Germanglish: A Language Two-Fer
The European Commission
has announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the
European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the
negotiations, the British government conceded that English spelling had
room for improvement, and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan for changes to
the language that would become known as "Euro-English."
In the first year,
"s" will replace the soft "c." Sertainly, this will make the
sivil servants jump for joy.
The hard "c" will
be dropped in favour of "k." This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards
kan have one less letter.
There will be growing
publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will
be replaced with "f." This will make words like fotograf 20% 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
enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to
akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that
the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it
should go away.
By the fourth yer people
wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z"
and "w" with "v."
During ze fifz yer, ze
unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and
after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl
or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a
united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer,
ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
By Susan Darst Williams • www.GoBigEd.com • Class Clown 019
• 6/14/06