Sweden to Phase Out Å, Ä and Ö

In the fine tradition of April Fool’s Day media hoaxes like the hotheaded naked ice borer and the Swiss Spaghetti harvest, The Local, an English-language site with news from Sweden, posted an item about a parliamentary proposal to make the Swedish language more globally competitive by eliminating letters with diacritical marks.

When I clicked on the link to the story from my friend Susan’s post on a Scandinavian music and dance mailing list, I think I actually believed it was on the level, but then I’m not necessarily the best judge.

I not only believed Natural History’s story about the ice borers, I told my entire family and a number of my friends about it. Fortunately, the whole thing happened before I got tangled up in the Web, so there’s no incriminating email trail my friends can resurrect to remind me how gullible I am.

I’ve bookmarked Slate.com’s April Fool’s Day Defense Kit — a round-up of some classic media pranks — and set an alarm in my calendar program for next March 30, with a reminder to prepare myself.

Update: And speaking of April Fool’s pranks, I almost forgot to mention my pal Chopper, who temporarily transformed his site Cars! Cars! Cars! (A car blog. Only angrier.) into Krauss! Krauss! Krauss! (An Alison Krauss blog. Only fiddlier.).