Rings of Smoke

These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.

Four hundred words written without using some vowel

Posted on | December 12, 2008 | 2 Comments

This thought descended in November but kept being postponed. But it seemed to be worthwhile. Like…test my skills in English to see if I could exclude some vowel from my writing but still write something coherent. It seemed terribly difficult when I tried to work it out the first time in my mind, seeking to compose some two hundred words. But the job promised to be interesting if I could complete it. I could not decide on subjects first…something which did not require the use of minimum one vowel…could not be poetry ‘cuz it is very dependent on specific words. Prose seemed good, but subject? Something which would be comfy to write but interesting too. Difficult. Then end terms, with their evil sisters, the projects, took over. Result- the project got put in the cooler. But tomorrow end terms end. Open book quiz is scheduled for nine in the morning. I go to bed by four but sleep does not come. So, listening to music, not thinking of something specific, I remember this. Thirty minutes of tossing-turning in the bed. Then get up to do something. Which is, switch on light, pull computer to bed, begin writing this blogpost. Which would the best vowel to select to reject for writing four hundred words without using it? Only five vowels in English to give birth to enough vowel sounds to confuse people for their lifetimes. Hindi, my mother tongue, though is built on thirteen vowels which give birth to zillion vowel sounds. So much the difficulty for the pronouncers. I think hindi might be better suited to the exercise I choose to do. But it would be difficult in hindi too, I think. Tongues do no lend themselves lightly to experiments. Nor is my word store big enough. But I think enough bullshit written while being selective enough might be the route to getting there. I think sometime someone will decide to remove vowels from English. Then? Will children write like they write their SMSs now? Wl lnguez b shrtnd 2 thz extrms? Or will people still try to write proper English? Will there be phonetics with vowel sounds removed from English? Will there be spoken English? How will it flourish, if it survives? I do not think so. Intelligible sound will in best likelihood be finished without vowels. Here I try to write four hundreds without using some vowel, the results right now seem limping. How will someone ever write books of million words without stilting the sentences if they do not use vowels? I do not know…I like vowels. Besides, this experiment is successful. Including the title, it is now four hundred fifty words…   

 

P.S. I chose what seemed to be the easiest of the vowels. The result is not a piece of art, but it seems readable enough. Can anyone write four hundred words without using any one of the other four vowels? The results would be interesting to see. I think the vowel “U” might be an easy one, or may be “O” even. But like without “E” and “I” seems very difficult. I don’t see anyone writing even two hundred words without “E”.

P.P.S. To put things in perspective, the 82 words or the postscript have 14 As and more than 50 Es.

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Comments

2 Responses to “Four hundred words written without using some vowel”

  1. oia
    December 12th, 2008 @ 7:49 pm

    … which buzz @ cruel smells,

  2. riversidetree
    December 12th, 2008 @ 9:23 pm

    i can never do this…

    superb effort…

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