Today I received the following e-mail from a freind. Is it joking or it's true?

***
German lobbies finally accepted English as the official language in the
European Union.
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 growingb 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.

This is an old, but quite good joke.

Thanks Richard English. So it's a joke. Personally speaking, I don't like such things to be applied to any form of English (Euro-, British, American, etc.).

It is a joke, but there have been serious proposals for spelling reform put forward by people at various times. Some have even ben attempted. Some schools did experiment with, for example, Pitman's Initial teaching Alphabet. I have a cousin taught using this system who is unable to spell consistently to this day.

George Bernard Shaw was also an advocate for spelling reform.

Of course Germany went ahead and did it with a whole set of spelling reforms, the Rechtschreibreform.

And, of course, there was Noah Webster. Whilst his intentions were good, his reforms meant that American English was no longer spelt in the same way as the rest of the English-speaking world, with all its concomitant problems.

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
American English was no longer spelt

True, arnie. Around here we think "spelt" is a type of grain!

I wondered if anyone would notice that. I wanted to work into the post one of the differences!

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
I wondered if anyone would notice that. I wanted to work into the post one of the differences!

Since my spouse has recently gone to work for a grain mill, such stuff comes up constantly!

Alas, Sunflower's gone to seed...