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

[Mark Walberg <Walberg@simmons.swmed.edu>]

>As a historical point, it's interesting to note that the text being
>circulated as a "Euroenglish" agreement was originally written in 1946 by
>"Dolton Edwards" and was intended as a satiric rejoinder to George Bernard
>Shaw's proposal to simplify and regularize English spelling.  Unfortunately
>there aren't many people writing today who could produce so funny a piece of
>writing!

Well, there is a version of this far older than 1946 written by Mark Twain:

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be
replased either
by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet.
The only
kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be
dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and
"one" would
take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it
with "i"
and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing
awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz
and the
rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali
bi posibl
tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" bai now jast a memori
in the
maindz ov ould doderez tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl,
kohirnt
speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Mark Twain (1835-1910)
American writer