Originally posted by Vespasian on the comedy forum.
"The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the E.U. 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 replased with 'k'. This should clear 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 replased with 'f'. This will make words like 'fotograf' 20% shorter.
In the third 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 be done away with.
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!
And zen ze world!"
'All we see and seem is but a dream within a dream' Poe