You have no idea what it means. So, if you want to educate yourself and get a grip on things I suggest you sit down with a cup of tea and read the writing on the blackboard.
The European Commission had announced an agreement that English will be the official language of the EU, rather than German, which was the other contender.
This had got the Germans very upset. The French thought it was a pathetic decision and the Italians ignored it completely. And the Spanish were in full sail rebellion. No one asked the Greeks or the Portuguese their opinion.
As part of the negotiations, however, Her Majesty's Government conceded some space to the continental cousins. English spelling would be made more universal and the new rules implemented in the schools. It hasn’t happened yet, but who knows. Since hardly anyone uses Queen's English in the United Kingdom anymore and spellings and grammar have collapsed and died a dusty death, the concession makes sense. After all only six percent of the UK knows the meaning of clause analysis and only two percent have heard of parsing a sentence, an activity now restricted to the former colonies and their educational curriculum.
The new language will be called Eurolish or EuroEnglish and will be a special subject, if indeed everyone agrees on it.
My friend who lives in Laussane in Switzerland does not feel the least bit neutral about this decision.
He calls me on the phone last evening and says, this is ridiculous, we have to protest.
Bu I don't live in Europe, I say, what's with this 'we' bit?
Today Europe, he says, tomorrow, who knows, the world. Then he orders me to open the email and read what he has sent as an example of Eurolish. Naturally, he gives no one any credit so I presumed it is of his own making. But then I remembered he isn’t that clever (my friend) and that comedian George Carlin who died some years ago had done something like this without realizing that sms and Twitter would hasten the process of killing spelling and leaving the purists writhing with the agony of it all. We are already half way there.For those of you who missed the original that did the rounds years ago here is another fun repeat of it:
In year 1 of the Eurolish course, the soft 'c' would be replaced by 's'.
Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy along with the sivit cat and if it won’t bring the house down it might crack the seiling. The hard 'c' will be replaced by 'k'. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan now have one less letter.
The letter "C" will be made redundant.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year,when the troublesome 'ph' is replaced by 'f' and thereby reduse 'fotograf' by 20%. This will be a developing fase and every frase will be handled with compashun and kare.
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 horible mes of the silent 'e's in the langwij is disgrasful and they should eliminat them.
By year 4, peopl wil be reseptiv to lingwistik korektions such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v' (saving mor keyboard spas). Computers will become more compakt and easyer to use.
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and similar changes vud of kors be applid to ozer kombinations of leters. It will then be easyer to sorce maerial or go on a krooz.
After zis fifz year, ve vil hav a reli sensibil riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrirun vil find it eesi to understand ech ozer. Ze dreem vill finuly cum troo and Yorup vill moov kloser to the wun nashun thyoree.
Note: This is exactly the sort of article that should not be written on a computer because the spellcheck goes berserk and red lines all the words ... obviously the fewchur spelcheks vil have to be redesined so that we can overkum this condishun and moov on to grater and greener pashchurs.
