Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/06/29

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Subject: Re: [Leica] EuroEnglish (new agreement among Euro-countries)
From: "Joseph Codispoti" <joecodi@thegrid.net>
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 23:34:52 -0700

While the original post on this subject was entertaining and may as well be
prophetic, I must say that there is merit in bringing the language up to
modern standards, that is tune it to the way it is pronounced nowadays.
Foreign nationals are very aware of incongruities in the our language. Why
the "K" in knife? Why "bureau" instead of buro? And why xenophobia" and not
zenofobia?

Spanish spelling is updated every generation or so according to how it
differs from current pronunciation by the Academia de las Bellas Letras. I
am not fond of all the rules of Spanish phonetics, spelling, or its
alphabet, but the elimination of most double consonants does make it very
easy to spell (as opposed to Italian which has many doubles without double
emphasis).

The first change should be to eliminate capitalization of the pronoun "I"
(pompous, presumptuous), of nationalities, months, and days of the week.

In the end no one entity will have to decree how Euro English will be
spelled or pronounced. Regional differences will go their separate ways.
After all US English is but a distant relative of its British counterpart.
We can only regret the demise of so many beautiful languages in that
process.

Joseph Codispoti