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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)

#151

Post by kstenerud »

born2discover wrote: post #123
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 wh…

Because having multiple official languages adds more layers of bureaucracy to everything and amounts to a colossal waste of time and money.

We have this in Canada, and outside of Quebec, nobody cares about the French language. In fact, many manufacturers specifically avoid Canada in some cases due to the requirement to put both English and French on the packaging. All government communication has to be written twice. Government employees must have fluency in both languages.

All that waste, and for what? A language that nobody else uses.

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

#152

Post by lucb1e »

781 wrote: post #138
lucb1e wrote: post #102

Finished the article but I haven't seen a single proposal of what this actually would mean. EU English would be different how? And that's besides the fact that I also have yet to hear a single real advantage for forking the language and creating 15 competing standards. Reasons like "then it's fair for everyone" doesn't make any sense when the UK is gone anyway, it would make sense right now since one country has an a…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English#Examples

It's an existing thing? Interesting, I never heard of it. Thanks for linking.

The Wikipedia article isn't very clear on what the language officially is. I don't see where I can find a reference of the changes it makes, aside from a few examples of ways to make English mainly more like French. It honestly looks as though it is just an excuse for people to use words incorrectly just because they have words in their own language that sound similar but mean something else.

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

#153

Post by usrusr »

rofo1 wrote: post #126
rocqua wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Hitchcock, almost the entirety of pre-hiphop popular music, a very big chunk of the "cultural pressure" behind the success of the English language did not come from America but from a small island nation that lost WW2 in all but name. American cultural influence is wildly overrated.

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

#154

Post by akvadrako »

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…

As a universal 2nd langauge Esperanto is indeed a much better choice. Esperanto is so easy to learn that you can even learn it for free. If you teach children Esperanto than English for the same total time as children who just learn English, the 1st group will be better at English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperant...

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

#155

Post by s_dev »

r3bl wrote: post #112
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…

We could all cherish and love our own native languages internally while relying on English abroad (and online). Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

What I'm saying is it's better that "some" people don't know English. I don't know what number constitutes or what % of people but by having some people -- for lack of a better word -- "corrupted" by English will have new perspectives. We need lots of languages and lots of combinations of these languages for a healthy world.

I say this as a monoglot English speaker. I have some French and Irish but both are very poor.

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

#156

Post by 7952 »

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…

A few years ago I was in a group of people using English to talk. I was the only native speaker,and honestly had more trouble communicating as a result. I have a strong west country accent and people are not used to it. And there are lots of colloquialisms that you use without thinking about it.

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

#157

Post by danieltillett »

I have wondered for awhile if it is possible to have a world language - not that the world couldn't all agree (or be forced) to choose a common language, but that any single language spoken by 7.5 billion people would immediately start to fragment or the pace of change would be so fast you couldn't talk to your grandparents.

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

#158

Post by otikik »

tluyben2 wrote: post #12
peteretep wrote: post #7

> 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.

Spain will fight tooth and nail as well. And Germany too. So no it really won't.

Spain? What makes you say that?

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

#159

Post by anoncake »

tluyben2 wrote: post #12
peteretep wrote: post #7

> 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.

Spain will fight tooth and nail as well. And Germany too. So no it really won't.

> tooth and nail as well. And Germany too.

Maybe. Definitely not to the extent France will.

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

#160

Post by thefounder »

tluyben2 wrote: post #105
thefounder wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> 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 speake…

That is still what you say; I do not see much proof of that. I work in banking and deal with much of what you say and I meet too many Dutch guys in those positions to think there is an issue. I was looking more for an objective measurement instead of a gut feel we both have.

What about this measurement: how many TV presenters speaking "broken english" have you seen in the UK? or broken spanish in Spain or broken dutch in Holland? I believe the number is close to zero.
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