Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)

european-views.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 267 posts

Re: EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)

#31

Post by skohan »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #14
Zrdr wrote: post #10

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.

Let's get your facts straight: > Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. ...only for many Indo-European speakers.

Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn and to lack many of the special cases and "gotchas" present in every natural language.

There are probably many cases where it would be easier for a native of some language to learn a specific similar language (i.e. for a Dutch speaker to learn German, or a Portuguese speaker to learn Spanish), but I would not be surprised if Esperanto minimizes the cost function for the net effort required for all native speakers/all second languages.

Re: EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)

#32

Post by oytis »

I'm surprised this document wasn't mentioned so far: https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOG...

Also, I would rather propose using Irish English as an official EU English dialect after Brexit. Not as boring as the American one.

Re: EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)

#33

Post by flexie »

peteretep wrote: post #6

> the rest of the EU will be freed of the British veto and able to get as integrated as it wishes Anyone who thinks that EU skepticism is exclusive to the Brits is in for a nasty nasty surprise.

I think that by now everyone realizes that there are EU skeptics in all member countries. There will always be.

Around 25 percent of Americans want their state to secede (1). A lot of Italians want Northern Italy to part with Southern Italy. Spain has Catalan and Basque separatists. The UK has Scotland, and perhaps even Northern Ireland.

There are many people in many places that think they would be better off in a more (formally) independent state.

For now, the EU skeptics are a small minority in most EU countries. I for one hope it stays like that. The EU has shown remarkable unity when met with Brexit.

1: http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in-four...

Re: EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)

#34

Post by acd »

Adopting English as the main working language would save a lot of costs in EU from translations. Also one could have German, French and Spanish as side languages. The smaller EU countries will have to accept English as main working language.

In many international business settings in Europe English is the norm. Why should politics be different?

Re: EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)

#35

Post by rwmj »

What problem is this trying to solve? Is it the cost of language interpreters? That will probably soon be solved by technology. Is it the lack of a "demos"? That would only be solved if everyone in the European demos also learned English and all local politicians only spoke English, which is, ahem, unlikely to happen ever.

Re: EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)

#37

Post by coldtea »

SirHound wrote: post #16
Zrdr wrote: post #10

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.

The majority of western media and communication is in English. This would be a humongous waste of time and resources.

And in other centuries they were in French (the language of diplomacy), Latin, and Greek. Things change, and now is not the best time for the US empire (and UK has lost its imperial reach decades ago) -- so the "common" language could change too in 50-100 years.

Re: EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)

#38

Post by NotPaidToPost »

rofo1 wrote: post #29

The language of our time is English. There's just no disputing that. You can argue that it's because US won the cold war, and then indoctrinated the world via music and movies, and so on, and so on, but it doesn't change that fact. We should adopt English and move on; majority of people know it and study it. Why regress? The point of using a language in the first place is to understand each other. Everyone learning a…

> We should adopt English and move on; majority of people know it and study it. Why regress?

It's extremely offensive to suggest that English is progress and other languages are a 'regression'.

Re: EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)

#39

Post by tluyben2 »

thefounder wrote: post #27

It should develop its own language, easier to spell and write perhaps taking advantage of machine learning etc during development. Something like Esperanto that is not owned by anyone but is easier to learn by everyone(within EU). English gives an unfair advantage to native english speakers not to mention that it has a lot of legacy stuff that makes it hard to learn. Non-native speakers will always be seen as outside…

But everyone already speaks it. When I moved to Spain (from NL), I was flabbergasted about the level of English here; even the English teachers were impossible to understand. But now it is rapidly changing. Same in France and Germany. When I start speaking English to someone now in either of these countries, they generally understand.

> Non-native speakers will always be seen as outsiders/2nd class.

Not in my experience. But how would you measure that; in my personal experience, the Spanish and Brits treat my wife and me like their own.

Re: EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)

#40

Post by louthy »

rofo1 wrote: post #29

The language of our time is English. There's just no disputing that. You can argue that it's because US won the cold war, and then indoctrinated the world via music and movies, and so on, and so on, but it doesn't change that fact. We should adopt English and move on; majority of people know it and study it. Why regress? The point of using a language in the first place is to understand each other. Everyone learning a…

> You can argue that it's because US won the cold war, and then indoctrinated the world

Seems odd, surely you could argue it was because of British imperialism (which also brought English to the US)? The British empire once covered 1/3 of the globe, it seems far more likely a cause.

Post reply on HN