far-reaching decision by the EU!

[DutchMarco]

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 "Euro-English".

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 sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze 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.aa

[Babar]

I remember getting this joke over ten years ago!

Still somewhat funny, though.

[Radiant]

Pf. Haf of d intrnet spels dis wai alredi.

[Questionable]

When I speak that out loud it sounds like I'm French...

Or Belgian?

[Danman]

Ze mst iraitatng jok I evr rad  .  Took me like 2 minutc to read and figure out. Quite a hard joke to write though

[NsMn]

Dutch, Questionable. (Or Swiss, but I honestly have never heard someone from Switzerland speak English)

[Snarky]

This joke is older than the hills (or at least older than The Hills). It was making its way around email lists and bulletin boards in pretty much exactly this form 15-20 years ago. Apparently it goes back to Mark Twain!

On a somewhat related note, I'm really sick of the way American (and also some British) comedians find the German language -- or rather, their completely inaccurate impression of the German language -- endlessly amusing, and will take any excuse to start screaming in a poor impression of a B-movie SS officer. This is even more annoying since I have friend who does a dead-on and hilarious German accent: very soft-spoken and polite.

[NsMn]

On a somewhat related note, I'm really sick of the way American (and also some British) comedians find the German language -- or rather, their completely inaccurate impression of the German language -- endlessly amusing, and will take any excuse to start screaming in a poor impression of a B-movie SS officer. This is even more annoying since I have friend who does a dead-on and hilarious German accent: very soft-spoken and polite.

I have to agree there... but still, there are so many, oh, so horribly many Germans who still don't get how you pronounce the "s" and - which is worse - don't want to get that it's stupid to say "z" instead of "th", though it would make more sense to use something like "f" or "d" (like I do). But no. It's sad.

[markbilly]

I've still got the cut-out from when this was in the "letters" section of the local paper...

[DutchMarco]

I remember getting this joke over ten years ago!

Still somewhat funny, though.

Ah, but did you post it here ten years ago? If you had, I wouldn't have noticed since I've only been on this forum for a few years. (So how long has it been around?) I only read it for the first time today on the apneaforum (not that I suffer from sleep apnea myself, but I'm a bit of an insomniac, so I`ve taken to hanging around there. There was a thread with real funny jokest there, it's where I found it. Apparently that thread was started in 2006 and no-one has seen firt to close or delete it yet. So chances are that this joke has been posted tghere some years ago already. Glad that it's generally liked by most posters here. Though I agree with Snarky, it is a bit of a stupid, rvrn insulting  mangling of other people's manner of speech. BTW I don't know that many instances of Germans making fun of the English way of speaking German. There might be some, but I'm not up to schnellheid with German popular culture.

[Snarky]

(So how long has it been around?)

This particular text first shows up on Usenet in the spring of 1997 (which fits pretty well with when I first read it), but most of the early instances mention that it's being copied from an email. It had been going round for a while before that, according to some people's recollection. The basic joke is often attributed to Mark Twain, but that appears to be pseudographical. The first documented instance is an article in Astounding from 1946 written by WK Lessing.

Amazing what you can find out on the Internet, isn't it?

[Frodo]

Haven't sen this befor.   8)

I thought yu vere serious at first.  It was only as I read furzer, I realisd it was a jok.   

[Baron]

The British government has no legal power over spelling in their language (unlike certain authoritarian regimes on the continent).  I stopped reading after that.

[cat]

Actually, I think the last sentence does not look German but Dutch 

[Darth Mandarb]

On a somewhat related note, I'm really sick of the way American (and also some British) comedians find the German language -- or rather, their completely inaccurate impression of the German language -- endlessly amusing, and will take any excuse to start screaming in a poor impression of a B-movie SS officer. This is even more annoying since I have friend who does a dead-on and hilarious German accent: very soft-spoken and polite.

Aren't all Germans really Nazis?  I mean, seriously.  Hitler.





My favorite thing about the German language is how "manly" it can sound if you speak it with a deep voice.  Tool (the band) has a song called "die Eier von Satan" which translates to "the Eggs of Satan".  When you listen to the song (which is German) you get the impression it's violent and angry when it is, in reality, a recipe for how to make hash cookies ... AND NO EGGS!!  But the "tone" of the spoken language is very deep and forceful.

I am learning to speak Spanish now, but next I plan to learn German because I find the language fascinating personally, though not in the B-movie SS officer way

[Tuomas]

Might have been funny if not only the title of the thread but also the first 3 sentences of the text were flawed. Anyone familiar with the EU institutions and jurisdiction would spot, that not only can EU make a decision over the official language all of a sudden and even before the year 2020 min. and the other possibility most certainly would not be the German language from the 23 official languages EU at the moment has...

[SookieSock]

My suggestion regarding languages is be born in England.

The advantage of this is that you can never be foreign. It's always everyone else who's foreign.

If you do decide to go to a foreign country (usually for football, prostitutes, drugs or alcohol) and they don't speak English, then feel free to smash the place up, safe in the knowledge that you tried your best to fit in with their weird shit.

[/post modernist irony]

[Calin Leafshade]

Damnit.. posted with the wrong account AGAIN..

Stupid girlfriend..

[Matti]

Yeah, I feel so incredibly stupid for choosing to be born in Germany and thus being a foreigner. If only I could undo it, I just was a little young and naive back then.

[Calin Leafshade]

It's a common mistake.