Monday 22 September, 2003 at 5:25PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (2)

The other Weasel said to me the other day, "Hurry up and learn how to speak Russian so you understand what I'm saying all the time already!" (the other Weasel of course being bi-lingual). I've thought about it a bit more, and had I been quick enough at the time I could've responded with, "Well, you work with heaps of Chinese people all day, how come you don't know how to speak Chinese already?".

Actually I am picking up a malenky bit of Russian as you can viddy. heh. This topic got me thinking though. In New Zealand Te Reo Maori is now part of the school curriculum (speaking Maori, the native language of NZ). Outside of NZ, Maori language is non-existant, so although increased awareness within NZ is culturally a good thing, it is relatively useless in the big scheme of things. This is because as the world moves more and more towards a global economy, lesser known languages will become less useful in everyday life.

I wonder if eventually the Tower of Babel story will be reversed and there will be one common global language.. which brings me to a post I saw on a forum recently (thanks Orion):

EURO ENGLISH : EUROPEAN DIRECTIVE

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 strongly lobbied by the German Government.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year plan that would be known as Euro English.

In the first year, "S" will replace the soft "C" . Sertainly, this will make sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "C" will be dropped in favour of the letter "K". This should klear up konfusion and musik keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the tiresome "PH" will be replaced with the "F". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the third year publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted 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 wi agre that the horible mes of the silent "E" in the language is disgrasful, and should be don away with.

By the fourth yer, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'TH" with "Z" and "W" with "V". During ze fifz yar, ze unesesary "O" kan be dropd from vords kontaning "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 trubls or difikultis and evriven vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!