This announcement (below) just appeared in my "In Basket", and I
realize now that my quibble about a national spelling variant is
nothing, compared to the overall problem.

Obviously this was composed by a Master of the Queen's English!

Cheers,¶
Robbie Rhodes

- - - - - -

              Rectification of English in the EU

Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC (now
officially the European Union, or EU), the European Parliament has
commissioned a feasibility 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
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 was
anounsed 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 reach the stage where more komplikated changes 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 uvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.

• ----------------------------------
|         Robbie Rhodes            |
| Return-Path: rrhodes@foxtail.com |
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