Though the countries of the European Union aspire (in varying degrees) to some sort of political and economic union, there remain many barriers to integration. The most intransigent of these are cultural. France likes its farmers and would have the rest of Europe pay to subsidize them. The French like good food and pretty countrysides, and don't much care for farmers in developing countries. Britain, not having many farms itself, refuses to pay for such handouts and continues to demand the partial refund of its dues it has enjoyed since Margaret Thatcher declared the nation too poor to pay so much money and get so little back (at the time this was true). The Italian elite would prefer to run their country as a fiefdom and are annoyed when EU member states criticize their roughshod approach to governance. Such examples could fill many pages, but there are also more mundane problems to European intergration. Chief among these is the diversity of languages spoken in the EU. At present, there are eleven official languages, and consequently the EU Commision employs a rather large number of translators, some 1200 who tranlate over one million documents each year. I came across the following article recently, and it seems that they have finally decided to simplify things.
------
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 5- year 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 had "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 sensibl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understnd 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.
If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl
------
I don't know where this came from originally. I received it via email from a friend and rather enjoyed it. I thought you all might as well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment