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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)

#171

Post by tannhaeuser »

anoncake wrote: post #147
tannhaeuser wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But is hearing Frenchpeople speak German really much of an improvement? At least everyone's English is about equally broken.

There's just too much nuance lost. French has very particular words for concepts of state philosophy, politics, and law, and so has German (eg. yesterday's result saw the Green party's uprising, with their somewhat gender-mainstreamed and weaseled, but in any case special language), and other European languages as well I guess. English could be easily seen as the language of eg. finance-dominated Eurocracy, so using plain language also helps in not portraying EU institutions as "slaves to an international capitalist elite" or something, and give arguments to radical parties.

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

#172

Post by swongel »

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.

As an EU citizen, language is more than just translation. Free interpreters like Google Translate are very useful but will never be a substitute for learning a foreign language.

Because you're not only learning the language you study, but also the culture, norms, and values of the people speaking the language. One might be able to translate "Gezellig" (Dutch, cozy) of "Fika" (Swedish, afternoon tea) into English, but context and understanding will be lost in the process unless the English listener knows these distinctive words and their meaning within the cultural context.

Dutch and Swedish are still closely related to English by language as well as culture, imagine languages with no relation to English whatsoever; this "lost-in-translation" effect will be more pronounced.

A future universal translator might be incredibly good at translating, but will never be a substitute for human cultural understanding without having to explain every caveat and cultural intricacies to the user.

By all learning English, we can have a shared language, we're all able to understand each other in real-time, without technology, with less cultural ambiguity when interpreting.

And why wouldn't we learn English? Learning a second language is very achievable when you're taught in school as a child, and Engish seems like a good compromise between Romance languages and Germanic languages since English has a shared vocabulary with both.

Finally, I'm of course biased towards learning English, coming from a country where English is a mandatory subject in school. That being said; I assure you that no matter how good the translator; Seinfeld sucks in German.

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

#174

Post by coldtea »

Creationer wrote: post #62
coldtea wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The cultural, scientific, and commercial works that have been created in English in the past 100 years dwarf anything created in French or Latin by a gigantic order of magnitude. Why would we possibly switch to anything else, and lose 'access' to all that? All of the greatest movies and TV shows, the millions of scientific articles, the music, the computer code... English will never lose its position because of the a…

>The cultural, scientific, and commercial works that have been created in English in the past 100 years dwarf anything created in French or Latin by a gigantic order of magnitude.

I beg to differ. Compared to the Latin and French corpus, the body cultural works created in English is paltry and subpar. And that's the British ones, American ones, even less so. I can give you scientific and commercial if you feel any better.

>Why would we possibly switch to anything else, and lose 'access' to all that? All of the greatest movies and TV shows, the millions of scientific articles, the music, the computer code...

Yeah, pop music, movies, and TV shows. We'd lose Happy Days, I love Lucy, Breaking Bad, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Kanye West. OK, and Melvin and Henry James and Hemingway. Not much loss.

We would still have Racine, Rousseau, Rabelais, Rimbaud (and that's just part of the R).

Plus, all the huge variety and masterpieces of the peoples of the earth, before American commercial monoculture and its marketing power ate everything else.

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

#175

Post by mdhen »

born2discover wrote: post #128
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 i…

Due to not having an alphabet and being tonal I highly doubt Mandarin is ever going to be the lingua Franca. It's just too hard for non native speakers to learn.

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

#176

Post by antientropic »

jacquesm wrote: post #120
flexie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

Once upon a time Amsterdam was at war with other cities. What those people do not realize is that the only alternative to further European integration is another war, the more and the smaller the slices are the more certain that future becomes. Just the UK seceding from the EU increases the chances of such a thing happening tremendously.

> the only alternative to further European integration is another war

False dichotomy. Surely the same level of integration, or even a slightly lower level of integration, will not necessarily lead to war. EU members were already quite peaceful before the adoption of the Lisbon treaty, for instance.

And you should also at least entertain the possibility that integrating populations further than they're willing to go increases the odds of conflict.

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

#177

Post by liopleurodon »

achamayou wrote: post #81
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…

French here, I absolutely agree. Specifically, American English would be preferable because it is what’s spoken widely outside Europe, and its spelling is somewhat more regular (as well as historically accurate!). I wonder to what extent coming up with a new name for it would help adoption.

Upvoted for American English

The English tend to speak English better and have better grammar than Americans in my experience, but I do prefer American spelling (disclaimer: I'm American)

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

#178

Post by liopleurodon »

0815test wrote: post #90
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…

> Personally, I'm from Spain and I'm not annoyed or upset about English being the lingua franca. I think we should abandon the idea of English "belonging" to its native speakers. When I talk to people from Germany, from China, or from Vietnam, for example our common language is almost always English, even if neither of us are natives. Agreed. The EU should do the needful.

I dint see this one coming

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

#179

Post by Isinlor »

s_dev wrote: post #155
r3bl wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Languages drift apart, split and evolve. Even if by magic wand the whole world would start speaking perfect English now, in 100-200 years we will most likely have numerous versions of English. Each version would evolve depending on different enclaves of people around the world.

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

#180

Post by barking »

kstenerud wrote: post #151
born2discover wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

You'd still expect manufacterers to put your language on packaging and for the government to communicate with you in it, I presume?
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