Where You Can't Buy a Vowel

Published on by D. G. Hart

I have some Welsh in me from my mother’s side but then again so do most people who have a Jones in the family. While singing in church I have long observed the similarities between Welsh and Hebrew, as in both languages feature consonants. Here are the top ten Welsh hymn tunes according to one list compiler:

PANTYFEDWEN (TYDI A WNAETH Y WYRTH)
FINLANDIA (DROS GYMRU’N GWLAD)
BRO ABER (O TYRED I’N GWAREDU)
DIM OND IESU (O FY IESU BENDIGEDIG)
RHO IM YR HEDD (Rhys)
LAUSANNE (IESU IESU RWYT TI’N DDIGON)
CALON LAN (NID WY’N GOFYN BYWYD MOETHUS)
CWM RHONDDA (WELE’N SEFYLL RHWNG Y MYRTWYDD)
BUILTH (RHAGLUNIAETH FAWR Y NEF)
PRICE (I GALFARIA TROF FY WYNEB)

I’d love to see anyone of these featured on Wheel of Fortune.

Now it turns out the Quaker descendants of the Welsh in the suburbs of Philadelphia are abandoning vowels altogether:

Bryn Mawr College is announcing today that it is dropping the vowels from its name and questioning the use of vowels generally. The college will now be known as Brn Mwr. The move is being described as the first major initiative of the college’s new president, Kim Cassidy. A statement from Cassidy said: “This is the age of Twitter, every character counts. And really, what’s the difference, no one can pronounce our name anyway.” The college also announced plans for an academic conference related to the institution’s new skepticism of vowels. The conference is “The Hegemony of the Vowel: Incontinence and Lipogrammatics.” One of the planned sessions is “The Habermasian Response: Communicative Ir-Rationality?”

I am speechless (that’s with 3 e’s).

23 thoughts on “Where You Can't Buy a Vowel”

  1. On a more serious note, William Tyndale commented frequently on the similarity between Hebrew and the Anglo-Saxon tongue, short, punchy, terse, and with a penchants for monosyllabic words. Dr. Milton Fisher, OT man, often drew attention to it as well.

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  7. Pretty sad that in crafting the April Fool Joke they failed to realise that in Welsh W is a vowel. A truly vowel-free Bryn Mawr is: Brn Mr. Which might be confused with the evil Mr Burns of Simpsons fame.

    And that list should include O Iesu Mawr, oh aye.

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  9. “The college also announced plans for an academic conference related to the institution’s new skepticism of vowels. The conference is “The Hegemony of the Vowel: Incontinence and Lipogrammatics.” One of the planned sessions is “The Habermasian Response: Communicative Ir-Rationality?””

    Yep, probably an April Fool’s prank (“prnk”). But given that certain segments of the academy (usually bug-eyed hippy leftist profs off their meds or on weed) take very seriously the study of the absurd or the inane, it was a very believable prank indeed. 🙂

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  11. Pronunciation is important..

    Exhibit a:

    Asked how to say his name, he told The Literary Digest, “The first syllable is pronounced like May, the name of the month. In the second syllable the ch is as in chin, with e as in pen: may’chen. In Gresham, the h is silent: gres’am.”

    Just sayin’

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  19. In 1914, the officials at Ellis thought slotting two vowels into Anton Zrmc’s Yugoslav surname would help the Americans pronounce it better, but “Zrimec” has been roundly butchered for generations. However, adding an initial “Van” helps it slide off the Dutch tongue.

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  20. @ zrim: Ah, so your ancestor was vowel-bombed, lol. 🙂

    I’ve been part of Dutch congregations for over a decade; I’ve had to endure jokes made by the folks in them about adding ‘van der’ or ‘-sma’ to my last name, thus Dutchifying (or Friesifying, in the latter case) it. They were amusing, initially. After about the 100th time…

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  21. Will, my mock-u-moniker for any Dutchman is VanVanderVan, as in, “VanVanderVan, is that Dutch?”

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