Golden Oldie
- Thread starter BillK
- Start date
A gentleman of Asian origin, in order to progress his ambitions for a career in international banking, decided to travel (from Birmingham) to London to take English lessons.
Working in a menial job by day, he diligently attended night-classes, staying in a tiny bed-sit near Nottinghill Gate tube-station in order to save money. Encouraged by his tutor, he wrote down everyday phrases in his notebook, transcribing newspaper headlines, ads from buses, tube-stations and advertising hoardings as grist to the nightly translation mill in class.
He struggled with the nuances of the unfamiliar language, pronunciation in particular, and over months of hard work familiarised himself with the subtle and irregular differences between words like :
Working in a menial job by day, he diligently attended night-classes, staying in a tiny bed-sit near Nottinghill Gate tube-station in order to save money. Encouraged by his tutor, he wrote down everyday phrases in his notebook, transcribing newspaper headlines, ads from buses, tube-stations and advertising hoardings as grist to the nightly translation mill in class.
He struggled with the nuances of the unfamiliar language, pronunciation in particular, and over months of hard work familiarised himself with the subtle and irregular differences between words like :
- "tough" and "though"
- "taut", "thought" and "taught"
- "trough", "threw" and "through"
- etc.
DrMoriarty
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Things will be much simpler now that we've voted Yes to Lisbon...
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was 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 five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short). In the first year, “s” will be used instead of the soft “c”. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard “c” will be replaced with “k”. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters and komputers kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with the “f”. This will make words like ‘fotograf’ 20 per sent shorter. In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent “e”’s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go. By the fourth year, peopl will be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z”, and “w” with “v”. During ze fifz year, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou”, and similiar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinasyon of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was 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 five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short). In the first year, “s” will be used instead of the soft “c”. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard “c” will be replaced with “k”. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters and komputers kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with the “f”. This will make words like ‘fotograf’ 20 per sent shorter. In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent “e”’s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go. By the fourth year, peopl will be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z”, and “w” with “v”. During ze fifz year, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou”, and similiar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinasyon of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.
baldyman27
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Alles klar mein Artz. Alles!