A FEW MONTHS AGO, I happened to hear (or half hear) an interview on the Pat Kenny radio programme with an expert on ancient civilisation. The theory propounded by Pat's guest, as far as I could absorb it while engaged in domestic chores, appeared to be that mankind took a giant leap forward several millennia ago in the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia.

Of course it scarcely requires mentioning that Mesopotamia was at the heart of most of the giant leaps taken by mankind for many centuries. The region on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers -- around modern day Iraq -- was home to such progressive folk as the Akkadians, the Babylonians and the Assyrians, who took turns at being the bee's knees in ancient civilisation.

Until they let the baton slip to the Greeks and Romans on one side, and the Chinese empire on the other, the good folk in Mesopotamia dwelt in the Silicon Valley of their day. They led the way in cultivating grain, in setting up cities and in devising currency, to mention but a few of their major achievements. They were the sharpest of cutting edge.

However, it was not their agriculture, their streetlife or their money which excited the expert on this occasion, though he was quite happy to give them credit for all of their pioneering work in such departments. Instead, he was keen to propound his view that it was the taming of vowels which propelled the people of Mesopotamia to the very peak of civilisation.

In other words, you can grow all the wheat and rye you like to feed your citizens. You can then withdraw them from the drudgery of hunting and gathering into the excitement of urban living. And you can arrange secure currency to allow the citizens trade with places they will never see, in commodities they never before imagined.

But, according to this theory, it is only when those citizens can talk proper and write proper that they truly rise above the common herd. For many centuries, apparently, Mesopotamia was a bird flying on one linguistic wing. The people made free use of consonants but their vowels were sloppy. To put it another way, they were quick to cross their T's but neglected to dot their I's.

Then some bright spark persuaded the authorities that speech required a full range of A's, E's, I's (dotted or otherwise), O's and U's in order to achieve its full potential. Instead of allowing random sounds between the consonants, this pioneering bright spark put discipline on the vowels, unleashing a wave of poetry, literature and commerce as significant in its day as the popularising of the internet in our time. A veritable Renaissance on the Euphrates was born. Or so the theory goes. And now I am beginning to formulate my own theory. It occurs to me that while civilisation may indeed wax on the back of its cultivated vowels, it wanes on the corrosion of its consonants. Speech is increasingly degenerating into primaeval grunts. Yes, grunts of the sort that used to issue from the residents of primordial caves now dribble from the mouths of 21st-century youths too absorbed in the mind numbing diversions provided on TV, DS and ipad screens.

The first casualty in this degenerative process is the letter T. Young Persephone, a very model mademoiselle in so many respects, was heard the other day urging a friend guilty of some minor irritation to 'cuh ih ow'. Cuh ih ow? Cut it out, girl! The poor child has given up water entirely in favour of a fluid called 'waw-her'. The T is again marked sadly absent.

Young Eldrick has followed the same sloppy trend. Someone was talking recently about white bread in his presence. He caught the reference to white but failed to register which particular food was mentioned. So he asked 'Why wha?'. Figure it out yourselves.

Eldrick and his screen-loving buddies have evolved an even lower form of communication pushing closer still to the end of conversation as we know it. Asked a straightforward question, these lads are likely to respond 'Ah uh oh'.

Hmm. Here is a short, but nevertheless complete sentence, devoid of any decent consonant whatever. 'Ah uh oh' may be translated into old style speak as 'I don't know', without recourse to the traditional T, D or N.

When I was a child, living in Dublin, something called 'elocution' was offered as an extra-curricular activity. My parents, thank goodness, never despatched their son to the elocution teacher. The standardising of speech did not appeal to me, even at the age of 10.

However, it occurs to me that a generation which expresses itself in the brutish pidgin represented by 'Ah uh oh' is in need of some assistance. Now that Anne Doyle has retired from the newsdesk at Montrose, perhaps she could be persuaded to tour the schools of her native Co Wexford, and maybe beyond, to bear witness (not wihness!) to the joys of clear enunciation.