the Polish entrant who was the only one who could manage to find a word that required no vowels. The replacement of the letter O with the numeral 0 on Countdown has also led to confusion with Carol Vorderman recently turning the word Coloured into a complex algebraic equation describing general relativity.
The report also claims that hoarding is starting to occur within particular languages. The French have recently introduced several new words consisting entirely of vowels but are claiming that the use of grave and oblique accents exempts them from trading controls and tariffs on these letters. Problems are also being exacerbated by profligacy within lax regimes – Kulugoo, a district in Nigeria, has been urged to halt its annual ululation festival but has so far refused.
Governments are being encouraged to introduce measures to control rampant inflation in vowels as a result of over-demand and smaller fonts and quieter speech are likely to become commonplace within the next few weeks. Pressure is being put on consonants with many changing hands at rates as high as 20 consonants for a single vowel. The spot market for punctuation has also seen a massive upswing in the demand for apostrophes to assist in abbreviations.
Further restrictions are widely seen as inevitable with a number of popular words and phrases expected to become prohibited or only available on prescription. Oeuf, Euro and “Ooh! Aah! Cantona!” are likely to be early targets. Rationing cards bearing a single vowel are being prepared and will be priority issued to essential services that need to ensure they can be understood or rely on wit or verbal profligacy – marketing, actors and management consultants are believed to be the main benefactors.
Sesame Street has stepped up production of the most in-demand vowels with a month of episodes all featuring the letters A, E and O. From the head of the Countdown Crisis Centre, chief language guru, Richard Whiteley urged calm. “We have faced these dark times before and have managed to come through them. Who can forget those terrible 3 months in 1987 when the letter ‘K’ completely disappeared? People should be sensible and only take the vowels they need to make themselves understood and no more. I’ll have 75 A’s please, Carol”
Sex and Drugs and Growing Old 