thanks to FlyerTalk our american friends here start to understand the basics of the EC. Please allow a Swiss (Switzerland is not an EC-member - so it may very well be that not only United Airlines forgets about Switzerland "if we don't fly there - does it exits?", but the EC may also forget us: I have to queu at/with OTHERS when I enter an EC-country) to show you an allimport example of the lastest "official" rulings on your ENGLISH-language in the EC:

Subject : Be Ready for Europe
The European Commission have 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 "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 fase 3 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 enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they should go away. By the 4th yar, 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 ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!!!!