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

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

#91

Post by mxcrossb » Mon, May 27, 2019, 10:15 AM UTC

kowdermeister wrote: post #43

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…

> The language of our time is English. And tomorrows language is mandarin. Let's not write off that 1.1B speakers. With the rate China is expanding its influence in the world, I wouldn't be surprised if in 100 years not speaking mandarin wouldn't look a bit odd.

If you really want to troll, try recommending Arabic as the language of Europe’s future ;)

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

#92

Post by new_here » Mon, May 27, 2019, 10:16 AM UTC

seszett wrote: post #84

new_here wrote: post #55

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…

> whenever I write CSS and type 'color', I think, this was developed in America Well just so you know, it was mainly developed on the Franco-Swiss border (at CERN) by Norwegian, Dutch and English citizens. The largest role of America in CSS is influencing the spelling because of its cultural weight, but not developing the language.

Interesting, thanks for the correction!

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

#93

Post by chmod775 » Mon, May 27, 2019, 10:18 AM UTC

Creationer wrote: post #42

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…

For adults it is easy to move across the EU: you can work and socialise using in English. But for children, and families, it is impossible. How can a child move and be expected to learn a new language immediately? This seems like a huge disconnect. National governments need to start to offer (for parents that opt-in) primary and secondary education in English, with the entire curriculum and exams in that language as…

> National governments need to start to offer (for parents that opt-in) primary and secondary education in English, with the entire curriculum and exams in that language as well.

This already exists in many places. European countries are used to offering education in multiple languages. Multilingual schools or schools teaching in something other than the local language have existed for hundreds of years.

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

#94

Post by thefounder » Mon, May 27, 2019, 10:19 AM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #39

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 experie…

>>> 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.

Of course you can measure that! Try to get a job where communication and/or "presentation" skills are important(i.e lawyer, PR, media, investment banker etc)and see how it goes. Even the accent may cost you the job. The language skills are a handicap for any non-native speaker in the job market and not only.

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

#95

Post by Lucadg » Mon, May 27, 2019, 10:20 AM UTC

Language is open source. English does not belong to the UK anymore as much as Tiramisu doesn't belong to Italy or http to Tim Berners-Lee. People created these standards, let people use them, improve them and have a better life. [Edit: spelling]

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

#96

Post by DanBC » Mon, May 27, 2019, 10:20 AM UTC

rusk wrote: post #69

isolli wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The fact that it has so lany dialects that are frequently explored in popular media too means its a language that can be spoken poorly and still be understood. The listener bears some of the cognitive load and many other languages arent as advanced in this regard.

A Scottish accent in Parliament: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4k8dR04TzA

A Geordie accent on a British broadcast tv show (Auf Wiedersehen Pet) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY4TT3VtR8o

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

#97

Post by rocqua » Mon, May 27, 2019, 10:21 AM UTC

rofo1 wrote: post #70

louthy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

British empire was (almost) 1/4 - it was never close to 1/3 of the world. Even at its peak, English language wasn't as widespread as now. The French language was, especially in 18th and 19th century, having substituted Latin. After WW2, US absolutely dominated the world coming off as the only victor in WW2 (that's my personal opinion) and used their position to place English language as #1 language of the world (over…

> and used their position to place English language as #1 language of the world

I doubt it was intentional. Seems like it was a nice side-effect at most.

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

#98

Post by jacquesm » Mon, May 27, 2019, 10:21 AM UTC

Xylakant wrote: post #60

jacquesm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eng…

My country (NL) isn't small enough to have a realistic demand that everything be translated into Dutch as well. That means that for us here adaptation rather than rejection is the norm. To see other countries' representatives storm out of meetings because their linguistic preferences are not followed is one of those things that show me that the EU still has a very long way to go.

To 'only use English' is not a dictate, if the French ambassador felt the need to have a French translation of the document then I'm sure he could have had one as fast as pens could write. The citizens of France have every right to access the proceedings but I really fail to see how they were denied that right by having the situation as sketched transpire. Besides that, leaving the meeting for sure had an effect against the French citizens' interest, effectively they were unrepresented and the damage of that action far outweighs the inconvenience of translation.

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

#99

Post by kome » Mon, May 27, 2019, 10:21 AM UTC

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?

> Why should politics be different?

Because politics is not business. Business is done with the criteria of efficiency, politics use the criteria of fairness. You should be able to speak to the EU institutions with whatever language you want. Not everybody speaks English.

Also, I don't know how many times you actually did business in an international context, and especially consumer facing stuff: you need to master the local language and good localization are often the key to success.

For example, the Spotify team did a great job customizing their product in different contexts, creating playlist that are clearly made by natives with the help and the insight of their data.

So it is absolutely not true that international business just happens in English: it might at a high level, but you need translations and cultural awareness to make it work.

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

#100

Post by BlueTemplar » Mon, May 27, 2019, 10:22 AM UTC

And make official the EU being just an USA colony (see IT companies), just as the American Empire itself is waning. Such a wise move !

Meanwhile, Macron's proposal is impressively hypocritical(/real-political?), considering how much he has done to pump up English and diminish French...