Reading a sign in Welsh can be quite a painful experience, though we believe that there is post-traumatic help available. Most Welsh words are utterly unpronounceable due to a national shortage of vowels; a running joke on St George’s side of the border is that there is a secret vowel tax in Wales.

Ever eager to investigate, Centives asks “How much is the vowel tax in Wales?”

Uncovering this secret tax that has plagued Wales has been achieved by taking the same book in English and Welsh. We analysed this book for number of vowels, number of pages and price. From there we figured out the price of vowels in both English and Welsh, found the difference and voila! Vowel tax; which comes to a wonderful…

Welsh
Vowel tax = 0.00623p/vowel, or 6.23p/thousand vowels

Now, it may seem that this whole Welsh vowel tax is a bit of a joke, and that it couldn’t happen anywhere else. That would be silly, right?

Taking these two pieces of information

1. Women speak 13,000 more words per day than men (7,000 words per day)
2. Women earn 75% of what men earn

And assuming that the income discrepancy is due to a tax on these womens’ vowels, we arrived at the figure of vowel tax being

Regular vowel tax = 0.00492p/vowel or 4.92p/thousand vowels

And before you dismiss that figure as well. Look how similar that number is to the Welsh vowel tax. Just a little bit lower, but very similar. Even though those numbers were arrived at in very different ways. Suspicious much?

One final thought. Students of the world; does it not seem strange to you that you get set so much long homework with so little point? Does that not strike you as odd? I mean it’s not as if teachers got paid by the vowel that students write for homework, that would be silly.

But if it was true, they would have to make you write 25 pages per week to make their salary.

Centives suggestion? Play the system and write all of your homework about the mythological Greek island Aeaea.

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