By Madeleine Kando
Once upon a time, on an island in the big blue ocean, there lived a little boy who liked to sing. But singing was not allowed on his island. His daddy told him that it scared the fish away, and without fish there was no food.
So, all the little boy could do, was whisper his songs. ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star..’ he would sadly whisper-sing, sitting on the beach, trying not to scare the fish away. If you have ever tried to sing while whispering you know how hard it is. It’s like watching a black and white movie about the wonderful colors of flowers.
Not only was it forbidden to sing, but even sounds like ‘b’, as in ‘bat’, ‘d’ as in ‘dog’ and ‘g’ as in ‘good’, were considered too scary for the fish, so you had to say: ‘how to you to. Woult you like to ko for a walk? Even saying ‘I was a very good boy’ was forbidden. You had to say: ‘I wass a ferry koot poy’.
If you wonder what it was like to live on that island, try to speak English like a German. You will soon ‘realice that it iss not ass tifficult ass it sounts, putt it iss not ferry pretty’.
‘Putt tatty’ whispered the little boy, ‘why tit Kot kif us focal korts, if we are not aple to use them?’ ‘Stop asking silly questions’ replied his father. ‘Focal korts are like your appentix. A useless remnant of the past’.
One day a big storm came and all the houses ended up in the ocean, the trees lost their leaves and the birds lost their feathers. They all looked like plucked chickens, trying to take off, but flopping down on their beaks.
Lo and behold, when the survivors woke up, they no longer knew how to whisper and only could make the sounds that were previously verboten. All the ‘whisper sounds’ were gone!
So this is how they spoke: ‘Whad habbened? Does addywadd dow whad habbened? All the houzes are broguen! Whad zhould we do?
They preyed to the almighty Goddess Wisheyewazonvagazion and asked to please could she bring back the voiceless sounds? ‘Only if you give me a sound in return’, she said.
‘Uh…’ said the villagers, trying to think which one of their sounds to trade.
‘Ok, that one will do!’ said Wisheyewazonvagazion and vanished as quickly as she had appeared, with a big grin on her face.
The villagers were confused, but the little boy knew what just happened. They had traded the most priced possession in their language, the ‘uh’ sound, also known as the ‘schwa’.**
Since the inhabitants of this little island happened to speak American English, they liked to swallow most of their vowels and replace them with the ‘schwa’ sound. It’s the ‘uh’ sound in ‘balloon’ (buhlloon), ‘problem’ (probluhm), ‘family’ (famuhly), ‘bottom’ (bottuhm) and so on.
In other words, the Goddess, shrewd as she was, had made them trade in all their vowels! Without it, it was almost impossible to speak! They couldn’t even say ordinary things, like: ‘I have a carrot and a banana’. (I have uh carruht and uh buhnana).
The chief, who went by the name Hewhowillnotbenamed called an emergency meeting around the campfire that night, trying to come up with an alternative to the ‘schwa’, but he couldn’t figure out how to speak without the schwa. Not even the clever little boy could think of anything.
Eventually, Wisheyewazonvagazion got bored, now that the villagers hardly spoke at all and when they did they sounded so strange that she took pity on them. She said: ‘I will give you back the schwa if you get rid of your stupid rule of only using voiceless sounds. Fish love the little boy’s singing'.
So from that day on, the little boy sang at the top of his little lungs and he never had to whisper-sing any more. And the fish loved it. This is a true story.
If you don’t believe me, ko chump in a lake. leave comment here
** Schwa
