Vowel Be Darned

I stopped at the bank today and noticed round stickers all over the branch that asked the following question:

Of course there is something missing ... vowels. But what do missing vowels have to do with banking? I asked the teller and she directed me to a brochure about an identity alert benefit that the bank offers.

The brochure is titled as shown above and goes on to read:

Imagine having your identity stolen without even knowing it happened. Help safeguard you and your family with _____ _____Identity Alert Premium.

I get the correlation between stolen and missing items; however, I do not see any relation between missing vowels and stolen identity. Furthermore, I'm sure that an individual could have his or her identity stolen without knowing it happened; however, I have a hard time believing that any individual would read this copy and not know that the vowels are missing.

The semantic/pragmatic theme of this campaign is a stretch in my opinion.

As long as I am nitpicking, there is something else amiss with the copy too. The second sentence is a command with the implied subject "you" so it should really read "help safeguard 'yourself' and your family..."

What's the Frequency Pat Sajak?

The reason that Wheel of Fortune producers selected the particular letters they did to give as freebies to the winning contestant for the bonus round should come as no surprise. The five consonants and one vowel were the letters that contestants chose most frequently before the 1988 institution of the free letter bonus round scenario.


It should also come as no surprise that people would routinely choose these letters.

Based on the relative frequency of letters in English, "e" is the top ranked letter and vowel. The top consonants, in their ranked order, are "t", "n", "s", "r", "h"* and "l".

Makes me wonder why the letters appear in the order they do on Wheel of Fortune? They are not listed alphabetically or in order of frequency. Hmmm?

*Note to future contestants: Choose an "h" as one of your three consonants for the bonus round, and for the other two consonants, you may want to consider "d" and "c" which follow "l" in rank. Also, the vowel "a" is second to "e".

Here is an awesome visual reference to letter frequency that I spotted at 22 Words.



Interestingly, when comparing the relative frequency of the top seven consonant letters in English to the relative frequency of occurrence of the top seven consonant phonemes in English, there is quite a correlation.

The top seven consonant phonemes by relative frequency of occurrence are: /t/, /n/, /r/, /l/, /s/, /d/ and /z/.

The /z/ is of note because it is the phonetic realization of the plural letter "s" in many words, specifically words that end in voiced consonants and vowel phonemes, for example the words "dogs" and "goes" are phonetically transcribed as /dɔgz/ and /goz/. Additionally, words that end in the phonemes /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are pluralized by inserting a schwa /ə/ and then the /z/, for example the words "kisses" and "beaches" are phonetically transcribed as /kɪsəz / and /bitʃəz /.



Letter and phoneme frequency data from "Applied Phonetics: The Sounds of American English" by Harold T. Edwards.

Are You Envoweled?

According to the website is this your name?, I am extremely well envoweled (at least my name is, anyhow).

50% of the letters that make up my name are vowels and of one million first and last names reviewed by the site, only 2.2% have a higher vowel make-up.

I am thrilled that I can do my share to support the use of vowels, after all, without vowels (vowel sounds, that is) there would be no syllables and thus no rhymes; language would lose its poetic nature.

*The vowel sound is the nucleus of the rhyme and the only mandatory element of a syllable.

* A vowel letter does not always equal a vowel sound (ex. the word "tote" is written with two vowels but when transcribed phonetically, /tot/, it only has one vowel sound).

We All Make Mistakes - McCain's Schwa

I never claimed to be perfect though I did commit an error that I am a bit embarrassed about. In my post comparing Obama's name to McCain's I stated that McCain's name has only one vowel sound - WRONG. In fact, McCain's name includes the most common American English vowel sound - the schwa. When verbalizing the "Mc" portion of his name there is clearly a schwa (also called a reduced vowel) between the /m/ and the /k/. The schwa occurs in unstressed syllables because when a syllable is not stressed the vowel sound in that syllable is reduced. Interestingly, because any vowel sound can occur in an unstressed syllable and therefore be reduced there are 43 different spellings for the schwa.

Polish Vowel Sounds

POLISH DIVORCE

A Polish man moved to the USA and married an American girl. Although his English was far from perfect, they got along very well until one day he rushed into a lawyer's office and asked him if he could arrange a divorce for him -"very quick." The lawyer said that the speed for getting a divorce would depend on the circumstances, and asked him the following questions:
LAWYER: "Have you any grounds?" POLE: "JA, JA, acre and half and nice little home."LAWYER: "No," I mean what is the foundation of this case?" POLE: "It made of concrete." LAWYER: "Does either of you have a real grudge?" POLE: "No, we have carport, and not need one." LAWYER: "I mean, What are your relations like?" POLE: "All my relations still in Poland." LAWYER: "Is there any infidelity in your marriage?" POLE: "Ja, we have hi- fidelity stereo set and good DVD player." LAWYER: "Does your wife beat you up?" POLE: "No, I always up before her." LAWYER: "Is your wife a nagger?" POLE: "No, she white." LAWYER: "WHY do you want this divorce?" POLE: "She going to kill me."LAWYER: "What makes you think that?" POLE: "I got proof." LAWYER: "What kind of proof?" POLE: "She going to poison me. She buy a bottle at drugstore and put on shelf in bathroom I can read, and it say, 'Polish Remover.'"

By the way, I have many good friends who are Polish so this is all in good fun.