Euro English

[Snuts]

The European Commission has just 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 some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan 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 with 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 3rd 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 4th 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.

[snusgetter]

LMFAO... U had me going at first.

Strangely, I wouldn't put it past some buffoon to push for this mess.

[truthwolf1]

Actually, unofficially is not English the official language for communicating over there? I dont think it is too far off that someday the people of Europe will speak almost exclusively English.

[KarlvB]

Actually, unofficially is not English the official language for communicating over there? I dont think it is too far off that someday the people of Europe will speak almost exclusively English.

Around half of EU citizens can speak English. Their proficiency varies greatly though. That number is significantly lower in Germany and France. The majority of Europeans that I come across that speak fluent English tend to work in law or financial services and deal with international clients.

However, this does not mean that English will become the dominant language. People might eventually accept that they have to learn it as a second language but it will never replace the European languages, particularly in domestic business, schools etc.

You also have to remember that many Europeans will be fluent in 2-3 European languages which allows them to communicate very effectively - i.e. in Switzerland you can get along very well using Italian in Lugano, French in Geneva and German in Zurich.

Ps: The Scandinavians seem to be the exception to the rule and most people over there speak pretty good English.

[Mykislt]

It depends on the area of europe. Russian is still the lingua franca of the ex soviet world, which is quite big (lithuania: 80% speak Russian, 37% speak English), german and french is often taught as a second language all around europe, and I remember going to the south of france, an people told me ,that instead of learning english, they learned spanish. But english does have its presence everywhere