See the preceding “Vowels” subheads, rinse, and repeat.
To complete this little roundelay of vowel play, let’s first recap where we are. In Parts I and III, we concluded that our tongue-in-cheek list of vowels now stands at A, I, O, U, and sometimes E, Y, W, and R.
Now, see my entry for the letter Z on page 182, in which I point out that the letters / and U were also used as consonants before complementary J and V were introduced to the alphabet. And in fact V and U were somewhat interchangeable, as were I and J, given
the circumstance: Consider IVLIVS, which is not a Roman numeral, but an English spelling of Julius. U and V were kind of like UV light—visible only under certain conditions. Then add in the fact that double-u was formed literally as two joined U or V characters, and we’re forced to revise the lineup even further: A and O, and sometimes E, I, J, U, V, W, R, T, Y (starting to look like a keyboard row, isn’t it?), and once-upon a time JE.
For that matter, if we get real technical and decide to finally add in A and O as sometimes vowels because they also act as words, well, we have no pure vowels left at all.
I feel like I’ve just completed the linguistic murder version of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians.