EuroEnglish

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Since INDOLOGY is centrally concerned with language studies, I thought the
following text which is "doing the rounds" would be interesting even if
not perfectly relevant. Enjoy!

--

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English
will be the official language of the EC rather than German, which was 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 plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish".

   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 favor of the "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 the "f".  This will make words like
"fotograf" 20% shorter.

    In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
expekted to reach the stage 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 the silent "e" in the language is disgraseful, and it should go away.

    By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing
"th" with "z" and "w" with "v".  During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o"
kan be droped from vords kontaining "ou"; similar changes vud of kors be
aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

   After zi fifz yer, ve wil hav a reli sensibl riten styl.  Zer wil be no
mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech
ozer.

   ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!