Re:[Leica]EuroEnglish (new agreement among Euro-countries)

[TTAbrahams@aol.com]

Subj:	 [Leica] ubj:	 [Leica] EuroEnglish (new agreement among Euro-countries)
Date:	98-06-27 11:02:13 EDT
From:	cyberdog@ibm.net (Pascal)
Pascal wrote:
"This is  regarding the new agreement among the Euro-countries. EuroEnglish:
The European Commission has just announced an agreement that English
will be the official language of the European Community (EU) - rather than
German (the other possibility).  As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's
Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement, and
has accepted 5-year phase-in of new rules that would apply to the language and
reclassify it as EuroEnglish. The agreed plan is as follows: <cut>
 ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!!

Pascal,
Wonderful posting on Euro-English! Thanks!! -If this keeps up we can dispense
with any spellchecker program. When  we, my wife Tuulikki and I, lived in
Finland in the early 70’s there was a British columnist who suggested making
Finnish into the World Language. His view was that so few people spoke it that
it would put everybody on an equal footing. Everybody would have to learn a
new language (there are only around 5 million Finnish speakers in the world,
and in most cases they are fairly taciturn). The complexity of the Finnish
grammar, the spelling and the excessive use of double vowels and consonants
would keep the entire EU occupied for generations and they would not be able
to do any major decision making for at last the next 2-300 years. Nothing
better than having the politicians and bureaucrats occupied with something
that keeps them away from everybody else.
I, a Swede, tried to learn Finnish; every fall we all gathered at the
University of Helsinki, started “Finnish For Beginners”. By “Chapter 11” 95%
of the class had dropped out and we then sat in the University cafeteria and
chatted in English, after a couple of hours of this we went home and bemoaned
to our spouses what an impossible language it was. This was repeated in spring
and fall. I took Chpters 1 - 1 four times, dropped out, drank vast amount of
coffee (these dropped out students might the statistical reason why the Finns
are the world’ biggest coffee drinkers per capita!) 
 ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU !!! or as it is in Finnish “Unelma tulee
vihdoinkin todeksi!” - as translated by Tuulikki. Capters 1-11 did not cover
anything of this complexity.   :)
Tom A