This is humorous, though I think I saw it some time ago. (For a Unicode audience we could also substitute some extended characters such as the eng for ng.) It does bring to mind that familiarity with an orthography - mainly through experience reading it - is the key to its usefulness. In looking at the text below I think of how a written African language might look to a native speaker of it who had learned only English or French in school - an orthography may make perfect sense (and may even have been around a while) but if the person may not have had much exposure to it, it might seem strange...
I've reposted the earlier items in this thread to Qalam,* which might be a more appropriate place for the discussion?? Don * http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qalam/ Quoting "Carl W. Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Euro-English > The EU announces changes to the spellings of common English words... > > European Union commissioners have announced that 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, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English > spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase > plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short). > > > > In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, > sivill servants will resieve this news with joy. Also the hard "c" will be > replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typwriters kan > have one less letter. > There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the > troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like > "fotograf" 20 per sent 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 horible mes of silent "e"'s in the languag 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". 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 > trubls or difikultis and evrivon vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze > drem vil finali kum tru. > > > > >
