Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EU, the European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study on ways of improving efficiency in communications.

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult; e.g.: cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be administered by a staff committee at top level from the participating nations.

In the first year the committee could suggest using "s" instead of the soft "c".

Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy.

Then the hard "c" could be replaced by "k" sinse both letters are pronounsed alike.

Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was anounsed that the troublesome "ph" would henseforth be written "f".

This would make words like "fotograf" twenty persent shorter in print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent "e's" in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend.

By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing "th" by "z". Perhaps zen ze funktion of "w" kould be taken on by "v", vitsh is, after al, half a "w". Shortly after zis, ze unesesary "o" kould be dropd from words kontaining "ou". Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

Ze drem vil finali hav kum tru!

[beer]

. . . with apologies to Mark Twain.

ROTFLMAO [:D]

Point is, there some truth in there. The higher placed the polichicken the worse his English gets.

Over here English is taught in schools starting in elementary schools these days. I didn't start learning the language in highschool. Best thing was getting into computers, reading english techmanuals and magazines. Also speaking english on the phone for orders and info.

It's a second language to me and I can switch from Dutch to English language without blinking twice.

Unvortunazely aur politizians do not haf ze meens of zpeeking foren languaces veery wel [;)]

It's embarrassing some times I know

Kuiper

...aber Klug, Kar. "Deutschland ueber alles," ja.