欧盟英语拼写改革方案(ZT)
英语的拼写规则繁复,那么能不能简化呢?据说欧盟拟采用英语为官方语言,引起法国、德国等非英语国家的不满。作为妥协,英国政府同意实施一个五年文字拼写简化计划,以便最终创立一种各个成员国都可以接受的“欧语”。这个段子很有意思,却很难翻译,全文附在下面供各位参考,这里只能介绍一下大意。
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 "EuroEnglish".
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 styf
er vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understand ech of
e 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.
If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl
za. l.
按照这个改革计划,第一年内所有英文单词中发s音的字母c一律改为s;单词中发k音的字母c一律用字母k代替。比如,单词confusion(混淆)可以写成konfusion。在此基础上,第二年所有单词中发f音的字母组合ph将被f代替,所以,单词photograph(照片)fotograf 。第三年,文字拼写简化的力度进一步加大,所有单词中没有用的重复或者不发音的字母都将取消。所以,accurate spelling(准确拼写)这两个单词就可以写成akurate speling;而language(语言)这个单词最后的那个不发音的字母e也可以扔掉,写成languag。到了第四年改革深入发展,所有单词中的字母组合th将被z代替,而w将被v取代,所以定冠词the就会写成ze,单词word(词)可以写成vord。第五个年头是改革成败的最后关键,这一年内所有单词内ou的字母组合,可以将o省去;wr组合可以把w省去,ea组合可以把e省去。到了这个时候,The dream will finally come true(梦想终于成真)这句话就可以写成:
Ze drem vil finali kum tru! |