Spelling Reform

Having chosen English as the preferred language in the European Economic Community, the European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study to explore ways of improving efficient communications among government departments.

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult - for example, cough, plough, rough, through, and thorough are spelled alike but pronounced differently. What is clearly needed is a phased program of changes to iron out these anomalies. The program would, of course, be administered by a committee staffed at top levels by participating nations.

In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's' instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k', since both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but keyboards kould be made with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould be announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'. This would make words like fotograf twenty per sent shorter in print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful. Therfor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptiv to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsch is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o' kould be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli have a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls or difikultis, and evrivun vud find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of ze guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.