ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

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Let Them Eat Vowels Vil ze Euro Revolution kil ze King�s English?
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred langugage for European communications, 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 five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c." Sertainly sivil servants will reseive this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k." Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f." This will make words like "fotograf" 20 persent shorter.

In the third year, publk 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 will agre that the horibl mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgasful, and they would go.

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 dropd from words kontaining "ou," and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After ze fifz yer, we will hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand eah ozer.

Ze drem vil finali kum tru.


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From: Whole Earth, Fall 1998.
My thanks to Jim Kauffman, my former boss in Florence, for sharing this endearing glimpse of the future!

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