Ze king's English

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and 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 replased 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 persent 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 horibl 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" with "z" and "w" with "v." During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from words kontaining "ou," and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After ze fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer.

Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

- Whole Earth (Fall 1998)