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The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the ot

The 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 growing 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 sensi bl 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.

User23 6y ago
This spelling reform was pioneered by Mark Twain[1]. [1] http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html
- dang 6y ago
  That attribution to Twain is bogus. I believe it started as a letter to the editor in some mid-20th century magazine. Let me see if I can dig up the citation. Edit: the joke originated as a letter to the Economist in 1971: https://web.archive.org/web/20200807181810/https://lettersofnote.com/2012/05/03/iorz-feixfuli-m-j-yilz/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200807181810/https://lettersof.... The classic internet version (referencing the European Commission) was a later rewrite—no idea by whom. It's interesting that the original was a UK in-joke ("Haweve, sins xe Wely, xe Airiy, and xe Skots du not spik Ingliy") but the rewrite became more outward-facing, a sort of Euroskeptic joke when light humor about such things was still possible (I got it in an email in the 90s), as well as quite a bit funnier. Misassigning it to Mark Twain is not surprising, because all great quotes by obscure people get reattributed to famous writers over time. Also, Twain wrote a famous and funny essay complaining about German (https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html), and he was interested in alphabet reform too (http://www.online-literature.com/twain/1322/ http://www.online-literature.com/twain/1322/).
  - D-Coder 6y ago
    First published in Astounding Science Fiction, 1946 (Astounding later become Analog). Often recirculated with accumulated changes. As far as I know, this is the original. MEIHEM IN CE KLASRUM by Dalton Edwards
    - dang 6y ago
      You're right! You can tell for sure that this is an antecedent because the last line is almost the same: "his drims fainali keim tru" vs. "Ze drem [...] vil finali kum tru". Somewhere out there is a web page tracing this joke. When I googled this yesterday, there was just a haystack of drecky results repeating the joke. But once you have two sources, you can search for them together, and that tends to bring up better results. I just did that, and probably the best one I found was this alt.usage.english thread from 1999: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.usage.english/iwgeAzlweqY https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.usage.english/iw... Note the marvelous reply: "Thanks for your effort to clear up this ongoing mis-attribution. I remember well "Meihem in ce Klasrum" when John W Campbell Jr published it. Btw, the author is apparently "Dolton Edwards", not Dalton, and is said to be a pseudonym (which explains the satirical "Dolt") of someone named W.K. Lessing (edit: or K.W.? http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57114 http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57114), about whom I didn't find anything when I looked. I thought we had discussed this on HN before, too, but all I could find was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12108263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12108263, which you posted 4 years ago. Perhaps the next time this comes up, several years from now, one of us will at least find the current thread.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Thanks. Twain did write "On the Awful German Language", on which the false atribution likely leaned strongly. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Tramp_Abroad/Appendix_D https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Tramp_Abroad/Appendix_D

User23 6y ago

This spelling reform was pioneered by Mark Twain[1]. [1] http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html

dang 6y ago
That attribution to Twain is bogus. I believe it started as a letter to the editor in some mid-20th century magazine. Let me see if I can dig up the citation. Edit: the joke originated as a letter to the Economist in 1971: https://web.archive.org/web/20200807181810/https://lettersofnote.com/2012/05/03/iorz-feixfuli-m-j-yilz/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200807181810/https://lettersof.... The classic internet version (referencing the European Commission) was a later rewrite—no idea by whom. It's interesting that the original was a UK in-joke ("Haweve, sins xe Wely, xe Airiy, and xe Skots du not spik Ingliy") but the rewrite became more outward-facing, a sort of Euroskeptic joke when light humor about such things was still possible (I got it in an email in the 90s), as well as quite a bit funnier. Misassigning it to Mark Twain is not surprising, because all great quotes by obscure people get reattributed to famous writers over time. Also, Twain wrote a famous and funny essay complaining about German (https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html), and he was interested in alphabet reform too (http://www.online-literature.com/twain/1322/ http://www.online-literature.com/twain/1322/).
- D-Coder 6y ago
  First published in Astounding Science Fiction, 1946 (Astounding later become Analog). Often recirculated with accumulated changes. As far as I know, this is the original. MEIHEM IN CE KLASRUM by Dalton Edwards
  - dang 6y ago
    You're right! You can tell for sure that this is an antecedent because the last line is almost the same: "his drims fainali keim tru" vs. "Ze drem [...] vil finali kum tru". Somewhere out there is a web page tracing this joke. When I googled this yesterday, there was just a haystack of drecky results repeating the joke. But once you have two sources, you can search for them together, and that tends to bring up better results. I just did that, and probably the best one I found was this alt.usage.english thread from 1999: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.usage.english/iwgeAzlweqY https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.usage.english/iw... Note the marvelous reply: "Thanks for your effort to clear up this ongoing mis-attribution. I remember well "Meihem in ce Klasrum" when John W Campbell Jr published it. Btw, the author is apparently "Dolton Edwards", not Dalton, and is said to be a pseudonym (which explains the satirical "Dolt") of someone named W.K. Lessing (edit: or K.W.? http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57114 http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57114), about whom I didn't find anything when I looked. I thought we had discussed this on HN before, too, but all I could find was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12108263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12108263, which you posted 4 years ago. Perhaps the next time this comes up, several years from now, one of us will at least find the current thread.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Thanks. Twain did write "On the Awful German Language", on which the false atribution likely leaned strongly. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Tramp_Abroad/Appendix_D https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Tramp_Abroad/Appendix_D