And I’d like to thank the state of cable television today, and specifically the classic TV repeat channels, not to mention HULU online and the rest, for giving the youth of today the chance to understand this cartoon by having the opportunity to watch Hogan’s Heroes.
If you don’t get the reference in the last panel, you need to check you out some Hogan’s Heroes.
I she nushink! I hear NUShink! I know NUSHINK!
Do you vant das shtrudel?
Mein Gott! Sie sprechen Deutsch!
Veddy veddy interestink but schtupit? (or was that Laugh-In? X1)
I vaguely remember Hogan’s Heroes but I was more of McHale’s Navy person myself. (well whatcha expect from a Navy brat?)
;1
I know nothing!
I take offense to being called a Squishy “American”. I am a Squishy “Canadian”, thank you very much.
The European Commission has 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 five year phase-in plan that would be 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 the “k”. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 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 ekspekted 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 the silent “e”s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.
By the fourth year, peopl wil 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 similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen world!
That’s hilarious. I’m gonna email that to some people I know who love language. And watch their heads explode.
The sad bit is, have you seen some of the public school spelling scores? After texting became nearly universal (I am a major old school no-texting person mostly able to spell) that last paragraph reminds me of when some younger bodies come into interest forum chats and get p*ss*d that we insist they write in something other than Text/Twitter speak.
Aye, tis so. In sooth, those lack wits doth befouled the noblest tongue! Tis most testy indeed!
I started using the ‘net a few months after it’s “commercial” launch in 1994.
I got my first phone in 1998, and my second in 1999 (which was a Nokia 5190 with texting).
Then, and now, I refuse – for the most – to use txt spk. I’d rather look intelligent and write out full words, then save a few seconds of typing. I’ll even text antidisestablishmentarianism. (hehe Firefox spell check tries to tell me “antidisestablishmentarianism” should just be “establishments” … hahahah)
The “improved spelling”-idea dates back to (at-least) 1982, when a collection of light-hearted essays were published:
[https://www.amazon.com/Stress-Analysis-Strapless-Evening-Gown/dp/0138526087]
Why bother with five years of spelling reforms, when you can achieve the same effect by choosing Danish from the start?
But then, that’s the EU for you…
(At first, I thought that was serious, until you said that German was an option. Comedians would protest against such an idea, as that would deprive them of a never running dry source of gags from trying-to-speak-English Bavarian politicians…)
Bavarian politicians… ick.
Allan really got it with his language diatribe and I know german inside out. But, I wanted to comment on something else.
I think I figured out why Hubris is always so far down on the GoComics list. It´s because after reading we all go out and play but not for just a few hours but a whole week and can´t take our technology with us. I figured that out after being away from My PC for several weeks and camp for another week.
Obviously, if gocomics would only take that into account, Hubris would be up near #1 every day.
Slip over there and drop ’em an email to that effect, willya? Ever’body?
wnp, c’mon… even when I go out and play I can manage to drag my tech along and check in on Good Ol’ Hubie … 🙂
Buy an ottercase for your smartphone, they sell one that’s waterproof. Heh.
AllanV, I remember Fidonet, and before that, when a Usenet nodemap would fit on one page printed out. Remember BBS and 300 baud acoustic modems? hehehehehe. When I started college the state of the art was a TRS80 with 4k of memory, a cassette tape backup/storage… and I made money for rent by doing keypunch for the IBM 360 mainframe on campus. COBOL and FORTRAN. You haven’t cried until you dumped a deck of 10k cards 10 min before the system shut down for nightly maintenance…. the fellow that tried to teach me programming architecture worked on ENIAC during The War too… yep, I’m an old geekina… I’m more into sunning on a rock these days than trying to bust my body going up or down them. 🙂