EU Adopts Official Language?

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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 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 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.

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spam box special ladies and gentlemen... :smash:

teh old

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Originally Posted by Strike For The South

teh old

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Really?

This is why panzer doesn't attempt humor, even if its just someone else's humor copy/pasted. :shame:

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Really?

This is why panzer doesn't attempt humor, even if its just someone else's humor copy/pasted. :shame:

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Get back up on that horse cowboy :cowboy:

Very old.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

This is why panzer doesn't attempt humor

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You're German! Best to stear well clear of any attempts at humour. :beam:



You don't ask the British to cook, the Italians to build meticulously planned roads on time, and the Germans to make jokes.

The EU is all about fixing this: British jokes, German roads, and Italian food. :2thumbsup:

So France is kinda of useless? Glad to see the EU wont drastically change the culture of the continent much

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

You're German! Best to stear well clear of any attempts at humour. :beam:

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From a Parisian? :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars

From a Parisian? :laugh4:

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The laughing smilie makes me assume there is some sort of attempt at humour in there, but I think your Germaness got the better of you. ~;)

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So France is kinda of useless?

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No. France is the Texas of Europe.

It just sits there, right in the middle, being Big and Strong and letting the others worship us in jealous despair.

I hadn't seen it before and found it quite hilarious! :2thumbsup:

And I agree with Louis, France is so strong that we had an entire topic about it's army falling apart.

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

The laughing smilie makes me assume there is some sort of attempt at humour in there, but I think your Germaness got the better of you. ~;)

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German humour, far too base sophisticated for a Frenchman. ~;)

Husar! D...did I just notice a faint glimmering of...of...of humorous wit in your post? ~:eek:

Well done lad! I bet you are at least 50% non-German! ~;)

I thought nationalism in the enlightened community of the EU was verbotten? :candle:

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Originally Posted by Hosakawa Tito

I thought nationalism in the enlightened community of the EU was verbotten? :candle:

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Except EU nationalism, of course. :book:

I hadn't seen it...

and I laughed my ass off...

Gah! My head hurts from reading that. :dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

France is the Texas of Europe.

It just sits there, right in the middle, being Big and Strong and letting the others worship us in jealous despair.

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Veldig god, Louis! The "jealous despair" is what really sells it. :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Martok

Gah! My head hurts from reading that. :dizzy2:

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Agreed! I found it pretty funny though, even if it might be old.

an old classic, well worth revisiting now and then.

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Originally Posted by Martok

Gah! My head hurts from reading that. :dizzy2:



Veldig god, Louis! The "jealous despair" is what really sells it. :laugh4:

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Did you just mean to say veldig bra? :inquisitive:


Anyhow, I believe this was posted by EMFM in the jokes thread in the frontroom a couple of months ago. ~;)

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Originally Posted by Viking

Did you just mean to say veldig bra? :inquisitive:

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Gah. Yes it was. (My Norwegian is *very* rusty.) :embarassed:

:laugh4:

Never seen it before, I thought it was hilarious.

If it can't be Polish why not German :) More citizens of EU uses German as national language.

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Originally Posted by KrooK

If it can't be Polish why not German :) More citizens of EU uses German as national language.

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Polish is on the list, I'm sure. I think it's somewhere behind Mandarin.

Väldigt bra!

Anyway, I think both mandarin and Iambic hexameter beats polish when it comes to official EU language.

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Originally Posted by SwedishFish

Polish is on the list, I'm sure. I think it's somewhere behind Mandarin.

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Haha, oh snap!

I loved that, Panzer :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Martok

Gah. Yes it was. (My Norwegian is *very* rusty.) :embarassed:

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It's just that it appeared to come out of thin air. Norway isn't even a member of the EU. ~;)

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Originally Posted by KrooK

If it can't be Polish why not German :) More citizens of EU uses German as national language.

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But how many actually speak it?

They more shout it imho... or spit it out...

:sweden:

We should count only citizens of European Union or people living into European Union not people uses language at all. GB has about 60.000.000 citizens, Germany 80.000 + few millions into Austria.
German language has much more native speakers. English on the other hand is being used as lingua franca all over the world.

It's a little ironic to use lingua franca in reference to english.

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Originally Posted by a wiki article

Originally lingua Franca (or Sabir) referred to a mixed language composed mostly of Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Persian, French, Greek and Arabic. Lingua Franca literally means "Frankish language". This originated from the Arabic custom of referring to all Europeans as Franks. This mixed language was used for communication throughout the medieval and early modern Middle East[citation needed] as a diplomatic language; the generic description lingua franca has since become common for any language used by speakers of different languages to communicate with one another. Some samples of Sabir have been preserved in Molière's comedy, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

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If the wiki article is correct (and I think it is), then your assertion that English, particularly American English which absorbs millions of words from other languages, is correct, too. Whether continetal europe adopts Am-Eng, with its ability to accomodate all other languages, is a political question though, that doesn't look good, because of folks not wanting to 'give up' their native tongue, or in their minds 'submit' to American incursions on their culture.

I should get up to speed on Spanish and Chinese. Then I could communicate with about 75-80% of humanity. But I'm getting kinda old, and it gets harder to teach this old dog new tricks with each passing day.

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

I should get up to speed on Spanish and Chinese. Then I could communicate with about 75-80% of humanity. But I'm getting kinda old, and it gets harder to teach this old dog new tricks with each passing day.

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Well, if you know English, Spanish is (fairly) easy to learn. Basically, most people who had learned a few years of high school Spanish should be able to read most Spanish articles and get the gist of it without much problem. Communicating (ie speaking/writing), however, is another story.

As for Chinese.....well its really hard for anyone who hasn't learned an "Oriental" language already (something like Korean/Japanese) since it really has no resemblance towards Western languages (like the prominent use of phonic spellings as well as the written one)

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

It's a little ironic to use lingua franca in reference to english.

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Originally lingua Franca (or Sabir) referred to a mixed language composed mostly of Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Persian, French, Greek and Arabic. Lingua Franca literally means "Frankish language". This originated from the Arabic custom of referring to all Europeans as Franks. This mixed language was used for communication throughout the medieval and early modern Middle East[citation needed] as a diplomatic language; the generic description lingua franca has since become common for any language used by speakers of different languages to communicate with one another. Some samples of Sabir have been preserved in Molière's comedy, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

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If the wiki article is correct (and I think it is), then your assertion that English, particularly American English which absorbs millions of words from other languages, is correct, too. Whether continetal europe adopts Am-Eng, with its ability to accomodate all other languages, is a political question though, that doesn't look good, because of folks not wanting to 'give up' their native tongue, or in their minds 'submit' to American incursions on their culture.

I should get up to speed on Spanish and Chinese. Then I could communicate with about 75-80% of humanity. But I'm getting kinda old, and it gets harder to teach this old dog new tricks with each passing day.

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Curiously, the muslims called Catholic Europe a very wierd name (Translated into english that is). We already know about: Turkmenistan, where Turkmen live; Kazakhistan, where Kazaks live, Uzbekistan, and so on. "Stan" means "home of" (I think) in Persian, so using the "franca" cue, muslims called our Catholic Europe "Frangistan". Where Franks live. :P That makes us all "Frangistani" in Iranian's eyes.

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Originally Posted by TevashSzat

Well, if you know English, Spanish is (fairly) easy to learn.

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Ugh, English and Spanish have nothing in common, believe me. I would bet it's probably easier for an English to learn German or Norwegian than Spanish.

Jolt, you are indeed right...

Spanish is based on latin, english, norwegian, german and so on is based on germanic.

Sure, we all share an indo-european ground... but then we have divided into different groups...