HUM: English, the Preferred Language (**1/2)
(23 January 1998)
I think that you will be interested to learn that the European Union Commissioners have announced that agreement
has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German,
which was the other possibilty. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling
had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish
(Euro for short).
In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will reseive this news with joy, and
keyboards could have one less letter. Also the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up
konfusion, but keyboards kan loose a further letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replased by "f". This
will make words like "fotograf" 20 persent shorter.
In the thrid year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated
changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always been a deterent
to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"'s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v".
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from words kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be
aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understand ech ozer.
