Posted by Mike Field on November 04, 2000 at 01:21:55 from 203.18.21.200:
Literary readers of this extraordinarily literary bulletin board will undoubtedly enjoy this post from Colin, copied from the Scuttleboat bb today --
At long last.....some GOOD news fro Britain from the EU
The European Commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached in Brussels for English to be adopted as the Official Language of the EU, rather than an alternative proposal for German.
As part of the negotiating process, Her Majesty’s Government has conceded that some English spelling can be confusing and has therefore agreed to a five year plan to introduce “EuroEnglish”, a simplified form of English.
In the first year the letter “s” will be used instead of the soft “c”.
Sertain Sivil Servants are conserned at this change, but they will soon be convinsed.
The hard “c” will also be replased with the “k”. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but it will also mean one less letter will be needed on keyboards.
There will be growing pubilk enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replased by “f”. This will make words like “fotograf” some 20 per sent shorter. In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes kan be possible. Double letters, which have always ben a sorse of konfusion, wil go to and akurasy in speling wil inkrease. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent “e’s” in the languag is disgraseful and they wil go to.
By the fourth year, pepl will be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” by “z”, “w” or “v”.
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of letrs.
After zis fifz year, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl, vich everyvun kan understand und zer vil be no difikultis or trobls.
Ze peples ov Europ vil find zat zer is onli vun suprem languag und at last ze dream vil finali kum tru.