Language primer for the new Europe

THE European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby ‘Esperanto’ will be the official language during Ireland’s tenure of EU presidency. Conceding that English spelling had some room for improvement they accepted a phase-in plan that would be known as ‘Esperanto.’

In the first month, ‘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 month, when the troublesome ‘ph’ will be replaced with ‘f’.

This will make words like ‘fotograf’ 20% shorter. In the terd month, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Government will enkorage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent ‘es’ in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away. By then we should all be familiar wit Esperanto.

Anthony Woods,

5, Marian Ave,

Ennis,

Co Clare.