Of Consonants and Vowels

There are many fundamental categories in which we divide our world. The categories of hard and soft, big and small, positive and negative, acids and bases, yin and yang are among the ones we use to make sense of the world. It is as if our life is composed of many kinds of opposites that collide and collaborate to create a meaningful world for us.
Even in a world where a lot of the traditional binaries are becoming fuzzier, we make meaning largely through a combination of what is and what is not.One such fundamental division that lies under our nose but seldom receives any attention, perhaps for a very good reason, is that between consonants and vowels. Alphabets are divided into these two categories across languages in the world, and it is a fundamental part of the structure of language.
What makes us break up language into these parts and what role does each play? The question occurred to me perhaps while running across a book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimum Experience (excellent by the way), by a gentleman called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on my bookshelf, and trying to figure out once again how to pronounce his last name. Too many consonants seem to be blocking the way; as if a lot of consonants have just heard the school bell and are tripping over themselves in a mad rush to get to the end of the name. To pronounce a word with such an overdose of consonants packed so densely into a single name feels like a cookie stuffed mouth unbroken by any milk.
The division of sounds on this basis has perhaps to do with the differential nature of sounds that these two categories represent and the manner in which we produce them.
The consonant is all hard sound, constipated in its matter-of-factness. The world bitten off before it can come to fruition. It is compacted sound, full of pith; it represents all that is material and tangible. Consonants when left alone among themselves turn guttural and rough; they abrade each other with their masculine tumescent eagerness. Like the Polish name that allows consonants to collide in an untrammelled form of laissez-faire shows, we need consonants to be set in the easier, more palatable backdrop of vowels.
The Czech phrase, 'strc prst skrz krk', which quite aptly means 'stick a finger down your throat' is a case in point. And gouge out your eyes, one might be tempted to add.
One could think of vowels as a form of punctuation that allows words to breathe phonetically. Vowels lave the consonants with laxative smoothness, allowing words to roll off our tongue.
The idea of the vowel is to insert time in language; they help a word lie back and unfurl itself with an air of relaxed ease. Vowel sounds are the ones we don't need to learn. We scream only in vowels; for the animal in us expresses itself best this way. Language is a form of complex code that sits on top of this natural fabric of communication. The consonant lends shape and direction to communication, while the vowel is our default mode of communication.
Vowels make words flexible by greasing their joints. Words bend, stretch, are able to elongate themselves and generally perform feats of high gymnastics largely because of vowels. Vowels connect the more important consonant sounds; in that sense they are like conjunctions in grammar, which too operate like devices that extend sentences. Of course, as a result, vowels are used sparingly in most words. Too many vowels together become vacuous and insubstantial; we are left with little to pronounce.
Vowels are the media in which consonants serve as the content. Indian classical vocal music uses a preponderance of vowel sounds since the words there are often merely a device to explore the myriad forms of a raga.
Vowels hang in the air and allow it to resonate with musical timbre. Music in any case is air made beautiful and vowels play a pre-eminent role particularly in the more classical forms of music.
There are consonant-heavy languages (Polish, Welsh & Czech come to mind) while others like Finnish and Icelandic that seem to favour vowels. Like all apparently binary labels, the vowel-consonant divide has its own grey areas. 'Y' is often called the sixth vowel as it fulfils the role of a vowel without quite being one.
The English language is in any case not known for its consistency and having a consonant serve as a vowel is part of its quirky charm or exasperating randomness, depending on how one chooses to see it.
In some ways, one could at the risk of considerable simplification argue that we are moving from a world of vowels to one dominated by consonants where time and space are scarce, and where meaning is being stuffed into everything.
We live in a world where our senses are suffering from the indigestion that comes from wolfing down too much meaning in too little time. It is interesting how the sounds of frustration (grr and aarghhh) are consonant-laden grunts while those of relaxation (auum) and emotional expressiveness (ooh-la-la) tend to stretch out vowels.
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