How many vowels have you used today? 10? 15? Try thousands.

But when was the last time you stopped to think about how those vowels live? These vowels have friends, family, and natural classes, but yet they never hesitate to resonate for you in your time of need.

Yet every day, vowels are bought and sold on national television, subjected to reduction (or even deletion) in unstressed environments and worst of all, in elementary and middle schools, students are systematically taught to deny the existence of more than two thirds of their ranks, focusing instead on five (sometimes six) lies spread by the million-dollar-a-year spelling bee industry.

But you have a choice. You can fall in line, ignore their plight, and carry on the abuse, five (sometimes six) letters at the time, or you can take a stand. You can refuse to lump together the high and the low, the front and the back, the rounded and the unrounded, in one massive cloud of orthographic lies. You can refuse to participate in game shows which treat vowels as commodities to be bought and used. You can resist frequency effects, fight elision, and perceive all vowels equally, be they tense or lax. No phonemes should face denial, sale on national television, reduction or deletion. Ever.

You have the power to make a change. Act now, bfr ts t lte...