From: dzo@bisharat.net
Date: Mon Dec 15 2003 - 11:42:56 EST
This is humorous, though I think I saw it some time ago. (For a Unicode
audience we could also substitute some extended characters such as the eng for
ng.) It does bring to mind that familiarity with an orthography - mainly
through experience reading it - is the key to its usefulness. In looking at
the text below I think of how a written African language might look to a native
speaker of it who had learned only English or French in school - an orthography
may make perfect sense (and may even have been around a while) but if the
person may not have had much exposure to it, it might seem strange...
I've reposted the earlier items in this thread to Qalam,* which might be a more
appropriate place for the discussion??
Don
* http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qalam/
Quoting "Carl W. Brown" <cbrown@xnetinc.com>:
> Euro-English
> The EU announces changes to the spellings of common English words...
>
> 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 phase
> plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).
>
>
>
> In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly,
> sivill servants will resieve this news with joy. Also the hard "c" will be
> replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typwriters 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 per sent shorter.
>
> In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to
> reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Government will
> enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to
> akurate speling.
>
> Also, al wil agre that the horible 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" 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 difikultis and evrivon vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze
> drem vil finali kum tru.
>
>
>
>
>
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