Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Modern English?

Languages are funny beasts. People are always coining a new phrase or finding a different way to say the same thing. Written and spoken styles change faster than last summers fashions. The advent of emails and text messaging has further changed how we think and write in English. It was amusing therefore to read the following bit of nonsense that I shamelessly pilfered from the web.


Five year phase-in plan for "EuroEnglish"

The European Commission have 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'sgovernment conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump for joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like"fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have alwaysben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes ofthe silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, 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 year, ve vil hav a realy sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand each ozer

ZE DREAM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!

- Author Unknown

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