European Commission agree that English to be official language.

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 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 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 vords kontaining '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.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl

Source: an email
@Mods: I'm sure you'll relegate this to the BTS abyss

i think English should be the official language for sure. German is out dated, french is to tough, and Spanish's is not big enough.
but changing it, please don't, it is hard enough as it is.

reply to post by PrisonerOfSociety


Awesome

Though Im sure many wont see it ;-)

Originally posted by danishD
i think English should be the official language for sure. German is out dated, french is to tough, and Spanish's is not big enough.
but changing it, please don't, it is hard enough as it is.

'

What is wrong with those languages they are not hard to learn Spanish is quite easy compared to some romance languages.

English must be your first language because almost everybody else thinks English is the hard language.

English hardly makes sense at all; alot of the rules in the language are not used in any way or form. English has masculine and feminine words like in other languages but they are ignored. Letters don't make sense case in point W why is that called a Double U while in other languages it is called a Double V.

Yes, this post probably will be relegated to BTS, although it is a topic that certainly has merits on ATS as well, even if it was just a joke post.

English is perhaps the most difficult language to grasp. As it is a bastardization of so many different languages, with words borrowed from even more, it is almost nonsensical. There are more exceptions to the rules than there are those that adhere to the rules. English also has one of the largest number of grammar rules compared to other languages.

Thanks to Sir Walter Raleigh's School of Night and Sir Francis Bacon's Knights of the Helmet (or Pallas Athena) a more flexible English language was created and standardized, that provided words and grammar which English speakers could express themselves, a literature written in their own tongue to take the place of Latin. It's rather humorous that the modern English language owes itself to the efforts of two Elizabethan Secret Societies both under the symbol of the Rosicrosse. However, anyone who has read Middle or Old English knows that this was more than necessary and long overdue. Without their efforts the Renaissance and Romantic periods would have never happened.

Still, the English language still remains elusive and evasive, even to native speakers.

German is a pretty easy language for English speakers to pick up. There is a good part of the English language that was borrowed quite liberally from the Germanic tongues. I've personally found it easier to learn than French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, or Russian.

I see little reason for the EU to adopt English as their official language. German is already spoken by the largest majority of participating members of the EU. English really has as much of a claim to the EU as French, Italian, Spanish, or Swedish does. (Although, no offense to our Northern European friends, but those mysterious Scandinavian languages are about as elusive and evasive to everyone but the Scandinavians. The only language that is any more confusing than their language group is Welsh Gaelic!)

However, as I'm not a citizen of the EU, I'll trust in them to make the better decision for themselves.

[edit on 21-6-2009 by fraterormus]

I'm a native English speaker. Since I have devoted the last 15 years of my life to Mandarin fluency, I personally think that it should become the official language. Just kidding about the official part.

Why change the language? I am in the English language instruction business. Will I need to relearn my own native tongue? Idiotic.

reply to post by Silk


I agree, it will be shoved to some dark place on ATS as it will be classed as humour, which it is but it's a very clever dissemination of the English language.

What i find interesting, is just how close languages are if you omit the subtleties of vernacular, then languages are all more or less the same (except people from Dudley (UK), who speak gobble-di-gook).

If you listen to someone speak a language completely foreign to you, pardon the pun, you can pick out meanings and intent without studying the structure of the language.

Edit: I only speak English as my brain isn't wired to learn languages as i struggle to even remember lyrics to songs. I think I'm auditory dyslexic

[edit on 21-6-2009 by PrisonerOfSociety]

English does make sense. English is the language of free thinkers and scientists, always has been.....

And plus.. I'm happy because I'm lazy and now I don't have to learn another language.. woohoo

reply to post by PrisonerOfSociety


Ha. This isn't real. It's funny though. Many Europeans know English as it is so changing spellings would just cause chaos.

reply to post by jatsc

English must be your first language because almost everybody else thinks English is the hard language.

From those that I talk to here in Germany, they think that English is rather easy to learn, but difficult to master. Mastery is difficult in any language though. I know of a guy that lived in Germany for 20 years and his German grammar was messed up a lot.

English hardly makes sense at all; alot of the rules in the language are not used in any way or form.

What rules are you referring to? There are some rules that are only used in writing [who versus whom].

English has masculine and feminine words like in other languages but they are ignored.

Only a few English words retain their gender. The gender/case system fell out of use in English centuries ago. Even if each noun still had a gender, there would be no one to differentiate between the gender because English only has two articles--the and a(n).

Letters don't make sense case in point W why is that called a Double U while in other languages it is called a Double V.

It's just a letters name man! But, it's not true that every language calls W "double v". For example, in Spanish, B and V share the same sound--"be". When one says "double u" in Spanish it's "doble be". German also calls W "ve".

reply to post by fraterormus

with words borrowed from even more

Every language borrows words. Many languages now-a-days are borrowing tons of words from English. Mainly technology words.

German is a pretty easy language for English speakers to pick up.

Oh man, I wish that was true! Yes, it's easy to learn random words since German and English are in the same language family. Bread = Brot, Brother = Bruder, Ocean =Ozean. But, once you go to learn the nuts 'n' bolts of the language, it is extremely difficult. German has grammatical cases, gender, and adjective declension, in addition to the normal idioms that one has to hurdle over when learning another language.


[edit on 6/21/2009 by octotom]

reply to post by fraterormus


Did you know the word serendipity is one of the hardest English words to translate

The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.

Wiki

That's some great info fraterormus, but i disagree German is a pretty easy language for English speakers to pick up; I only know the word "9"

I find it interesting that Chinese people (when i get emails) cannot form their sentences correctly and totally miss or mess up their prepositions. It seems there is a fluidity to the English language that is hard to teach or learn.

Originally posted by octotom
Ha. This isn't real. It's funny though.

I'm glad you noticed it was a joke email octotom, as some seem to have missed it's sarcastic intent; another English trait that seems to be lost in translation in written form (and verbal sometimes...Benny Hill, Kenny Everett, Monty Python, etc).

Just out of interest, who enjoyed "The Office" by Ricky Gervais. I found it hilarious but its humour was so subtle, i was surprised it was Americanised...no offence

[edit on 21-6-2009 by PrisonerOfSociety]

reply to post by PrisonerOfSociety

another English trait that seems to be lost in translation in written form (and verbal sometimes)

I don't know if English has lost it's "sarcasticness". If you're listening for it, it's rather easy to pick up--especially since English uses a lot of tone/inflection to give meaning and context. I think that many English speakers are naive sometimes and just don't pay attention to sarcasm.

I find it interesting that Chinese people (when i get emails) cannot form their sentences correctly and totally miss or mess up their prepositions. It seems there is a fluidity to the English language that is hard to teach or learn.

I don't know anything about Chinese, but I wonder if they mess up their prepositions due to their grammar. In Hungarian, they have "post positions" as opposed to prepositions. So, in Hungarian, if you wanted to say, "I am in the street", you'd literally say, "I am the street in". Hungarian descends from ancient oriental languages as well.

I agree with the fluidity of English. It may be since I'm a native speaker, but it seems to me, as I'm learning German for example, that English just "flows" much more nicely. It is so much more convenient to put all the verbs together than one on the end! (When I'm speaking German, I often forget to add the verb on the end, or, due to the German grammar, sometimes I forget the verb altogether!) I think that the lack of guttural sounds in English attributes to this as well as the lack of extremely long compound words. [Just for fun, here's a long (ridiculously long) German word: Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft]

[edit on 6/21/2009 by octotom]

[edit on 6/21/2009 by octotom]

Originally posted by PrisonerOfSocietyThat's some great info fraterormus, but i disagree German is a pretty easy language for English speakers to pick up; I only know the word "9"

My degree is in Paleography with an emphasis on Papyrology. The Egyptian government recently have mandated stricter regulations for doing work in Egypt, to deter Archaeologists from the U.S. and U.K. (they couldn't just deny them without creating an international incident). It is thus now required that non-Egyptian Archaeologists to show fluency in Arabic, French, German, and at least one of Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, Demotic or Coptic. As I have grown up speaking French as a second-language that was easy. As my first wife was Lebanese, learning Arabic was easy too as I had motivation (although granted, the Lebanese dialect is quite distinct from the Egyptian dialect). Hieroglyphic and Hieratic were difficult as the concept of grasping a Base 800 character language was intimidating at first (coming from someone used to Base 22-26 character languages). Coptic was a breeze already knowing Greek as well. German is the last requirement I have needed (I put it off for last because frankly, I have about as little personal interest in things Germanic as I do Native American writings).

I've only had 3 semesters of German thus far, although I have a large network of friends that are fluent to help. It may be after learning nine languages other than my own, it's becoming easier each time. (I still haven't caught up to my dad who was fluent in 14 languages while he worked in Military Intelligence.)

reply to post by fraterormus


Holy crap fraterormus, you're a walking Google machine

I think your point about base character set has hit the nail on the head. English has to be more creative with its limited set of letters, so words are formed with different intent that gets lost in translation with foreign speakers who are more used to rigid rules and composition.

I guess the Hieroglyphic and Hieratic (base 800 character language) you speak of, is more of a verbatim language where creativity is strictly forbidden because of its construct or just difficult to twist into a different flavour for humour, sarcasm, etc.

@octotom
I also found your observation about German language most interesting. I never really thought of that (as i don't know any German), but guttural sounds & extremely long compound words limits their creativity of form and construction of language.

I always wondered why the English language doesn't have any guttural/throat words that covers a person with phlegm. It must be to do with an Arabic origin from Babylonia that's sweeped through Europe but never took off in the UK, because we're an island nation.


[edit on 21-6-2009 by PrisonerOfSociety]

reply to post by PrisonerOfSociety

extremely long compound words limits their creativity of form and construction of language.

The long compound words in German seem to actually enhance creativity some because you can take random words and put them together. I guess though we do this in English to, we just don't make the words one word.

I always wondered why the English language doesn't have any guttural/throat words that covers a person with phlegm. It must be to do with an Arabic origin from Babylonia that's sweeped through Europe but never took off in the UK, because we're an island nation.

I think that English doesn't have guttural sounds due to the "Great Vowel Shift", which basically characterizes the change between Middle and Modern English. During this period, the way that some vowels sounds in English was changed.

Portuguese is such a beautiful language, with words not even able to translate to any other... The most famous one: Saudade. Try looking anywhere for a close meaning

Too bad our time was back in the Conquistadores time.

Believe me, if English becomes the official EU language, 95% of my College mates wouldn't fit in at all! They can barely complete a single sentence with gigantic mistakes like "I have 20 years of age" (it would be correct if it was in Portuguese "Eu tenho 20 anos de idade").

Acreditem, o Português é uma língua riquíssima!


Cheers.

I think English is the most easy to understand.
One can learn English in a few months, because it has influence of Germanic languege, Latin and others as well.
It's more simple than other langueges too, it's based on simple conditions of yes and no.
English is popular but it's not the best languege for comunication, sometimes I can not express my self in English the way I can do it in Latin.

Speaking your heart in English is sometimes so simplistic that it does not capture the best of it. English is an elementry languege.

reply to post by jatsc


english is my 2nd, and i have watched english movies listen to english music, my whole life. so that is where i got the basics from. had english since 1st grade. and it all comes natural, along the road.

reply to post by pepsi78

Speaking your heart in English is sometimes so simplistic that it does not capture the best of it

I feel this way sometimes. I think that part of what contributes to that is that in English, one word can have many meanings, possibly more than any language. Due to this, sometimes, you can be mistaken. One example is the word "hate" in English. It has developed a simple meaning of "dislike", but many don't realize this.



Something that I wanted to say yesterday but forgot is that in English, we probably call "W" "double u" stems from the cursive script of the letter, not so much the print version. When you make a W in cursive script, it really does look like two Us instead of two Vs--except for a little hook on the end to distinguish it.

Originally posted by fraterormus
English really has as much of a claim to the EU as French, Italian, Spanish, or Swedish does. (Although, no offense to our Northern European friends, but those mysterious Scandinavian languages are about as elusive and evasive to everyone but the Scandinavians. The only language that is any more confusing than their language group is Welsh Gaelic!)

Old English has many similarities with the Old Norse!

Many English words evolved from the Old Norse, like:

Husband (master of a house) = Husbondi - in the Old Norse
www.merriam-webster.com...

Window = vindauga - in the Old Norse.
www.merriam-webster.com...

There are so many more examples with English words coming from the Scandinavian countries and the Old Norse!

Quite interesting really!

So maybe the Scandinavian languages are not soo spaced out, after all?