Speaking of spelling, here's a news bulletin
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby
English will be the official language of the EU 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 1 less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the
troublesome "ph" will be replased with the "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
horible mess of the silent "e's" in the language is disgraseful, and
they should go away.
By the 4th yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th"
with "z" and the "w" with "v."
During the fifz yar, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords
kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer
kombinations of leters. After ze fifz yar, ve vil hav a realy sensibl
vriten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evryvun vil
find it easy tu understand each ozer.
ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!