EU English... (joke)

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The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, 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 five-year phased plan for what will be known as Euro-English (Euro for short).
In the first year,"s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve 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 per sent shorter.
In the third year, publik 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 wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst place....

Oh... my... gosh...

Was that ever a joke?

This might make some difference to the apparatchics, but the standard of spelling has been a problem for years. No-one would notice. I worked in a customer services centre (thats center to some) at one point and deciphering letters recieved was almost the entire activity for the day.

Ha! I can't learn languages, but that would be an awesome strategy to teach people who also can't. Slowly turn English into a different language.

Oh, wait! It's a joke! Umm...haha...

Und efter ze fifz yer ... it sunds lik Dutch *gg*

zanks, Sean :)

that is the single funniest thing ive ever read. i was in hysterics at the end.

Ah, I have a joke like this before on alt.usage.english and alt.english.spelling.reform.

Funnedik rieting reelee iz bedder. Not oanlee iz it eezeer too lern, but it's aulso eezeer too prunnouns. Peepol wil aulso bee aibol too "heer" eetch uther's aksents without speekerz! Thee udjusmint shood not taik vairee laung at aul. Ospeez wil hav an espesholee eezee tiem beecuz thuh noo spelling iz rool bound.

What makes English tricky is that it has more phonemes (fundamental units of sound in a language) than Latin alphabet letters. The vowels bring the most trouble. I will use Evan Kirshenbaum's transcription of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) into ASCII text below.

• /i/ "long E" fear, only, be
• /I/ "short I" bit, honestly
• /eI/ "long A" eight, bait, bay
• /E/ "short E" said, fled
• /&/ "short A" battle
• /@/ "schwa" about, the
• /A/ "short O" Asperger's, bond, ah
• /V/ "short U" putt, duck
• /O/ "AU" law, all, on, autistic
• /oU/ "long O/ boat, bone, go, oh
• /U/ "short OO" pull, put, book
• /u/ "long OO" pool, boo, rule, you
• /aI/ "long I" bye, thigh, rite, I
• /aU/ "OU" how, bout
• /OI/ "OI" boy, boil
  

• /S/ "SH" shape, special
• /tS/ "CH" change, catch
• /Z/ "ZH" measure
• /dZ/ "J" judge
• /j/ "Y" yet
• /w/ "W" watch
  

• /r-/ "ER" color, number
• /l-/ "-LE" little
• /n-/ "-EN" mitten
• /m-/ -UM" forum
  

try turkish or welsh, then, as they're both phonetic languages.

mind you, turkish grammar is a nightmare...

One thing I liked about learning Spanish was its WYSIWYG structure. Each letter's pronounciation coincided with the sound of that letter in the Spanish alphabet, cutting down on any confusion with spelling. Of course, one language I'm thankful I don't have to learn is Icelander with its 18-letter words that are mostly consinents stuck together in an almost unintelligible pronunciation.

Nice one, Sean. At the beginning, it wasn't that hard to read, but when it got to the end, I had to sound all the words out, rather than just reading it to myself (in my head).

The only confusing thing about Spanish is the accent marks, really. I can never remember what vowels they go over, especially in the preterit form. Heh.

Nice one, Sean. I liked it.