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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)

#121

Post by NotPaidToPost »

Majestic121 wrote: post #79
NotPaidToPost wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'.

I think the progress part is about having a common language, not about this common language being English. If the common language was wolof, people moving back to their own (Spanish, French, German, whatever) would be regression, as now a discussion between French, Spanish and German people would be much much harder to have.

Well, the wording is rather clear that it was about English.

Note that the author stealthily added a precision to his comment (which originally ended at "why regress?") since then to make clear it was about having a common language. But he has not removed the offending part.

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

#122

Post by gumby »

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…

> The French language was, especially in 18th and 19th century, having substituted Latin.

Hence the use of the Latin term “lingua franca”

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

#123

Post by born2discover »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #47

I don't think English will stop being EU's lingua franca any time soon. Agreeing on a replacement would be politically impossible (the Germans wouldn't accept French, the French wouldn't accept German, the Spanish would have good arguments to make in any of both cases); and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical (you cannot realistically expect every EU citizen to know their native langu…

and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical - Sorry but I have to disagree here. Look at UN, they have Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish as official languages.

Why is there an absolute must to only have one official language? Why not chose several most widely spoken ones, including English, and let each speaker chose the one that suits them best?

I live in a country where we have 4 national languages and 3 official ones. Our members of parliament can express themselves in the language of their choosing and their speech/intervention is translated for the rest. That way people can express themselves in the language they are most comfortable in (that is often not English, unless it's their mother tongue) and that does not put older generations (who never learnt English) at a disadvantage.

Having one single language in a multicultural setting can be tricky.

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

#124

Post by s_dev »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #111
s_dev wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's vital small languages are preserved and that the world doesn't become monolingual. Communication is a funny word -- we often mean it to commuincate with others but often we communicate with ourselves in the present -- and to our furture selves -- e.g. code comments are often for your future self as well as other programmers. People who speak different lanaguges litteraly "think differently" and diversity of thou…

That's a fine opinion to have but I happen to have the opposite opinion. A thought has the same meaning in any language. And we actually waste energy in translation and slow humanities' progress with language barriers. I really do wish we all spoke the same language. I feel like I gain nothing by not being able to communicate effectively with some subset of people. This is obviously not a very popular opinion of mine…

>I really do wish we all spoke the same language.

Just contemplate how if someone suggested all computer languges should be just become C because things would be easier.

It's even more important that we have diversity for natual languages imo -- after all onece you've a Turing Complete language one is the same as the next but we know how silly and inconvenient that would really be.

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

#125

Post by rlkf »

k_bx wrote: post #107

Great idea, and I'd be more interested in EU English Locale. I'm Ukrainian, and whenever I choose to have an English UI, I have a problem because U.S. and GB are using a non-metric system. Canadian locale works, but it would be nice to just have a common EU English one. UPDATE: just checked, Ubuntu's United Kingdom uses Metric system actually, no idea why was I thinking it'd be Imperial before.

Try the Irish one; it is mostly sane, apart from not having dates in ISO format.

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

#126

Post by rofo1 »

rocqua wrote: post #97
rofo1 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do they call it cold war, what do you think? They had wars either through proxy or through propaganda (aka. "culture"). Movies, music and books were big part of that war. Billions and billions went into the production and placement of them.

If that doesn't show intent, then I don't know what would :)

Don't get me wrong, I am actually impressed by it and gotta hand it to Reagan - winning a war without even firing a single shot.

Edit: I don't want to downplay the factor of oil and, but I feel like it's off topic here so that's why I don't mention it.

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

#127

Post by gumby »

Chris2048 wrote: post #119
sgift wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The British position was special for at least three reasons: - British state doctrine has always been: We are the empire, the natural rulers of the world. We only live by chance near the rest of Europe, so we have to interact with the continent at bit more - Britain was a net payer. We may strive for that to not be relevant, but if you pay you have influence - Britain got many exceptions to the usual rules that allow…

> Britain got many exceptions to the usual rules that allowed them to further their position Can you explain what you mean?

The rebate is (was) the biggie.

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

#128

Post by born2discover »

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…

While English might be the language of "our time", I wonder for how long? With China's expansion and their almost 2.5 billion of people speaking Mandarin, I am wondering whether in the next 20 years we'd see a shift towards people learning Mandarin instead of English.

"We should adopt English and move on; majority of people know it and study it. Why regress?" - Sorry but I have to disagree here. While I think it is important to study English, I am not convinced it would be a great idea to abandon other languages in favor of it. Languages are part of a culture and it's traditions. Abandoning the language might lead to a progressive death of certain cultural aspects of one's identity and that wouldn't be progress, imho, that would be the exact opposite.

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

#129

Post by yorwba »

Creationer wrote: post #51
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 Ger…

There's nothing stopping national governments from offering services in English right now. For example, https://www.nelson-mandela-schule.net/ is a bilingual (German and English) public school in Berlin, where you could send your kids, assuming they speak English well enough.

If on the other hand you want all services to be available in English everywhere, then I don't think that's a realistic expectation, since it would require all public-facing government employees to speak decent English.

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

#130

Post by aarroyoc »

ktpsns wrote: post #73

So what's the definition of EU-en, compared to US-en or UK-en? I know the differences between US-en and UK-en, but I'm lacking facts about EU-en.

Metric system, date formats, currency... are the first things they pop in my mind
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