Subject: Final Uniformity in Europe
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby
English will be the official language of the European Union 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 5-
year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this
will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be
dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and
keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik
enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be
replaced with "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 komplikated 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 horibl mes of the silent "e" in the
languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords
kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl
riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in
ze forst plas.
If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl
trkyhntr
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
--Mark Twain (1866)
