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

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

#51

Post by Creationer »

rwmj wrote: post #35

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.

The point is that English is the de-facto single working language of the EU, and the de-facto business and scientific language of Europe, and so it might as well be made official.

If countries offered Government services including education in English, it would hugely assist the movement of people and capital throughout the continent.

Consider: you are from Spain, and have been offered a job at a great company in Germany. You will speak English at the office and probably get around the city speaking English. But: your children need to learn German, fluently and immediately, in order to continue their schooling?

An official EU English would help pave the way for National Governments to offer services in both the local language and English.

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

#52

Post by ctz »

bitL wrote: post #13
Jonnax wrote: post #3

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.

You probably don't know that 'u' in colour is a more recent British development than the standard US English is based on. US English is more original than the current British one.

You misrepresent the timeline, though. Webster popularised the simplifications in US English in 1828. But this was about six hundred years after colour was borrowed into English from French, not the Latin "color" that Webster preferred.

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

#53

Post by BjoernKW »

I've had a similar idea for some time now, albeit without the unnecessary focus on American English: With the UK probably - and very unfortunately - leaving the EU the latter could adopt English as its main language without any unfair advantage to one of the larger EU countries or hurting national sentiment.

I'd even go as far as to propose adopting English as the main language for legal matters, public administration, business and education in each of the EU member countries.

The language barrier is the predominant obstacle preventing a closer integration between EU countries and collaboration between businesses across borders.

A single, unified language over time could remedy that problem.

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

#54

Post by bhaak »

louthy wrote: post #40
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.

> 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.

If this were the reason, then English should already have been the lingua franca in 1900. But it wasn't.

But the previous spreading of the English language by the English Empire certainly helped when the US emerged as one of the main beneficiary of WW2.

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

#55

Post by new_here »

I was raised to use British English spelling. Honestly, without any offence intended, whenever I see words like 'color', 'organize', 'oriented' and so on my mind sees it as a lazy (for lack of a better word) interpretation of the original word's spelling that has evolved in the US. I don't think the content has any less merit because of it, the authors are following the American convention. Just saying that because I'm curious as to what American's think when they read British spelling?

Also, whenever I write CSS and type 'color', I think, this was developed in America so they have complete right to spell it however they damn well please.

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

#56

Post by levosmetalo »

acd wrote: post #34

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?

There are many reasons why using English makes sense, but saving costs on translation is just not that.

Unless you are bilingual the lost productivity of having to use non native language in business context would easily dwarf any cost savings, due to misunderstandings, miscommunication, not "Punkt genau" documentation etc ...

Heck, anyone can just try to do an IQ test in non-native language and see how the score drops.

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

#57

Post by isolli »

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…

English has the advantage of being an easy language to learn (at least up to 80% proficiency): no genders, little conjugation, no declension.

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

#58

Post by tannhaeuser »

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…

English is only the smallest common denominator really, and it hurts to hear Germans speak English imprecisely, stereotypically, or plain incorrectly. I'm far from being a language nationalist or something, but I think the EU (parliament, comission) should take the opportunity to move away from English, and begin to speak and publish in the "Common Tongue" (German, French, etc.) instead.

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

#59

Post by perfunctory »

BjoernKW wrote: post #53

I've had a similar idea for some time now, albeit without the unnecessary focus on American English: With the UK probably - and very unfortunately - leaving the EU the latter could adopt English as its main language without any unfair advantage to one of the larger EU countries or hurting national sentiment. I'd even go as far as to propose adopting English as the main language for legal matters, public administratio…

> With the UK probably and very unfortunately - leaving the EU the latter could adopt English as its main language without any unfair advantage to one of the larger EU countries or hurting national sentiment.

This is exactly the point the article makes.

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

#60

Post by Xylakant »

jacquesm wrote: post #46
Xylakant wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. But the decision that the Ambassador objected to was to use english-only for the records. And citizens don't have access to that army of translators and might be interested in the records too.

The same held for all the other countries. Except for the UK of course.

Well, I have no objection on english being the de-facto lingua franca. But my position on english being the only official language is certainly not as simple. And the same is true for german, french or any of the other official languages of the EU - neither of them are or should be the only official language in such a multilingual construct as the EU. So I share the ambassadors rejection of the notion to only use english and I do not regard that as pettiness harmful to the EU. Sure, translation costs money, but it also makes records more accessible to the citizens, and I regard that as a good thing.
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