From colin@hons.cs.usyd.edu.au Tue Jun 10 14:12:50 1997
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 11:10:39 +1000 (EST)
Subject: EuroEnglish

EuroEnglish

The European Commission has just announced an agreement that English
will be the official language of the EU - rather than German (the other
possibility).  As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government
conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement, and has
accepted a 5-year phase-in of new rules which would apply to the
language and reclassify it as EuroEnglish.

The agreed plan is as follows:

In year 1, the soft 'c' would be replaced by 's'.  Sertainly, this will
make the sivil servants jump with joy.  The hard 'c' will be replaced by 'k'.
This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan now have one less letter.
There willbe growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the
troublesome 'ph' is replaced by 'f'.  This will reduse 'fotograf' by
20%.

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 horible mes of the silent 'e's
in the language is disgrasful and they should eliminat them.

By year 4, peopl wil be reseptiv to lingwistik korektions such as replasing
'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v' (saving mor keyboard spas).  During ze fifz
year, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and similar
changes vud of kors be applid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz year, ve vil hav a reli sensibil riten styl.  Zer vil be no
mor trubls or difikultis and evrirun vil find it ezi to understand ech
ozer
...
ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!!

*****

(In the spirit of that great spelling-reformer G.B. Shaw,
who pointed out that English-language phonetic conventions
license "ghoti" as a spelling of "fish" -- "gh" < "enough,"
"ti" < "nation," and "o" as in "women." -- Terry)

Have fun,
Colin.