Language Log: Consonants and vowels

Today's Frazz: Update — A sample of relevant earlier LLOG posts. "Taking the fun out of cussing since 2004": "The FCC and the S word" (1/25/2004) "The S-word and the F-word" (6/12/2004) “You taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is, I know how to curse”, 7/17/2005 "Curses!" (7/20/2005) "Call me… unpronounceable", 9/6/2005 "Thinking specifically about the F-word", 4/2/2006 "Goram motherfrakker!", 6/7/2006 "The history of typographical bleeping", 6/10/2006 "The earliest typographically bleeped F-word?", 6/15/2006 "Beetle Bailey goes positively meta", 6/22/2006 "More @!%!**#~@#!! wisdom from Beetle Bailey", 6/23/2006 "Everybody's going meta", 6/23/2006 "Avoiding the other F-word", 7/4/2006 "Presidential Expletive watch", 7/17/2006 "We only take shit from the president", 7/19/2006 "Words of curse", 7/19/2006 "C*m sancto spiritu" (8/7/2006) "Obscenicons in the workplace", 8/24/2006 "Oh sleepies!", 8/30/2006 "Typographical bleeping antedated to 1591", 11/20/2006 "Oh tabernacle! What the wafer!", 12/5/2006 "More about cussing in Quebec", 12/6/2006 "Nigger, nigger, on the wall", 12/11/2006 "2500 words for cursing the weather", 1/18/2007 "On the offensive language beat: Use vs. mention, avoidance", 1/23/2007 "Taboos of the nation" , 2/2/2007 "Swearing and social networks", 1/19/2008 "Reading the ampersand comics!", 3/21/2008 "Spiral thingy lightning bolt!", 3/20/2008 "Reading the ampersand comics!", 3/21/2008 "A little more on obscenicons", 3/23/2008 "Seven words you can't say in a cartoon", 7/4/08 "A few dollops of taboo avoidance", 8/17/2008 "The FCC, Fox News, and the modest New York Times", 11/2/2008 "Taboo toponomy", 1/24/2009 "Comic profanity", 4/26/2009 "'Pound sign question mark star exclamation point'", 7/17/2010 "Obsenicons a century ago", 7/17/2010 "More on the early days of obscenicons", 7/24/2010 "Another meta-obsenicon strip", 5/11/2011 "Translinguistic taboo avoidance: Arabicizing'Ayrault'", 5/17/2012 "'Not just any sale, it's a #$&@^' sale'", 1/9/2012 "Not taking shit from the president?", 6/1/2014 "The paucity of curse words in Japanese", 9/4/2014 "The paucity of curse words in Japanese, chapter 2", 9/15/2014 "WT[bleep]", 10/30/2014 "Curses! Introducing a new blog, 'Strong Language'", 12/17/2014 "Dropping the H-bomb", 1/5/2015