English as she ain't spoke or wrote

[Dave (imported)]

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 confusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing public enthusiasm in the second year when the troublesome ph will be replaced with f. This will make words like fotograf 20 per sent shorter.

In the third year, public akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will encourage the removal of double letters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent e in the language is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the fourth 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 droped from vords containing ou and after ziz fifz yer, v evil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, v evil al be speaking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

I zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

[Kangan (imported)]

Phuque euwe!

[Dave (imported)]

sounds like text messaging to me...

and, may I add - UR lil' doggie, 2!

[Douglas Adams (imported)]

This sounds suspiciously similar to the plan developed a decade or two ago by the US government to implement a transition to the metric system. It probably has the same chance of success.

[Kangan (imported)]

I think Orwellian NewSpeak was a better solution!

If that's what they want to do to English, I'd hate to think what would happen if they chose German!:D

[Dave (imported)]

This sounds suspiciously similar to the plan developed a decade or two ago by the US government to implement a transition to the metric system. It probably has the same chance of success.

Transition? I worked as a chemical engineer for 30 years and used the metric system every day. What transition?