European English

Joined
Thursday May 28, 2015
Location
Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire
European English:

AS a result of the new Lisbon Treaty, 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 5year 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.
 
:D Third year English approximates my native Norwegian. From there on it's just downhill ;) (But we're not even bluddy members of the Union, are we, let alone a big or even medium power...)
 
Having helped many a foreigner with English when I have been abroad I can unequivocally state that English is a difficult language to speak as well as spell. It requires an incredible amount of memory as there are so many rules & exceptions. Other languages, such as German & Spanish, have fast & hard rules on pronunciation. Here is a great test I devised years ago:

rough
cough
slough
bough

Less than five native English speakers in a hundred get all the variations correct. ;)
 
Having helped many a foreigner with English when I have been abroad I can unequivocally state that English is a difficult language to speak as well as spell. It requires an incredible amount of memory as there are so many rules & exceptions. Other languages, such as German & Spanish, have fast & hard rules on pronunciation. Here is a great test I devised years ago:

rough
cough
slough
bough

Less than five native English speakers in a hundred get all the variations correct. ;)

I presume you're pronouncing the third example as "sluff"?
 
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