The European Commission has just announced an agreement that English will be the official language of the EU - rather than German (the other possibility).

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement, and has accepted a 5-year phase-in of new rules, which would apply to the language and reclassify it as Euro-English.

The agreed upon plan is as follows:

In year 1, the soft 'c' would be replaced by 's'. Sertainly,this will make the sivil-servants jump with joy. The hard 'c' will be replaced by 'k'.

This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan now have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome 'ph' is replaced by 'f'. This will reduse 'fotograf' by 20%.

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 been a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent 'e's in the language is digrasful and they should eliminat them.

By year 4, peopl wil be reseptiv to lingwistik korektions such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v' (saving mor keyboard spas).

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary 'o" kan be dropd from vords Kontaining 'ou' and similar changes vud, of kors, be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters (i.e., 'ea').

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