Soaring Eagles - your website for politically attentive people
of European ancestry

 

 

Engleutsch?

As I have often threatened, as soon as I find time, I intend to wield a mighty broom to clean up the smut and sleaze in our speech, along with all that slipshod grammar that blunts the rich and complex tools we have in our respective written languages. 

I used to think  that what I saw and so intensely disliked – for instance, neglecting precise rules of punctuation or dispensing with capitalization - was merely the expected sloppy outcome by an ever more sloppily educated populace.  Today, I see it as part of an evil design to cloud our thoughts by dulling our love of precision in words.  I’m serious!

(Those who like to pick on me and my occasional typos should please remember that English is my sixth language, learned in mid-life – and should thoughtfully cut me some slack…!)

Here comes a handy satire to help me make my point:

[START]   

*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  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  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"  be dropd from vords kontaining "ou"
and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl 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.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

[END]