EU 'Harmonisation' Plans for Greek Spelling Revealed

Strasbourg, 01/04/2008

*The EU's Committee for Language Harmonisation has today announced
radical plans for the reform of Greek spelling to align it with the
united European ideal of the 21st century.*

by Pleres Vlakas

At a conference in Strasbourg yesterday, Linguistic Commissioner
Hervidor Inalambrico told the press:

'After a long-term round of far-reaching in-depth consultations, both
in committee and with the public at large, we have established that
there is an urgent and widely felt popular need to reduce the
historical linguistic deficit suffered by the Greek people, and we are
therefore taking prompt steps to rectify this unfortunate situation
before it escalates into a massive social problem.

'Naturally, to minimise any potential disturbance to our fellow
citizens of the European Union, we have no intention of introducing
these reforms abruptly. Rather, we intend to roll out our improvements
on a gradual basis over sucessive time periods, so that the population
will have ample opportunities to acclimatise itself to them.

'In the first stage of our plan, to be introduced in 2010, we shall
add the following letters to the Greek alphabet, to make it more
suitable for rendering the sounds of other languages: b, d, h and w.
The capital of b will be written as Ь, and the capital of h as Һ, in
order to avoid confusion with the existing letters beta and eta, so we
anticipate that the change will proceed smoothly and will be widely
welcomed.

'In 2015 we shall discontinue the use of certain undesirable letters
that present intractable problems to our fellow European citizens. Eta
will be written as epsilon, and omega as omicron. In addition, we
shall dispose of the anomalous letters theta, phi, chi and psi,
substituting tau-h, pi-h, kappa-h and pi-sigma, thus significantly
improving inter-European communication and mutual comprehension.

'Finally, in 2020 we shall amend the forms of all those letters that
do not correspond to pan-European norms; for example, gamma will be
written as g, and pi as p. In this way, for the first time Greek will
be fully legible not only to Europeans, but to all mankind. I am proud
to be associated with this visionary step into a future of unity and
European brotherhood.'

Asked whether the changes would be legally enforced, Señor Inalambrico
said, 'We are certain that our brother Greeks, who have already
reformed their spelling in the last century, will perceive the need
for further steps to keep abreast of European advances, and that there
will be no need for any element of coercion. Until the completion of
the process in 2020, we will permit the display of both old and new
orthography side by side, with only minimal policing.

'Offenders must be dealt with, of course; that is the price of
progress. They will be subject to a penalty of €1000 for a first
infraction, with further compliance incentives calculated on a sliding
scale. But we do not anticipate any degree of dissent among our loyal
European citizens.'