It is the news of the day that the 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. Now that customs barriers have been abrogated, that all member States have adopted a single monetary currency, and that a common passport reunites all Europeans under the same flag, the next logical step was to have a common language denominator.

Americans in particular will appreciate the paramount importance of a single, common language and medium of communication. How would the United States look and sound like if, for example, people spoke German on the East Coast, English in the Midwest, French in California and Italian in the Deep South? Certainly it would be enough to give Ol Uncle Sam a huge headache. Fortunately, linguistic diversity will no longer be a problem in Europe in the forthcoming future.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement, and has accepted therefore a 5-year phase-in plan that would modify 'British English' (the one I normally use ...) in favor of the new "Euro-Englisch". Here are the highlights of the plan.

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 persent 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 yar pople wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with"z" and "w" with "v" as well as "sh" with "sch".

During ze fifz yar, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yar, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozar. Ze drem of a United Urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yar, vi vil al be speking German like zey vunted in zeforst plas.

So, vhat do yu zink abut it ?

Luigi Frascati