Thread: English will be the official language of the EU

  1. #1
    Woof, woof! zacs7's Avatar
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    English will be the official language of the EU

    Don't know if some of you have seen this before, but I found it amusing

    The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was 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 be 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 hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the"k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 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 ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage 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 language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

    By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

    After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru!


    If I've broken the rules, I'm sorry

  2. #2
    The superhaterodyne twomers's Avatar
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    I remember showing that to my father a couple of years ago and while he got the joke and laughed he agreed with ze sentements ...

  3. #3
    Woof, woof! zacs7's Avatar
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    Aww, I am behind the times - a couple of years ago

  4. #4
    chococoder
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    yes. First heard it in I think 1995, maybe earlier.

    Of course the reality is different but similar, as we're all going to end up being Franco/German colonies and being forced to use either one of those languages depending on who our overlords will be.

  5. #5
    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
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    I just hope something like this stays a joke! I learned one way of writing English, and that's really all my government can expect of me.

  6. #6
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    It's a joke. Just that. The new language rules bit, that is.
    That aside, I'm in favor of a one-language europe. If some of us dropped the national pride in the toilet (where nationalism belongs) life would be much easier. Unfortunately it won't happen in my lifetime.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  7. #7
    l'Anziano DavidP's Avatar
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    A one-language Europe would sadly eliminate an essential part of culture. Whether you think about it or not, language helps develop culture...and vice versa. Although there is usually some type of global language (Greek, Latin, English), it's very doubtful that there will ever been a global first language (i.e. everyone's first language will be the same language). It would destroy many cultures, to be quite honest.

    In regards to nationalism, it can have both good and bad effects. Being a patriot is not a bad thing. Many good things have come from a sense of pride for one's nation, but of course, so have many bad things. You can't, however, simply write off nationalism as an evil concept.
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  8. #8
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    I'm unsure as to cause-effect relation between language and culture. I would be tempted to think that it goes both ways with maybe culture having a stronger influence in the language than the other way around. That is, language is for the most part changed by the lifestyle, culture and... isolation (yes)... of a nation.

    However, europe already speaks english whether we are debating it or not. Most of the world does when we sit two people from different countries. This doesn't seem to affect a countries culture anymore than importing foreign words, coca-cola, movies and news.

    I can see your point, but without better knowledge I sincerely doubt the cultural idiosyncracies would be strongly affected. Each country would eventually develop their own variant like australia, canada and USA did, for instance.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  9. #9
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    And not a single person points out that this was blatantly ripped off from Mark Twain?

  10. #10
    The superhaterodyne twomers's Avatar
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    Brewb, how many people do you think read his stuff?

    A 'common tongue' would be great ... but it would probably start wars with people being so patriotic. I'm willing to die for my national language, of course. I reckon we should learn cow, or dog. Sure nobody knows them but contrary to all our languages they all sound the same.

  11. #11
    chococoder
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    I'm not against a common language, but I am dead against what it would be representative of, and that's the total loss of independence and sovereignty, becoming a Franco/German colony (which the so-called EU "constitution" which now has been renamed "treaty" already starts to bring about).

  12. #12
    Registered Abuser
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    Enter the global village that is the internet. As if it isn't obvious already, the first language of the internet is "english" and undoubtedly as the internet slowly creeps into more and more areas of society of different societies they will slowly find themselves taken over by the power that is English.
    I'm sure we've all had those anecdotal experiences on forums (even these ones yes!) and games, other online communities, etc. where so many members from completely random corners of the earth are able to communicate in english on the web (and when you asked them how they learned, many simply respond "the internet"), whereas the same relationship is not usually shared amongst english speaking members trying to communicate in foreign communities.
    This is my subtle way of saying ENGLISH IS THE LANGUAGE OF GODS. Give it 50 more years and it will be the first language of earth (hell, to any alien lifeform intercepting voyager, it already is).

    p.s. does anyone know why Latin was beaten into obscurity? For the most part I don't see any more shortcomings than english in grammar/syntax that couldn't be solved by adding some strategic words throughout the centuries...

  13. #13
    Woof, woof! zacs7's Avatar
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    Was not Latin beaten into obscurity because of war, tribe separation and alike? Hence why most languages are based on Latin.

    But the same thing could happen with English...

  14. #14
    The larch
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    The sad thing about the English renewing project is that it fails to do away with the major annoyance that you still don't know how each letter should be pronounced.

    It is time to move on to some phonetic alphabet (like pronunciations are written in dictionaries)!
    I might be wrong.

    Thank you, anon. You sure know how to recognize different types of trees from quite a long way away.
    Quoted more than 1000 times (I hope).

  15. #15
    chococoder
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    Latin disappeared because the people speaking it were pretty much wiped out.

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