This column, as part of its annual task of improving this world, is not going to allow that non-consonant which is twixt "d" and "f" in any of its columns, again. This is a fairly gallant ambition, but it is worth trying, if only to show that nothing is so vital that this world cannot do without it.
So, from this point, I will call that non-consonantal unit "twixtdandf". Now today is it is our duty to say only truths. This twixtdandf is an arrogant strutting thug, it truly is, putting its busy-body proboscis around all sorts of locations that it has no right to stray into. It's only right that a columnist should finally confront this odious twixtdandf, so that it starts this AD knowing that humans can start and finish a total column without it, and without noticing that it's not around.
And how blissful this world would turn out without this monstrous virus of twixtdandf! Just think of so many words which contain it! Vil*, and *vil and abominabl* and wick*d and so on. Do you not find it odd that our robust four-unit words which folk usually complain about and which can usually turn up in print as c*nt or f*ck or w*nk or sh*t do not contain a twixtdandf?
So what's going on? How is it right in your ordinary journalistic world to print c*nt with a twixtdandf, but not with a "u"? Why is a coin all right, but not part of a groin? Why is it all right to ask a man or a woman about having forty winks; but if you put in an "a" for that "i", why, big rows start, and all sorts of tribulations follow.
A curious fact
So, non-consonants within particular words can significantly modify connotations and transform a primary import. That's why this columnist is trying for a column from start to finish without a twixtdandf.
And just think. Why this curious fact, that twixtdandfs simply do not find a way into any of our daily taboo words but do find a way into many thousands of sanitary words in books, journals and talk? This is not funny: in fact, it's distinctly odd, and you must ask why this is so?
Is it that our chum, twixtdandf, brings chastity to a word? Most truly "bad" or impolitic words subsist without it; but many good words contain it in almost miraculous amounts. Think of that family of words for "kind" or "good", coming from Latin, and which start with "b", with an twixtdandf following, with an "n", and with a twixtdandf following again - I think you know which words I'm thinking about. Isn't that amazing? So, I must ask: is this small calligraphic unit a custodian of a particular kind of humanitarianism?
Firstly, you must admit that curious oddity of twixtdandfs, that it is so ubiquitous, and still, so without impact upon any words containing it. Look, say, at a word such as "many": it sounds as if it has a twixtdandf following that initial "m", but this is not so. So why is an "a" doing that visual duty which is rightly twixtdandf's? Why is that twixtdandfs can land without a sound in many thousands of words, but at that point that it is truly vital, as in "many", or "any", it abandons its duty, obliging poor "a" to fill in for it.
And twitxdandf is ridiculously ubiquitous, with so many thousands of words containing it. In many words it is just doing nothing, just hanging around, showing off. How can it insist on finishing so many words, though no function is brought about? How orally dissimilar would ar and ar* sound, or hav and hav*: so why that concluding and wholly gratuitous twixtdandf?
Not just that. Why do you and I not insist on confining twixtdandfs to obligatory occasions and words? Grammarians should insist on writing "futur" and "captur" and "raptur" and "impassabl" and "surpris" without such arrogant intrusions from that lazy, good-for-nothing show-off suffix, which is always turning up in words, but hardly brings much about with all its arrogance.
Okay, such words without concluding twixtdandfs might look odd, possibly sick, but that's simply out of visual habit: if from now on words always show up without that concluding non-consonant, nobody would think it mad or bad or unusual. In fact, soon it would turn out as our visual norm, and infants acquiring a grasp of calligraphy would know no dissimilar way of writing. It would grow into an all-dominating standard, and this world would know total logic in writing words.
Surplus labours
But what is going on in Poland or Italy or Russia or Spanish? Is our chum, twixtdandf, constantly intruding in such lands, lodging in words without pronunciation? Just think about all that scriptural work - involving so many folk with so many ways of talking - which is invariably a by-product of such unsought arrival of twixtdandfs in words: nothing is brought about orally or aurally, but any word containing this irritating non-consonant must still command vast but wholly surplus inscriptional labours.
But not now. For as you will now know, you and I can pass through our days and nights, communicating without any confusion, and without a solitary twixtdandf in sight or sound. Therefore, A Happy New Year, Readers! Oh fuck.