THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU, 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 5 year phase-in plan that would be 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 favor of the "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 the "f." This will make words like "fotograf" 20% 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 enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the languag is disgracful, and they should go away.

• By the fourth year, peopl wil be receptiv 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 similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

• After zis fifz yer, ve wil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or dificultis and avrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!