If the dictionary were run by bureaucrats...

(For the spelling nazis out there, with apologies to Shaw...)



COMPACT LANGUAGE



Whereas on this data did assemble &C,
The Committee for the Revision of English Orthography
and Legibility Enhancement
to decree that our language is inefficient,
and that seven years would be enough to fix it:



I. The first year, they said "Q" was really "K" -- a maskerade that after so many years must be kwickly kwelled.



II. The second year, they said to kwit using "X" when we meant "KS" or "Z." Our alphabetic eckstravagance was kwite eckstreme and so we should eksamine our literary kwirks.



III. "C," the said the third year, was redundant; "K" or "S" worked ekwally well, and sinse the only kase other than these was "CH," the "H" was eckstra there. Cange is good for our sosiety, they told us, but we bekame suspishius.



IV. The foorth yeer, thaa simplifiid graatlee the vowlz bii reeplaasing ol vowlz with standurd kombinaashunz. This, thaa sed, woud maak owr langwidj moor foonetik, Hwotever that meenz.



V. Th fith yeer, thaa pasd a law that eliminaatd siilnt letrz. Hwii riit them, thaa askd, if noobodee bothrz tou proonowns them? (During th saam yer, th souisiid raat dubld.)



VI. X sikx yeer, xaa uuzd xooz obsooleet letrz "X" and "Q" tou reeplaas x kombinaaqnz "TH" and "SH," respektivlee. Xaa sed xis woud kompaktifii owr ritn langwj and konsurv owr nacrl reesoorsz. (Oonli wun nuuzpaapr haz manijd tou kontinuu xrou ol xis, X Naqnl Enkwiirr. Plaaboi iz stil in
egzistns, but it noo longr kareez anee tekst.)


VII. xsevnxandfiinlyeerxkomiteedsiiddtourimouvolspaassa ndpunkcouaqnandxus
kompaktifiixlangwjtouitslojikaleksteemfiinleexaase dweehavlangwjxatizfonetik
kompaktandubuvoleezeetoulurn
xenxbomzkaamanduginxpeeplwurhapee

Shaw was right... create a single symbol to represent each of the 40 main sounds in English and spelling would be far more simpler

Does any other language besides English have "spelling bees"?

Gotta love ghoti!

That almost made my head explode.

Mindseye, I love this! Absolutely fabulous!

Are you trying to say something about the French? :P

but that would obsolete the keyboard I bought last Friday!!

You are so mean, there's nothing wrong with French!

Just because they have magic letters and words that disappear when spoken, that's no reason to be so mean!

It's kinda cool, actually, to be able to take a common 4-word, 15-letter-and-symbol phrase, and pronounce it with a very simple 2 syllables.

It's amazing how this thread is really slamming the french like crazy.

I got lost at the 6th year.

I would harldy call two light-hearted comments about the complexities of a language as "really slamming" the people.

The word-wrap on here adds to the complexity of Year 7. The last sentence "xenxbomzkaamanduginxpeeplwurhapee" parses as "then the bombs came and again the people were happy", which just goes to prove what a cynic I was 21 years ago. ;)

I think French is easier to pronounce than English; I can see a French word that I don't recognize and immediately sound it out, but I'm less likely to be able to do that with an unfamiliar English word. (If you had to sound out the words, how would you know that "debatable" and "palatable" didn't rhyme?)

In French, it's going the other way that's hard: I can hear a word, and not know whether it's spelled "cent" (100), "sang" (blood), "sens" (feel), or "sans" (without). I can read and write the language competently, but I'm not fluent in French, because when someone speaks the language to me, I'm completely flummoxed. Je ne vous ai compris qu'un peu; est-ce que vous parlez anglais?

And the whole idea of an académie is strange to Americans, so it's easy to make fun of it, but the American media likes to pick on the French académie above all others. In fact, English is peculiar in this regard, because most widely-spoken languages have centralized advisory bodies.

I remember once, in Quebec City, hearing some francophones talking about some kind of spectacle whose title I just couldn't quite catch ... a short syllable repeated three times.
Later, I saw a poster for what turned out to be a play: Cent sans sang ... or, in English, One Hundred Without Blood.
Very hard to understand just when you were getting into spoken French.

And then there's that famous French sentence: Ton thé t’a-t-il ôté ta toux?
I had to be walked through that one, and now enjoy using it to torture those who are just starting to learn French. No one ever understands it.

Mais oui, merci. (The codeine wasn't such a terrible torture.)

Wunnuphul, DC.
Once again, um ... bang on!!!

I hadn't heard that one before, but yes, it'd be a monster to parse if spoken and not written. How about Ces six saucissons-ci sont six sous?