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Dis is verry funni. Giv it a moment to get going.
inglish fer al*
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt Engish as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's government has conceded that English spelling has 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 resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less 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 third 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 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 vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis 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.
Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
This is from Jane of Tenenbaum Design, who has contributed a large number of pieces well worth reading.
Tenenbaum Design
16 North Carroll Street, Suite 620
Madison, WI 53703
Phone: 608-258-8333
Fax: 608-258-8318
E-Mail: [email protected]
*ENGLISH FOR ALL
Ifjanes writing isnt nuf and if you like archyandmehitabel you cant Idgnore timothy deXters book a pickle for the knowing Ones. Dexter's book caused quite a stir when he wrote, published and sold the book to the unwary in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1802.
The book is "one long sentence or, rather, no sentence at all. Not a single comma, semicolon, quotation mark, apostrophe, exclamation point, or period marred its half-coherent text"(1). The spelling was as he liked it, with novel variations that seemed phonetic; capitalization was at best on a random basis. And, the free flow of ideas and thoughts, one has to read the book to appreciate that Timothy Dexter was a writer two-hundred years ahead of his time.
In fact Dexter predated the Fowler brothers and other in the use of punctuation. In a reprint of his famous book, he included one extra page which was filled with commas, periods &c. with the instruction to the reader to peper and solt it as they please.
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(1) Mostly From Irving Wallace's The Square Pegs, published in 1957 by Alfred A. Knopf, pp 267
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Additional reading:
William Graham Sumner wrote the Commonwealth Cooperative which is very much in keeping with this essay, it's to be found in The Forgotten Man, published by Yale University Press in 1919.
Scientist, Daniel Koshland, added a bit of perspective in his essay published in ScienceJune 1, 1990.
And, click on any of the tags at the top to expand on the subject.
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