Bob Walkden wrote:
> It's obvious that a standardised spelling can never accurately reflect
> pronunciation, since pronunciation changes over time and in space. This
> seems particularly true of English.
and what followed was very educational.
Thanks Bob - but this extract from an EU white paper seems to disagree:
"English Chosen as new European Standard"
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, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling
had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for
what will be known as EuroEnglish (EuroE for short).
In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly sivil
servants will reseive this news with joy. Also the hard "c" will be replaced
with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but keyboards 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% 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 been a
deterent to akurate speling. Also al wil agre that the horible mes of silent
"e"s in the languag is disgrasful and they will 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.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor
trubls or difikultie and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.
Ze drem vil av finali kum tru!
-
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