Euro-english?

One of the many Englishes spoken and written today is Euro-English. Euro-English has its origins in the political arena of the European community. Here is a humorous article about the future of Euro-English published in a Canadian newspaper.

The European Union has announced that an agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year plan for what will be known as Euro-English ("Euro" for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly sivil servants will reseive this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only this should klear up konfusion, but typewriters 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 per cent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the state where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkor-age the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would.

By they fourth yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords containing "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!

Sedang [si'da:n] – седанг

Abkhazian [eb'keizien] – абхазский язык

Chippewa ['tfipiwa:] – чипевьян (язык)

Minnesota – Миннесота

disproportionableness – несоразмеримость

incomprehensibilities – непонятности, непостижимости

aborigine – коренной житель

Meori ['mauri] – маори

insatiable – жадный, ненасытный

to coin – создавать (новые слова)

if your message gets through – зд. понимают ли вас

civil servant – государственный служащий

Imperial english

1. In the article below, which appeared in Scientific American, Professor Anne Eisenberg writes about the importance of English in the scientific world. For which jobs or subjects is it important to know English in your country?

2. The statements below express the main idea of each paragraph. Read the article and match the statements to the paragraphs.

1. In many countries English is now a practical second language.

2. Meetings were often held in several languages.

3. Most resistance to English has disappeared.

4. Americans may be changing their attitude to learning foreign languages.

5. Unlike Heisenberg, most American science students only speak English.

6. After World War ll the USA became the international leader in science and technology.

7. English may survive longer than American scientific leadership just as Latin survived longer than the Roman Empire.

8. American scientists have not needed to learn other languages for the last few decades.

9. Some countries resisted the linguistic dominance of English.

10. Before World War ll scientists had to learn foreign languages in order to understand scientific publications.

• Decide which sentences in each paragraph express the main ideas.