From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Mon Dec 15 2003 - 12:23:34 EST
> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]De la
> part de Carl W. Brown
> Envoyé : lundi 15 décembre 2003 16:15
> À : Unicode@Unicode.Org
> Objet : [OT] Euro-English (was: Corea? (Re: Swastika to be banned by
> Microsoft?)
>
>
> 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).
>
Ok for that part.
> 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. (...snip...)
This is very excessive. The reform will certainly not affect common
words (unless there's an agreement to use some orthograph
simplifications that americans have introduced without even asking to
Her Majesty, such as "color" instead of "colour"), just proper names
to give them a reliable recognition, when they have a legal impact.
Country names should follow the recommandations of the relevant
countries. After all, Canton is now preferably written Guangdong,
and Pékin becomes Beijing following the recommandation of ISO
standards for topological names.
It's not a reform of English, but the adoption of ISO standards
for toponyms, people names, and transliterations. And the European
decision is a recommandation which is needed because there's a need
of a neutral common work language within the Commission and the
Parlement, for countries that do not have English as their official
language and are confused by some irregularities specific to english.
What will happen if Korea officially changes its english name to
Corea at the United Nations? There will be a change in the ISO 639
and ISO 646 standards for the official english names (no change
necessary for the French version which is already "Corée" and
"coréen"), and possibly (if Corea opts for it) a new attribution for
its country code (but the "cr" country code is already assigned to
Costa-Rica). In official documents signed with Corea, the new term
will need to be used because of diplomatic rules of respect of
country names. The decision by the European Commission just means
simplification: use the new diplomatic word in all occurences of
"Corea", not only in documents addressed directly to Corea.
__________________________________________________________________
<< ella for Spam Control >> has removed Spam messages and set aside
Newsletters for me
You can use it too - and it's FREE! http://www.ellaforspam.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Dec 15 2003 - 13:06:11 EST