The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which is 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 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English.”
In the first year, ‘s’ will replace the soft ‘c’. Certainly, this will make the civil servants jump with joy. The hard ‘c’ will be dropped in favor of the ‘k’. This should clear up confusion, and keyboards can have one less letter.
There will be growing public enthusiasm in the second year when the troublesome ‘ph’ will be replaced with the ‘f’. This will make words like ‘photograph’ 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, public acceptance of the new spelling can be expected to reach the stage where more complicated changes are possible. Governments will encourage the removal of double letters which have always been a deterrent to accurate spelling. Also, all will agree that the horrible mess of the silent ‘e’ in the language is disgraceful and it should go away.
By the 4th year, people will be receptive to steps such as replacing ‘th’ with ‘z’ and ‘w’ with ‘v’. During the fifth year, the unnecessary ‘o’ can be dropped from words containing ‘ou’ and similar changes would, of course, be applied to other combinations of letters.
After this fifth year, we will have a really sensible written style. There will be no more trouble or difficulties, and everyone will find it easy to understand each other. The dream of a united Europe will finally come true!
