The European Commission has just announced an
agreement whereby English will be the official
language of the European nation 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 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 the
"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
the "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 peopl 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.
If zis mad yu smil, pleas pas it on to oza pepl.
----- End forwarded message -----
On Tuesday 05 August 2003 19:33, Mike Fedyk wrote:
[...]
>If zis mad yu smil, pleas pas it on to oza pepl.
Chuckle... Some people have way too much time on their hands. :-)
--
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz 512M
99.27% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com attornies please note, additions to this message
by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 08:14:31PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Tuesday 05 August 2003 19:33, Mike Fedyk wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >If zis mad yu smil, pleas pas it on to oza pepl.
>
> Chuckle... Some people have way too much time on their hands. :-)
That message was of course reformatted removing all of the forward
notices... which took a little time in of itself, but not as much as if I
wrote it in the first place.
And yes, I did forget to put "[OT]" in the subject line. Sorry.
On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 16:33:08 PDT, Mike Fedyk <[email protected]> said:
>
> The European Commission has just announced an
> agreement whereby English will be the official
> language of the European nation rather than German,
> which was the other possibility.
Fortunately, Mark Twain wrote this before the current silliness with copyright
lifetimes took hold in the US... ;)
> >If zis mad yu smil, pleas pas it on to oza pepl.
>
> Chuckle... Some people have way too much time on their hands. :-)
Oh, come on, it really points something out.
Europe is a place where everybody speaks bad english :)
And people who know english and bad english tend to use bad english.
Regards,
Maciej
On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 11:16:51AM +0200, Maciej Soltysiak wrote:
> > >If zis mad yu smil, pleas pas it on to oza pepl.
> >
> > Chuckle... Some people have way too much time on their hands. :-)
> Oh, come on, it really points something out.
> Europe is a place where everybody speaks bad english :)
> And people who know english and bad english tend to use bad english.
As you have just done ;)
I also disagree. Many in Europe speak English much better
than those born to it.
--
________________________________________________________________
J.W. Schultz Pegasystems Technologies
email address: [email protected]
Remember Cernan and Schmitt
On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 04:14:03PM -0700, jw schultz wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 11:16:51AM +0200, Maciej Soltysiak wrote:
> > > >If zis mad yu smil, pleas pas it on to oza pepl.
> > >
> > > Chuckle... Some people have way too much time on their hands. :-)
> > Oh, come on, it really points something out.
> > Europe is a place where everybody speaks bad english :)
> > And people who know english and bad english tend to use bad english.
>
> As you have just done ;)
>
> I also disagree. Many in Europe speak English much better
> than those born to it.
Yes, I have to agree also. I am a native english speaker, and I have an
Arabic friend who knows english many times better than I do. Though he does
come to me to make sure his phrases are in acceptable according to modern
english (ie, slang and common phrases).
jw schultz wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 11:16:51AM +0200, Maciej Soltysiak wrote:
>
>>>>If zis mad yu smil, pleas pas it on to oza pepl.
>>>
>>>Chuckle... Some people have way too much time on their hands. :-)
>>
>>Oh, come on, it really points something out.
>>Europe is a place where everybody speaks bad english :)
>>And people who know english and bad english tend to use bad english.
>
>
> As you have just done ;)
>
> I also disagree. Many in Europe speak English much better
> than those born to it.
>
The trained Linguist in me speaks:
What is "good" English?
Do you mean "broadly understandable"? Or do you mean "as defined by
pedants"?
> > And people who know english and bad english tend to use bad english.
>
> As you have just done ;)
>
> I also disagree. Many in Europe speak English much better
> than those born to it.
Yes, but try going skiing to the Alps. Checkout French, Austrian, Italian
side glaciers. And try to get any response more correct than "we pipl buys
tickets, ski lift not works", and so on.
Ask "do you speak english?", and get "no".
Maybe I am exagerating, but decent english was hard to find during my
trips. I was better off using german.
When I once heard a Swiss and an Italian agree that bad english
rules I felt daunted. I am certainly no top-flight english speaker, but
that amazed me. I also realize that in around universities people tend to
know english better. But my view on using english to talk to people i meet
is that I'd better use it
Disclaimer:
My opinions are my hamster's opinions, so blame him as the source of all
evil and take all of this with a grain of salt :-)
Regards,
Maciej
Maciej Soltysiak <[email protected]> wrote:
| Yes, but try going skiing to the Alps. Checkout French, Austrian, Italian
| side glaciers. And try to get any response more correct than "we pipl buys
| tickets, ski lift not works", and so on.
It depends on the part of Europe. Not incidentally, in the countries
you mention, all foreign content shown on televison and in movie
theaters is dubbed. In other countries such as the Scandinavian
countries, The Netherlands and Belgium, almost everything is
sub-titled. I think there is a direct relation between dubbing and the
lack of English language skills.
--
Dick Streefland //// Altium BV
[email protected] (@ @) http://www.altium.com
--------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo---------------------------
On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 10:39:05AM -0000, Dick Streefland wrote:
> Maciej Soltysiak <[email protected]> wrote:
> | Yes, but try going skiing to the Alps. Checkout French, Austrian, Italian
> | side glaciers. And try to get any response more correct than "we pipl buys
> | tickets, ski lift not works", and so on.
>
> It depends on the part of Europe. Not incidentally, in the countries
> you mention, all foreign content shown on televison and in movie
> theaters is dubbed. In other countries such as the Scandinavian
> countries, The Netherlands and Belgium, almost everything is
> sub-titled. I think there is a direct relation between dubbing and the
> lack of English language skills.
hmm, there is a joke in Austria, where some
obviously polyglot person asks two natives in
several languages for directions ... and gets
no answer at all, when he has left, one of
the natives says to the other: "have you
heard how many languages he spoke?", and the
other replies: "yeah sure, but did it do him
any good?"
so not everybody capable of speaking english
will do so ...
best,
Herbert
> --
> Dick Streefland //// Altium BV
> [email protected] (@ @) http://www.altium.com
> --------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo---------------------------
>
> -
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Dick Streefland wrote:
> Maciej Soltysiak <[email protected]> wrote:
> | Yes, but try going skiing to the Alps. Checkout French, Austrian,
Italian
> | side glaciers. And try to get any response more correct than "we
pipl buys
> | tickets, ski lift not works", and so on.
>
> It depends on the part of Europe. Not incidentally, in the countries
> you mention, all foreign content shown on televison and in movie
> theaters is dubbed. In other countries such as the Scandinavian
> countries, The Netherlands and Belgium, almost everything is
> sub-titled. I think there is a direct relation between dubbing and the
> lack of English language skills.
>
er, thats a no. Just look into Japan, they have subbed movies, they have
dual channel movies on TV (english/japanese) and they really struggle
and fight with even basic english. why? because it is too different to
their own language ...
OTH you might be right for european countries, I always think eg
Scandinavian countries are far superior in english because they see,
watch everything in english on TV, etc ... and I see it on myself, if I
wouldn't have started watching movies in english and reading books in
english I think I would be the same "no inglisch heare" ignorant like a
lot of my friends in Austria are ... adding a second thought to
Japanese, they all WANT to learn japanese desperatly ... its just
horrible difficult for them, weather a lot of austrians are not even
interested in doing so ... "english? why? I don't need it ..." ...
ignorants ...
- --
Clemens Schwaighofer - IT Engineer & System Administration
==========================================================
Tequila Japan, 6-17-2 Ginza Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8167, JAPAN
Tel: +81-(0)3-3545-7703 Fax: +81-(0)3-3545-7343
http://www.tequila.jp
==========================================================
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> OTH you might be right for european countries, I always think eg
> Scandinavian countries are far superior in english because they see,
> watch everything in english on TV, etc ... and I see it on myself, if I
> wouldn't have started watching movies in english and reading books in
> english I think I would be the same "no inglisch heare" ignorant like a
> lot of my friends in Austria
And that is the conclusion I think. Kids should be encouraged to listen,
watch, read in english. Discouraged to watch dubbed movies. My 6 years old
neice is totally transparent to languages. If she hears something in
english, that's fine, she even repeats the words and frases. If she hears
in japanesse (i showed her anime) that's fine also. Hmm. I am no
child-schrink-wannabe but, if we just encourage kids to be open to every
language, they will just click to the ones they fancy.
Regards,
OT generator/exploder v0.0.1pre1, Maciej :)
Maciej Soltysiak writes:
> > OTH you might be right for european countries, I always think eg
> > Scandinavian countries are far superior in english because they see,
> > watch everything in english on TV, etc ... and I see it on myself, if I
> > wouldn't have started watching movies in english and reading books in
> > english I think I would be the same "no inglisch heare" ignorant like a
> > lot of my friends in Austria
> And that is the conclusion I think. Kids should be encouraged to listen,
> watch, read in english. Discouraged to watch dubbed movies. My 6 years old
> neice is totally transparent to languages. If she hears something in
> english, that's fine, she even repeats the words and frases. If she hears
> in japanesse (i showed her anime) that's fine also. Hmm. I am no
> child-schrink-wannabe but, if we just encourage kids to be open to every
> language, they will just click to the ones they fancy.
In Japan they actually have children programs on TV where they speak
(American) English and explain English words to Japanese
children. They also sing English songs. I think that is a good idea
especially considering the difficulties that Japanese have with
English as compared to Europeans whose languages mostly have the same origin.
If we had such programs in Germany it would probably improve the
overall knowledge of English and the reporters on TV would finally be
able to pronounce Tomb Raider :).
The younger you are the better you are able to learn (not only a
language), so you should start early and if you have fun while
learning that is even better.
Marcus
--
/--------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Dr. Marcus O.C. Metzler | |
|--------------------------------|-----------------------------------|
| [email protected] | http://www.metzlerbros.de/ |
\--------------------------------------------------------------------/
Maciej Soltysiak wrote:
> And that is the conclusion I think. Kids should be encouraged to listen,
> watch, read in english. Discouraged to watch dubbed movies.
I have been told that it makes a big difference which _sounds_ the
kids are exposed to during a certain age range, when they are
developing the ability to distinguish language sounds. This would
support the subtitles-better-than-dubbing hypothesis, and also explain
why adults find it easier to learn languages with similar sounds to
their childhood languages.
-- Jamie