"Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the
European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of
improving efficiency in communications between Government departments...."
Very witty post.
It reminded me of a story I once read about an early 20th century attempt to produce a 'universal language', called Volapuk (I think!). There was only one meeting of the International Volapukists for reasons I will outline.
The rules of the language were impossible. It actually dispensed with the letter 'R' for some reason and cancelled out several other semantic commons. By the time the 'rules' were established (at least in one person's mind) the grammar was described as "more challenging than that of Medieval Latin".
When the delegates met they quickly (immediately?) discovered few could speak the tongue and when they attempted to do so no one could understand them.
I think English gets a bad press and the famous Wildean quip about Britain and America as 'two peoples divided by a common language' unfair, but funny. By and large English succeeds because it has few hard edges. It succeeds best when used in the plain form, which in the hands of a master like George Orwell (an admirer of Mark Twain) is quite wonderful.
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