Euro-English
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:
[...]
Quoted 1 line
If zis mad yu smil, pleas pas it on to oza pepl.
Chuckle... Some people have way too much time on their hands. :-)
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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.
Quoted 7 lines · Gene Heskett
On Tuesday 05 August 2003 19:33, Mike Fedyk wrote:
[...]
Quoted 1 line
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.
Quoted 5 lines · Mike Fedyk
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... ;)
Quoted 3 lines
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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
Quoted 6 lines · Maciej Soltysiak
Quoted 3 lines
Quoted 1 line
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.
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________________________________________________________________ J.W. Schultz Pegasystems Technologies email address: [email protected] Remember Cernan and Schmitt
Quoted 4 lines · jw schultz
Quoted 3 lines · Maciej Soltysiak
Quoted 3 lines
Quoted 1 line
If zis mad yu smil, pleas pas it on to oza pepl.
Chuckle... Some people have way too much time on their hands. :-)
Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 3 lines
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).
Quoted 11 lines · jw schultz
Quoted 7 lines · Maciej Soltysiak
Quoted 3 lines
Quoted 1 line
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.
Quoted 5 lines
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"?
Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 1 line
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.
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Quoted 11 lines · Dick Streefland
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
Quoted 10 lines
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Quoted 2 lines · Dick Streefland
Maciej Soltysiak <[email protected]> wrote:
| Yes, but try going skiing to the Alps. Checkout French, Austrian,
Italian
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| side glaciers. And try to get any response more correct than "we
pipl buys
Quoted 9 lines
| 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 ...
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Quoted 6 lines
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 :)
Quoted 6 lines · Maciej Soltysiak
Quoted 6 lines
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
Quoted 7 lines
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
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Quoted 2 lines · Maciej Soltysiak
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