CUNNING LINGUISTS

THE European Commission have just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility.

But 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-in plan of a language known as ‘Euroenglish’.

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 also dropped in favour of the ‘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 the ‘f’. This will make words like ‘fotograf’ 20 per cent shorter.

In the third 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 been an impediment to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent ‘e’ in the language is disgraceful, and it wil be removed.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing ‘th’ with ‘z’ and ‘w’ with ‘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 year, ve vil hav a reali sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru!