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It should, but as recently as April last year a French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him: https://www.politico.eu/article/english-only-try-au-revoir-f... Petty squabbles such as these diminish the EU.
Of course it'd be the French.
> It will rid the French or the Germans of the temptation try to make their language the dominant one in the post-Brexit EU It really won't, especially the French.
This doesn't really make sense. American English which they propose adopting is removes more of the European roots of words. For example removing the 'U' from words like Colour. Ireland is also an English speaking country in the EU. And I don't know how much of the sentiment of "Let's Americanise!" Would be popular.
If we want to use only one official working language, it should be Esperanto. This would be neutral for any country (including Ireland and Malta). This would not be a threat to other languages and cultures. Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. Its benefits are clear, it only needs a political support to thrive.
> Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language.
...only for many Indo-European speakers.
If we want to use only one official working language, it should be Esperanto. This would be neutral for any country (including Ireland and Malta). This would not be a threat to other languages and cultures. Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. Its benefits are clear, it only needs a political support to thrive.
It should, but as recently as April last year a French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him: https://www.politico.eu/article/english-only-try-au-revoir-f... Petty squabbles such as these diminish the EU.
> French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him You left out one important word: "only". Traditionally, all important meetings and records in the EU are translated into the major languages, some of them are available in most, if not all official languages. That makes it easier for all european citizens to read the actual records. English might be widely spoken, but fluency varies massively among t…
If we want to use only one official working language, it should be Esperanto. This would be neutral for any country (including Ireland and Malta). This would not be a threat to other languages and cultures. Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. Its benefits are clear, it only needs a political support to thrive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him You left out one important word: "only". Traditionally, all important meetings and records in the EU are translated into the major languages, some of them are available in most, if not all official languages. That makes it easier for all european citizens to read the actual records. English might be widely spoken, but fluency varies massively among t…
It is pretty known that the parliment have an army of translators. Both live translating and translating law documents into most languages.
If we want to use only one official working language, it should be Esperanto. This would be neutral for any country (including Ireland and Malta). This would not be a threat to other languages and cultures. Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. Its benefits are clear, it only needs a political support to thrive.
Why do we all need to learn a new common language? We already have a perfectly serviceable one.
In any case, if we're going to go for a different common language then that really should be my native Greek because it's the language of the country who gave birth to European civilisation, and it was already the lingua franca of the people of Europe in ancient times, so there (i.e. everyone in Europe will have an argument to support their own language being the new common tongue).
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* And French and Italian and my native Greek