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 can have one letter less.
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 laguag
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 sensible 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 za fifz yer, ve al be speking German like zey vunted in ze
forst plas.
Jack Aeckerlin, The Netherlands
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