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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Knighty Tin who wrote (60835)5/26/1999 9:49:00 PM
From: gnuman  Respond to of 132070
 
MB, I'm still giggling. Wife thinks I may be touched. ;-)



To: Knighty Tin who wrote (60835)5/27/1999 1:55:00 PM
From: Monish Shelat  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 132070
 
Wonder if you saw this...Made the usenet rounds a couple of years ago. The formatting is a bit messy, unfortunately

Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the
European Parliament has commissioned a feasability study in ways of
improving efficiency in communications between Government Departments.

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
unnecessary difficult; for example: cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be
administered by a committee staff at top level by participating nations.

In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's' instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would reseive this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was
anounsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'.
This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty per sent shorter in print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are
possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters
which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o' kould be dropd from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli
sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls,
difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of the Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.

Monish