There were many lingua francas of which French was supposedly the first global lingua franca. That changed and it became English (from what I understand). We will probably see another language become the lingua franca, so my question is: should it be English? Are there better candidates out there? Why / why not?

  • @ycnz@lemmy.nz
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    77 days ago

    Given how western society is doing, Mandarin might not be a terrible call.

    • atro_cityOP
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      47 days ago

      Isn’t it the most difficult language to learn for Westerners?

      • @renzhexiangjiao@szmer.info
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        17 days ago

        if by westerners you mean english speakers, then yes, it’s known to be one of the more difficult ones. it’s ultimately subjective, but what people find hard about mandarin is 1.the writing system 2.tones

        what also doesn’t help is definitely lack of exposure, chinese popular media isn’t very popular in the west

        • @shaserlark@sh.itjust.works
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          47 days ago

          Also Chinese people are confused af if you try to speak Chinese with them. I tried several times and they were just looking at me like wtf are you doing. It’s probably a combination of not really getting why a foreigner would start speaking Chinese with them and me being extraordinarily bad at doing it too.

        • atro_cityOP
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          27 days ago

          Westerners = Europe, USA, Australia, New Zealand

          1.the writing system 2.tones

          Indeed. I just looked it up and the writing system is logographic. To my knowledge, not a single Western language is logographic and more alphabetic. The tonal system is also rare (not sure if exists at all) in Western countries.

          To me, those are two major differences that are difficult to overcome.

  • @ShotDonkey@lemmy.world
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    77 days ago

    Having a big economy who’s inhabitants never have to invest time into learn another language is a huge advantage for this economy. It’s not a level playing field. Today there is no reason to still support English. In Europe we should use Esperanto or another easy to learn equivalent.

    • @nullpilot@feddit.org
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      27 days ago

      Today there is no reason to still support English

      This forum bringing together people from different countries, is in itself proof that there is a reason. Many people are already comfortable if not fluid in the language. How many folks speak Esperanto already?

      • atro_cityOP
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        27 days ago

        How many folks speak Esperanto already?

        As many as Lithuanians, Latvians, or Basque, and twice as many as Estonians.

  • @shaserlark@sh.itjust.works
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    57 days ago

    Is this some kind of ragebait? I speak French but if you look at the attitude that the French have towards their language and compare that to their average commandment of the English language, why should we do that to a whole continent?

    If you ask me people in the EU should be raised bilingually and learn English from kindergarten on. All administration and official stuff should be bilingual. That would be a way for the EU to remain competitive. But no, we rather go down the Nazi route, way to go.

  • UnityDevice
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    7 days ago

    What if it remained English, but with the change that a new phonetic spelling system is used instead of the clusterfuck that is regular English spelling?

    Wat if it remejnd Inglish, bat wit de chejnđ dat a nju fonetik speling sistem iz juzed insted of de klasterfak dat iz de regjular Inglish speling.

  • @quatschkopf43@feddit.org
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    1469 days ago

    I think we are at a point now where almost everybody in Europe is able to speak at least some English. So cultural exchange has never been easier. Why make it more difficult again by adding another language people have to learn first?

    • @fartsparkles@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      As a Brit (but European at heart and strong “Remain” voter), I am quick to remind fellow Brits that English is a language heavily derived from our European ancestors: French, Latin, Germanic (Proto-Germanic, “Old English”, Old Norse, Romance, etc), Greek, Dutch, Spanish, and more.

      I know the United Kingdom has been a royal asshat throughout the centuries but the mark of Europe is intense and undeniable; without Europe, there is no such thing as the English language (except perhaps a number of proper nouns that are rooted in the Celtic people and their ancestors) [Edit: see crappywittyname’s comment below].

      I hope our European siblings can find solace in the fact that “English” is a distinctly European language that is full of words from all of our tongues.

      • @crapwittyname@lemm.ee
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        8 days ago

        The Celtic languages are closely related to European languages such as Breton, the ancestor languages having been developed and spoken widely in Europe pre-Roman conquest.
        I’m only being picky because it adds even more support to your (already very fine) argument. You don’t even need that caveat.

  • @idegenszavak@sh.itjust.works
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    579 days ago

    English is a global lingua franca, not just european. And it’s not just because of the american and british influence, but because it’s a relatively easy language.

    Also the translator programs are better and better, this is actually a good and fitting usecase of current LLMs. I think we are not far away from the babel fish.

    • RandomStickman
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      249 days ago

      but because it’s a relatively easy language

      I literally cried learning English as a kid lol

      • @jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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        9 days ago

        Now try to learn Portuguese, or German, or Russian. English has wonky phonetics, but has a relatively simple grammar. As a bonus it’s not properly standardized, so whatever you come up with is going to be correct in at least one of the existing dialects.

        • @CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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          8 days ago

          Plus English has influences from everywhere. In my oral abitur exam, I got stuck once or twice and made up words by anglicizing the pronounciantion of french words gaining extra points and impressed faces.

          • @jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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            68 days ago

            That works for almost all European languages. In one of his books Richard Feynman tells a story about when he went to Brazil and didn’t how to say “so” in Portuguese so he used “Consequentemente” by adapting Consequently and everyone was impressed with his fluency.

            • @MBM@lemmings.world
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              8 days ago

              I feel like that’s just a tall tale that Feynman told the author, like most of those stories

            • lime!
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              48 days ago

              there’s also a story about how he just decided to fire off nonsense phonemes at some visiting professor from some asian country because he thought it was funny and people were apparently impressed at his diction. i don’t think his perceived audience reactions should be taken at face value.

        • FundMECFS
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          98 days ago

          As someone who learnt both German and English as a second language, German was easier.

          Consistent spelling and pronounciation make a massive difference.

          • @jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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            108 days ago

            Consistent spelling and pronunciations but even native speakers get pronouns for certain nouns wrong sometimes.

            And as for German being consistent there are still situations like Umfahren (Drive around) and Umfahren (Run over) that are written the same but pronounced different.

          • lurch (he/him)
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            58 days ago

            It’s horrible how many German nouns have a female or male gender. Like a lamp is female for some reason, but not if it’s a spot or a chandelier or whatever. This is so stupid and has to be memorized. Why is a bottle female, but not if it’s a flat flask.

            … and French is even more silly.

            • atro_cityOP
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              58 days ago

              It’s called “grammatical gender”. The gender is of the word not what the word represents. It evolved in many different languages meaning it did so for a reason. My guess is that it started with good intentions as many things do have a sex. However, realization crept in that there are far more things on this planet without a sex (or even an identifiable one) and something had to be done. Probably it didn’t sound good either.

              There are also languages where the concept of gender (not just grammatical gender, but gender itself) doesn’t exist and they have no gendered pronouns (everyone and everything is an “it” --> “the man, it moved”, “the woman, it sang”, …).

              Languages are fascinating from a purely theoretical standpoint.

              • FundMECFS
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                38 days ago

                It even existed in Old and Middle english, upto the 1500s.

                Some nouns still have genders in english. But this is more an exception than a rule. Ie. a ship/boat is female (called “she”), while nature is also feminine (often personified as “Mother nature”).

                • @MouldyCat@feddit.uk
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                  17 days ago

                  a ship/boat is female (called “she”), while nature is also feminine (often personified as “Mother nature”).

                  This isn’t gender though, this is just personification. The thing about grammatical gender is that it is *not* personification. For instance, Germans don’t view a table has having some kind of male quality, nor do the French view a table as being somehow female.

            • Richie Rich
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              47 days ago

              The wrong use of “der/die/das” in German does not really bother. Everyone will understand the sentence if it’s done wrong. Since there is no rule to be derived as to how to use the article correctly, you simply have to learn it with the word itself like in other languages, too. (Why is a car a “female” in French? “La voiture” - I won’t ever understand, also in Swedish: “en” or “ett” words eg. “vatten” .) There are some rules in German, like ending on “-er” is often a “male” word, but not consistent… It’s only a clue. But sometimes it doesn’t matter at all: “der Joghurt”, “die Joghurt”, “das Joghurt” - all genders are correct, so just try. 😂

              • Richie Rich
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                27 days ago

                But it could be worse: “Czech, Slovak and Rusyn: Masculine animateMasculine inanimateFeminineNeuter (traditionally, only masculine, feminine and neuter genders are recognized, with animacy as a separate category for the masculine).”

                😳

          • @bugg@lemm.ee
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            27 days ago

            I’m learning German now and it’s insanely logical. I’m angry people dissuaded me as a kid from learning German. I truly love the language and Germans are also very kind.

            Side note: are there any German communities on Lemmy you know of? I’d like to join. I’m a fan of Staiy and Spacefrogs.

      • @Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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        79 days ago

        The grammar is fairly simple, but spelling is a total train wreck and an unparalleled nightmare of inconsistencies and convoluted rules. As long as you don’t have to read or write anything, there’s not much to cry about.

      • @idegenszavak@sh.itjust.works
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        69 days ago

        Me too, but later I learned a bit of german and latin. The thing is you can fake english easily, like “why use lot word when few do trick” is a totally understandable sentence. Word order is not as stict as in german, no cases, no grammatical genders, verb tenses are mostly optional. Pronunciation is messed up though.

    • @vesi@lemm.ee
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      59 days ago

      I HATE the idea that we would have some Kind of built into us translators. Languages are a crucial part of human development and, therefore, they should be learned in school the old way. (Ofc school must also evolve)

    • tiredofsametab
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      49 days ago

      it’s a relatively easy language

      I don’t know about that part. The orthography at least is wild.

      • bluGill
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        99 days ago

        Every ‘real’ languare has wild parts. there are constructed languares that don’t but if they became common wild parts will likely be added over time.

        • tiredofsametab
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          58 days ago

          Yep. I always liked the idea of a conlang, but there’s nothing stopping language change with them.

    • Don Antonio Magino
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      8 days ago

      No language is inherently easy to learn. Whether a language is easy to learn depends on how close it is to the languages you already know, thus to a Dutchman it will be much easier to learn English than to a Russian or a Thai. It is true that learning English is made a lot easier by having such a huge media presence, meaning it’s very easy to immerse yourself even without living in an English-speaking country.

        • Don Antonio Magino
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          28 days ago

          The researchers themselves however also make the valid point that

          Complexity in language, however, is a difficult size [standard, I presume]. For although Danish is difficult in pronunciation, it is grammatical, for example, much simpler than German and Finnish, which in turn is easier to understand than Danish.

          But I was speaking in general terms, anyway. Language, being a natural phenomenon, of course has lots of variation.

      • @jjpamsterdam@feddit.org
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        38 days ago

        As a Dutchman living in Germany I can attest to the immense difference that dubbing makes. While even young children in the Netherlands consume tons of English language media and have done so for decades, their peers in Germany generally get only dubbed versions. This leads to a lackluster immersion when “properly” learning English.

        • Don Antonio Magino
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          58 days ago

          Yeah, I’m also Dutch and watch German television often, and I always think it’s odd that all foreign movies have been dubbed over. In the Netherlands, that only happens to movies for children who can’t read yet. I think it’s a bit of a shame too, as I like to hear different languages.

    • Enkrod
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      28 days ago

      It’s a lingua franca, and I don’t even think it’s about being easy to learn… avalanche effects are completely sufficient to explain its status. Many people already speak English, so more people learn English to speak with them, now even more people speak English, and so on, and so forth… the development of any lingua franca only depends on the ability to talk to as many people as possible. It’s absolutely a bonus if it’s easy and quickens the process, but at some point the pure amount of speakers outside ones own country becomes the overwhelming factor.

  • @misk@sopuli.xyz
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    499 days ago

    It’s not possible to please everybody so I vote for Basque and pleasing nobody.

    • B-TR3E
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      119 days ago

      Came here to say that. I intended to propose an immensely complex language that almost nobody understands and that is unrelated to any other family of languages. My choice was Hungarian or Finnish but Euskadi (aka “Basque”) clearly beats it. I had the privilege to learn some words from Basque coworker years ago when I was living in Spain for a while and I swear it is so utterly alien to anything I’ve heard, that it must be of extraterrestrial origin.

      • @itsralC@lemm.ee
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        8 days ago

        FYI Euskadi is a region of Spain that doesn’t include all Basque-speaking territories. The language is Euskera.

        Also, there is a Basque lemmy instance! lemmy.eus

        • atro_cityOP
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          18 days ago

          @mikelgs@lemmy.eus @Allartean@lemmy.eus @Txopi@lemmy.eus are there good resources online for learning Basque?

      • DerGottesknecht
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        18 days ago

        Albanian would also fit your criteria as it’s also completely different from everything else and fucking strange at the same time.

        • B-TR3E
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          48 days ago

          Yes, but when I asked an actual Albanian (another co-worker on a slightly adventurous job abroad) about the Albanian language and relations to other European languages in a friendly small talk he got rather angry and weirdly nationalistic. So I decided it might be healthier not to ask silly questions to anyone Albanian (very recommendable for most Balkan things!) and considered the Alban language as probably too dangerous to bother with. Retrospectively, I think he just didn’t want to admit he had no idea. 😅

          • DerGottesknecht
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            38 days ago

            Yeah, asking those questions to any balkanese is dangerous. I had the luck to spend some weeks with an albanese family while traveling and while being weird they were also the most friendly and welcoming people I ever met (after every Canadian). I learned some albanian while being there, but the language doesn’t share anything with the other languages around there. And i was explicitly forbidden to learn any curse words, because that could be apparently really dangerous if the wrong people heard it. But if you ever get the chance to visit Albania, i can’t recommend it enough.

    • atro_cityOP
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      89 days ago

      Basque might be the most neutral language of them all, right? Does it have a connection with any other European language?

  • @BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world
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    A lingua franca isn’t controllable. French was the lingua franca as it had been the dominant language of trade. Then the British Empire and later USA emerged and dominated global trade, and it became the lingua franca through shear necessity.

    In the tech age, English has also become the lingua franca which is likely to cement it’s position into the future. In Europe, it’s been a convenient second language for many as it allowed Europeans to compete in global trade and also talk to each other with 1 common language, also avoiding nationalist concerns around language. English has also been less controversial as a second language than everyone learning French or German for example given the history of previous european wars.

    A language isn’t owned by any country, so it doesn’t matter that the US is going crazy or that the UK left the EU. English is likely to stay the lingua franca in the west and in Europe as so many people already speak it, it’s already well established in schools and culture and in all honesty there isn’t an obvious alternative.

    In terms of economics, China is powerful but Chinese is spoken largely by one country, and is hard for Europeans to learn due to how fundamentally different it is. India is emerging as an economy, with English it’s own lingua franca in a continent divided by numerous languages. Urdu is being pushed by the hindu nationalist government but the global reality is that speaking english is a strength for Indian citizens in trade and global work place, so it’s unlikely people will stop learning and speaking English in India in the foreseeable future.

    The only other viable alternative in global terms currently for Europe would be Spanish due to the shear number of native speakers. But the problem remains that most Europeans don’t speak Spanish and while there is a large number of spanish speakers, they are heavily concentrated in the Americas. Meanwhile English is already spoken widely in Europe, North America outside of Mexico, India, and many other former British Colonies including widely in Africa, Oceania and across Asia.

    It’s certainly possible things may change, but at the moment it seems unlikely. We’re not seeing a huge trend of people moving away from English. One possibility though is that translation apps become near instantaneous and people move away from learning any 2nd language. However I personally think that is unlikely as a translation app can never be perfectly instantaneous due to the nature of grammer - you need the whole of a sentence to translate into another language with a totally different sentence structure, especially for longer and more complex sentences.

    So I think it’s unlikely English will be displaced as the lingua franca. It is also unneeded - it benefits Europe that a European language is the lingua franca (regardless of the UK exiting the EU etc), and it also benefits Europe as so many Europeans speak English - so the best thing for Europe is to help spread English, and offer a different influence and culture from the US with other English speakers particuarly in emerging economies. English can be Europe’s trojan horse for sharing it’s culture and values.

  • Don Antonio Magino
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    A lingua franca isn’t decided upon, it just happens to become one because of some power its speakers hold. In the Indonesian archipelago, Malay became a lingua franca because it was used by traders. In Europe, French was a lingua franca because French held a large amount of prestige among the European nobility. Now, English is the global lingua franca because English-speaking media have dominated the global media landscape.

    If you want there to be another lingua franca in Europe, that language will somehow need to attain a good reason for it to become one. You can’t just pass a law proclaiming it now being ‘the lingua franca of Europe’.

    Forcing people to speak eg. German by law might work, though you’ll probably have to be prepared to coerce people into actually doing so, and thus will have to ask yourself whether that’s worth it. Otherwise, there’s a good chance people will not really give a shit about your stupid law.

    You could also maybe abolish all EU level accommodation for other languages than the official language in a new federalised Europe. Then, if you want anything done at that level, you have no choice but to use the official, non-English, language. This seems like it might spur an elitist environment where only a small layer of Europeans (outside of the country from which the speakers of the official language originate) will generally be able to speak that language.

    This all seems a bit fantastical, though. Unless Europeans en masse stop consuming English language media, and at the same time start consuming the media of one specific other language (thus it’s a movement away from English and toward some other language by language users themselves), there won’t be a new lingua franca in Europe.

    • @tal@lemmy.today
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      This seems like it might spur an elitist environment where only a small layer of Europeans (outside of the country from which the speakers of the official language originate) will generally be able to speak that language.

      Not your main point, but I watched an interview with some senior translator person at the EC, and they said that the EC very intentionally refrained from codifying a “Brussels English” over exactly this concern: that it would lead to official government documents being written in a form that the typical person in the EU would consider distant, have a “Brussels elites that spoke differently from me” impact. The concern was that this would have negative political effects.

      Can’t recall the name of the guy, but IIRC he had a British accent. Was an older guy.

      Did drive home to me that there is a lot of political consideration taking place over policy decisions that I probably wouldn’t normally have expected.

      • Don Antonio Magino
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        68 days ago

        That’s really interesting. Language is one of the main ways we distinguish ourselves (often subconciously). Designing a special Brussels English would likely make the ‘Brussels Elite’ more of a distinguishable ‘they’ indeed.

  • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    English has a blend of Germanic and Romantic features, which is nice for Europe, and no inflections to memorise, which is nice in addition. You could also argue that no grammatical gender is a positive feature.

    On the downside, the orthography is ass, so maybe there should be a new EU-standard fonetik version. The contractions are confusing. A non-native speaker can maybe add some more, but that’s all I’ve heard about.

    • Lv_InSaNe_vL
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      68 days ago

      We could also use this as a chance to push Esperanto!

      Gi estis desegnita por ci tiu specifa afero! (Please forgive me its been a while haha)

    • troglodyte_mignon
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      68 days ago

      As a non-native speaker, I’d say that your summary of the upsides and downsides matches my experience.

      maybe there should be a new EU-standard fonetik version.

      Or maybe it’s finally time for Shavian alphabet to shine!

      • @Hans@feddit.dk
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        118 days ago

        Reminds me of an old joke:

        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 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 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.

        Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

    • Captain Aggravated
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      18 days ago

      Spoken English and written English are two different languages that have different features and different design flaws.