Rescue English
Gwynne Dyer once wrote that "APEC" stood for "American Plan for European Collapse." Sadly, he has been proved wrong with the imminent arrival of Euro, effective Jan. 1, 1999.
However, a frightening possibility looms large on the horizon now. The English language that we all love is likely to be first victim of the European conspiracy. I'm afraid there is every chance of total breakdown in world communication. I shall now share with the readers an e-mail received by me recently from a university student in India.
The European Union commissioners have announced that an agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications 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 five year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish.
In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will reseive this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replased with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replased by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 persent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Government will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horrible mes of silent "e"s in the language is disgrasful and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v" (it's not clear, though, what happens to the Indonesian pronunciation of "fe" for "V" and also, the ever-present confusion of "e" for "i", hopefully, by then we should sort these out, at our end).
During the fifth year, ze unesesary "o" vil b droped from words kontaining "ou" and similar kchanges vud ofkors b aplid to ozer kombinations of letters.
After zis fith year, 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!
How is it? Well, this news is surely a one way ticket for the English language to join the ranks of the world's dead languages. If you don't believe it, try passing this letter through your computer's spell-check.
Under the circumstances, I suggest that the term "EURO" should mean "English: Urgent Rescue Operations." All the puritans of English will be expected to join this crusade so that we may save what is left of the language, currently used by one-fifth of humanity.
D. CHANDRAMOULI
Jakarta