From \’Sounds Appealing\’ by David Crystal, Profile Books, 2018. One of my Oxfam Bookshop purchases.
It all begins with a 12th century Icelandic scholar, \’consonants can neither be named nor produced without a vowel.\’ There are words that are all vowel. There are no words purely of consonants. Vowels have a primeval status \’the breath that gives existence to words. In the beginning was the vowel.\’
We singers know these things.
