Greetings from Spockgirl Musings, where logic rules, but the frailties of
human nature, genetic inadequacies and hormonal imbalances wreak havoc.



Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Somzing like zis?


I have always liked the taste of other languages on my tongue, even if it was just a few words here and there. Many years ago I was thinking of learning something other than English or French, so I bought two instructional packages... one for German and one for Russian. Something about the Russian language always intrigued me because it seemed to be a mouthful inside the mouth as well as outside it. There seemed to be more tongue movement as opposed to lips. Anyways, all I know are a few words, but only one sentence from the tutorial. On two separate occasions I have spoken with Russian women and both were quite surprised at how well I spoke in the language, even if it was just a few words including "hello"... and "Do you speak English?".  German, on the other hand was another story...   Maybe it was big bro's Sgt. Rock comics, maybe it was the WWII movies, or Hogan's Heroes (um... nope)... I'm leaning towards Sgt. Rock because the words were there in front of me.  At some point in my earlier years I read that German was closest in root language to English, but I never quite believed that. Maybe it meant that is was closer in grammar and structure. I'm not sure.  Regardless, I didn't even manage to remember a complete sentence...  but maybe I didn't actually do the tutorial? I don't quite remember.

Anyways, a friend of big sis sent this in an email to her quite some time ago, so I do not know how old it is or who the writer was.  For reasons above, this gem cracked me up.. but you must read it out loud to the end for full effect:

"The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become 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 "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publikenthusiasm 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 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 horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vordskontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas."

(Author unknown)

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