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Friday, January 06, 2006

Fine. Hurrah for superfluousness in the English alphabet

In light of our previous discussion, and especially in agreement with one of Sam's comments:

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

European officials have often pointed out the English spelling is unnecessarily 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 resieve 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 would be announsed that the troublesome "ph" would henseforth be written "f." This would make words like "fotograf" twenty persent 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 leters whish 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 them 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 vords 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 find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of ze Guvermnt vud finali have kum tru.

(Here's the source)

Urgh.

So yay for wonky, wasteful, inefficient, but wonderfully nuanced spelling!

That is all.

Jason

4 Comments:

Blogger Emma said...

that sounds a lot like Mark Twain's "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling." The last paragraph looks like this:

"Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld."

Now doesn't that make so much more sense?

11:11 AM, January 07, 2006

 
Blogger Meredith said...

Wow. That was a pretty fun read, with the author's tongue firmly in cheek.

7:08 PM, January 07, 2006

 
Blogger Henrik Herb said...

It reminds me of a russian or german dialect

3:42 PM, January 12, 2006

 
Blogger Henrik Herb said...

accent*, sorry

3:42 PM, January 12, 2006

 

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