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by Weiqi Gao.
Original Post: About Spelling Reform In English
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Are your daily stand-up meetings dull and boring? It doesn't have to be. Each person in our team do our level best to bring some fun into the meeting.
Kevin started the "When is next Tuesday?" debate 174 days ago. To this day, any mention of any dates next week would bring the whole joke up, culminating in Rob's "but this week was next week last week."
Last week Rob brought up the topic of English spelling reform. I recall seeing something similar many years ago. Today I went into my stack of printed out stuff and found it. A little Googling lead me to this jem:
> Here's a bit of fluff to inject some humor into these trying days in The
> Place:
> Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the
> European Parliament has commissioned a feasability study in ways of
> improving efficiency in communications betwen Government
> departments.
> European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
> unnecessary difficult; for example: cough, plough, rough, through
> and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of
> changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of
> course, be administered by a committee staff at top level 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' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only
> would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but
> typewriters kould be made with one less letter.
> There would be growing enthousiasm when in the sekond year, it was
> anounsed 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 reatsh the stage where more komplikated tshanges 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. Therefor 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 reseptive to steps
> sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w'
> kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly
> after zis, ze unesesary 'o kould be dropd from words kontaining
> 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations
> of leters.
> Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli
> sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trublsm
> difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze
> drems of Mr. Orvel vud finali hav kum tru.
> From REA News, Journal of the Royal Aircraft Establishment.
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