Subject: Progress
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English
will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was
the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's government conceded that
English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year
phase-in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish." In the first year,
the "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make sivil
servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the
"k". This should klear up up konfusion and keyboards kan have on less
letter.
There will be a growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the
troublesome "ph" will bereplased with the "f". This will make words like
"fotograf" 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted
to reach the stage where more komplicated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have
always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the
horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgrasful and they
should go away.
By the 4th year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th"
with "z" and "w" with "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
leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil have a reli senisble riten styl. Zer
vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understand ech ozer.
Ze drem vil finali kum tru! Ve vil tak ozer ze vorld!!
PS: still some gremlins in the weber.ucsd server I think. I posted to
the list from my compuserve address last Sunday and it still hasn't
appeared -- possibly for the best as it was rather hastily written and
no longer very current but it will be interesting to see when it shows
up, if ever.
Rolfe Windward
Dept. of Education, Lindsey Wilson College
windward who-is-at lindsey.edu
"We know more than we can say" -M. Polanyi