easytraveler

You will all love this:


"Subject: English Adopted as Official Language???



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 sensibl 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.!"


by William Fredlund,
Institute for the Study of Western Civilization

highflyer

bardo1

We already have "kwik kash", "kute klothes" and "klose kuts" businesses here in DC.

We have fallen much further than "donut"

EFUF IS ENUF!

i_am_kane

This should prove to be an interesting discussion for all!

quokka

Unfortunately this article isn't exactly new.
There is a version in German, too, by the way, which may be even older.

*yawn*

kerouac

And there is also a version in French.

kerouac

Le français langue officielle européenne
Bruxelles, 8 déc. (AFP) - La Commission Européenne a finalement tranché: après la monnaie unique, l'Union Européenne va se doter d'une langue unique, à savoir... le français.

Trois langues étaient en compétition : le français (parlé dans le plus grand nombre de pays de l'Union), l'allemand (parlé par le plus grand nombre d'habitants de l'Union) et l'anglais (langue internationale par excellence).

L'anglais a vite été éliminé, pour deux raisons : d'une part, il aurait été le cheval de Troie économique des Etats-Unis ; d'autre part les Britanniques auraient été privilégiés, eux dont l'influence est aujourd'hui limitée au profit du couple franco-allemand à cause de leur réticence légendaire à s'impliquer dans la construction européenne.

Le choix a fait l'objet d'un compromis, les Allemands ayant obtenu que l'orthographe du français, particulièrement délicate à maîtriser, soit réformée, dans le cadre d'un plan de cinq ans, afin d'aboutir à l'eurofrançais.

1. La première année, les sons actuellement distribués entre 's', 'z', 'c', 'k' et 'q' seront répartis entre 'z' et 'k', ze ki permettra de zupprimer beaukoup de la konfuzion aktuelle.

2. La deuzième année, on remplazera le 'ph' par 'f', ze ki aura pour effet de rakourzir un mot komme 'fotograf' de kelke vingt pour zent.

3. La troizième année, des modifikazions plus draztikes seront pozzibles, notamment ne plus redoubler les lettres ki l'étaient ; touz ont auzi admis le prinzip de la zuprezion des 'e' muets, zourz éternel de konfuzion, en efet, tou kom d'autr letr muet.

4. La katrièm ané, les gens zeront devenu rézeptif à dé changements majeurs, tel ke remplazé 'g', zoi par 'ch',- avek le 'j' - zoi par 'k', zelon les ka, ze ki zimplifira davantach l'ékritur de touz.

5. Duran la zinkièm ané, le 'b' zera remplazé par le 'p' et le 'v' zera lui auzi apandoné - au profi du 'f', éfidamen on kagnera ainzi pluzieur touch zur no klafié.

Un foi ze plan de zink an achefé, l'ortograf zera defenu lochik, et lé chen pouron ze komprendr et komuniké.

J_Correa

Eh, so what if this joke has gone around a few times. It is still funny.

nanabee

and in Spanish anyone?

easytraveler

kerouac: very good! I'm rushing to send the French version to my friends in France!

Poohgirl

I thought it was real until I got to the part about switching the hard "C" for "K." Actually, I think some of those rules make a lot of sense.

Larryincolorado

>>There is a version in German, too.

I find that hard to believe. I just finished a 3rd year university course in the phonetics of the German language, and I am more impressed than ever by the phonetic consistency and logic of German (well, accept for F and V).

Apparently German even undergoes period review and revision for phonetic consistency - something that has never happened to English.

I am always astounded by the people who push for English by phonics. After French, English is probably the worst example in the Western world of a phonetic language.

But then, maybe it actually doesn’t matter. No really literate person reads phonetically. The Chinese seem to be able to read well enough, with a language that is symbolic, not at all phonetic.

hopscotch

<i> I am more impressed than ever by the phonetic consistency and logic of German (well, accept for F and V).</i>

And how about W and V? And bier and other ie words? Give me more umlauts!! Capitalize all your Nouns.

Three &quot;sexes&quot; and 16 versions of &quot;the&quot; are winners. German gramman is a crap shoot.

Larryincolorado

There is nothing inconsistent about these things that seem to give YOU problems.

W and V. So they pronounce them as V and F, respectively. There are many differences between letter pronunciations for different languages. How does Spanish pronounce “ll”, or “J”, of “G”. Just because they’re different from English, doesn’t make them wrong.

What’s wrong with “ie”. It is always pronounced like our long e.

“ei”, on the other hand, is a diphthong, pronounce by sliding between lax (Eng. short) a and lax i. We have diphthongs in English, as well. Unfortunately, here we use a diphthong, long i, for one of our basic vowels, as if it were a pure sound. Try to “hold” the “i” sound. You can’t do it. It is really made up of two vowel sounds, one after the other. It is not a pure sound. That’s not good for one of the five basic vowel sounds of a language.

You might quibble with the symbol used for umlauts, but they are legitimate vowel sounds. In English, we have vowels (e and a) that are pronounced with the tongue forward and the lips spread. We also have vowels (o and u) with the tongue back and the lips rounded. German has a third type of vowel (&uuml; and &ouml, pronounced with the tongue forward and the lips rounded.

In German there are only two, at most, sounds for each character, and there are very obvious rules, as shown by surrounding letters, to indicate which sound is used. In English, for instance, the letter “a” has four sounds (at least). Which one is used can only be memorized.

German capitalizes all nouns; we capitalize all “proper” words, nouns or adjectives. Is one way better?

Three sexes. Most European languages have at least two; English has only one, and, although it would seem to simplify the language, it actually complicates it. We use the inappropriate plural word “they” when we really mean “it” or someone of an undermined gender. The three genders probably came from Latin, because Latin has them and Roman scribes first created a written German language.

And, since we don’t have distinct singular and plural forms of the word “you”, we can’t specify if we are talking about the listener (singular) or to everyone in the room (plural). Hence we get expressions like “you all” or “you guys”, “yous” or, in western PA, “you’ens”.

There are only 6 words for “the”, and if you know the language, you know how they are used. And they are used consistently.

By the way, does anyone know from where the original essay plagurized here came?

kenav

Larryincolorado - We learn written English first by phonetics. Then, after we have a visual picture in our head of the many often used words, we don't need to sound them out each time we see them. However, not using phonetic and resortingg to &quot;Whole English&quot;, has produced children who can't decipher unknown words. With phonetics, you learn not only individual sounds, but sound groupings.

And, no Chinese don't use phoneics, but it is an extremely complicated written language of ideograms.

Larryincolorado

Phonics is like training wheels. Maybe necessary at the beginning, but it needs to be abandoned as soon as possible. You don't see anyone in the Tour de France using training wheels. I went to school in the fifties and learned to read phonetically, and it has been a handicap ever since. To this day, when I read, I hear a voice in my head sounding out the words. On the other hand, my two daughters were taught &quot;Whole English&quot; and they can read circles around me. My older daughter, in particular, reads whole sentences (maybe paragraphs) at a time.

Larryincolorado

Just a question.

Can deaf people read? Since they can't understand sounds, is it more difficult for them? Or does that make it easier? When they encounter an unknown word, can they decipher it?

I think of all the times I have encountered an unknown word, sounded it out phonetically, and then continued to use (read) it, sometimes for years, before discovering that it is not pronounced that way.

kenav

There are better readers, and less better readers - perhaps you' re just not that good(?) As with anything - some people are better with sound systems than others; some people are better with visuals. Whole Enlish is being discarded as it has shown that children - overall - have a more difficult time leanring new words on their own. You can't just memorize the entire English language visually when young. How do you look words up in a dictionary and figure out how to pronounce them when what they give you is a symbol/sound system?

As I said, as you go along in the school years and beyond, after a while you will not have to sound out words as you see the entire word and your brain recongizes it from the myriad amount of times you've used it previously. However, knowing the rules of pronunciation allows you to have a very good chance of pronouncing a new word correctly. Not 100%, but close. Not understanding phonetics, not having a phonetic ability in a language whose written communication is based mostly on sound-letter correlation will not help you at all. Where would you start?

It's very complicated to teach deaf people to read English. However, what is your definition of deaf? There are many variations - not all are profoundly deaf. It's a slow long road for &quot;deaf people&quot; to learn to read. But there's a whole Deaf Culture thing going on which sometimes discourages deaf people from communicating in anything other than sign langauge. But that's another subject.