"A horse-drawn Pickfords van was picking up a house lot in Bremen one fine morning a couple of centuries ago, when the German vowels climbed on board while the packers' backs were turned. Since this was before the days of Afghan refugees, there was no checking at the Channel ports, and the vowels duly found themselves in England, rather smelling of horse dung, a few days later."

You know, this kind of wanton immigration violation continues to be a problem. This why the QANTAS flight attendants come and spray the inside of the plane when it lands in Oz; they're trying to get rid of all the glottal stops that might be clinging to people's clothes. Think how disoriented my Aussie ex-husband would be to find himself saying "Maria and I" (in reference to our daughter) instead of "Marearand I". It's largely because of passengers from some parts of England that have to use glottal stops with great abandon because the price of the letter "T" has gone sky high. Tragic, really.