[I thought that I should interrupt the current series to bring you this bulletin.]
European Union Commissioners have announced that agreement was reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British 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 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 fewer letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the state where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage 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 the fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords containing "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
Und efter ze fifz yer, we vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
[I send Bud Zomas my zanks for sending zis to me.]
(I gues zere is not much us of runing a spel check on zis.)
(11 Sep 02)
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