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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)

#181

Post by k_bx »

rlkf wrote: post #125
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.

Thanks! Also, just checked, Ubuntu's United Kingdom locale uses Metric system actually, no idea why was I thinking it'd be Imperial before.

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

#182

Post by Oreb »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #66
skohan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn and to lack many of the special cases and "gotchas" present in every natural language. There are probably many cases where it would be easier for a native of some language to learn a specific similar language (i.e. for a Dutch speaker to learn German, or a Portuguese speaker to learn Spanish), but I would not be surprised if Esperanto minimizes the cost function for the net…

(While Zamenhof tried hard, unfortunately,) False. - The vocabulary is a big part of the language learning and it is hard to even begin with when the target vocabulary resembles nothing in your original tongues. It can be probably argued that ESL learners can learn Esperanto more quickly, but it still represents only about 1/4 of the total human population. - Rhotic consonants are particularly hard to pronounce corre…

> - The vocabulary is a big part of the language learning and it is hard to even begin with when the target vocabulary resembles nothing in your original tongues.

While this is true for Esperanto, it is also true for any other language, natural or constructed. And the idea of Esperanto is to reduce the effort learning vocabulary not through familiarity, but by deriving its vocabulary from a minimal set of roots and a system of suffixes. In Esperanto, if you know the word for "big", you automatically know how to say "small", "huge" and "tiny". This is not the case in most natural languages.

Of course Esperanto will be much easier to learn for someone who already speaks some Germanic or Romance language than to anybody else on the planet. But even to a monolingual Chinese (or whatever) speaker, I believe building a working vocabulary in Esperanto is going to take less effort than in English, Spanish or German.

> It can be probably argued that ESL learners can learn Esperanto more quickly, but it still represents only about 1/4 of the total human population.

But far more than 1/4 of the total population of _Europe_, which is the only thing that matters in the context of this discussion.

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

#183

Post by kstenerud »

barking wrote: post #180
kstenerud wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, but without the requirement to have two languages on the packaging, you can have one design for both Canada and the USA.

Canada is a tiny market by comparison, so it's often not worth the expense of designing separate multi-language packaging just for them.

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

#184

Post by nabla9 »

barking wrote: post #80
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…

I would also like Latin as the EU language It would be like deja veni vidi vici all over again.

Interlingua is artificial language where vocabulary is common to the widest possible range of western European languages. Many Europeans understand Interlingua without knowing it.

Examples:

Mi aeroglissator es plen de anguillas.

Multo ben, gratias. E vos?

Contente de facer vostre cognoscentia!

Il es un placer facer vostre cognoscentia!

Amarea vos dansar con me?

Parla plus lentemente, per favor

Patre nostre, qui es in le celos, que tu nomine sia sanctificate; que tu regno veni; que tu voluntate sia facite como in le celo, etiam super le terra.

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

#185

Post by jacquesm »

antientropic wrote: post #176
jacquesm wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The same level would be fine but it is either the top of the hill or the beginning of the downslope.

The EU made several critical mistakes in the way they approached their growth and integration issues and those in turn could very well lead to a final desintegration or split of the bloc. The UK leaving is a very bad sign, given that they already had one of the most exceptional positions within the EU.

Time will tell.

Of course the integration 'by force' (Maastricht for one, Lisbon for another) was utterly dumb, it feels to me as though they thought 'now or never' not realizing that they may be planting the seeds for the eventual dismantling of the union.

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

#186

Post by Svip »

I'm sorry, but this opinion piece sounds pretty dumb. It almost reads like a troll post. The fact that so many in this comment thread seems to be concurring with its suggestion is troubling enough.

If you really want to alienate the EU from the average EU citizen, make English its official language. And adopt a version only a tiny minority really speaks too, just to salt the wound! I'm not sure whether to be scared or laugh.

The fact that the EU has 24 official languages isn't meant to make its proceedings cumbersome or to necessarily facilitate national pride (although, it's certainly also that!), but to make it available to the general public. The official nature of all the member states' languages means you can submit documents in all those languages.

Everyone on Hacker News speak English, but it's not a majority in the EU who speaks or understands English comfortably. But it's easy to forget our privilege. Even as younger generations get more and more accustomed to learning, reading and speaking English around Europe, most are still more comfortable reading technical, political and legal texts in their own language.

They may understand the dialogue in Game of Thrones well enough, but can an Estonian farmer understand an EU agriculture subsidy determination, if it was written in English?

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

#187

Post by giomasce »

isolli wrote: post #57
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.

Yes, but it has the big disadvantage of a very irregular pronunciation. Other languages, like many southern European ones, seem to me to have much easier pronunciation. I am biased because I am Italian, but I am pretty sure that it is much easier for an Englishman with basically no Italian training to speak relatively correctly an Italian sentence than it is for me, after many years of studying and practising English, to properly pronounce English.

I would like this EU English to evolve in the direction of keeping a simple grammar and going towards a more regular pronunciation. Basically it would become a new form of Esperanto, except that differently from Esperanto it would actually have a viable path for many people to learn it.

I know I like to dream, but maybe...

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

#188

Post by born2discover »

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.…

I live in Switzerland where everything you've mentioned has to be done thrice (3 official languages: French, German, Italian), yet I am firm in my belief that it should be maintained.

It's not about whether anybody cares about a specific language anywhere outside of a province. It's about maintaining a language as one of the elements of the culture and country's identity.

If only criterion to keep or strike a language as official one was whether it's spoken by a majority or a minority, then you'd be living in a dictatorship of the masses (where majority decides for everybody else).

Learning a second or a third language is not a burden. It's an opportunity. An opportunity to immerse one self into a different culture, different world view... It should be seen as gift to widen one's perspective and not a financial burden.

And using the money as an argument against this or that is a dangerous slippery slope. Because with the same argument one could argue against a lot of other things: "Why maintain a universal healthcare, it costs too much!", "What? Maintain free education? Who needs that, it costs too much!"... And so forth, and so forth.

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

#189

Post by jacquesm »

mdhen wrote: post #175
born2discover wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a drawback when you're catching up but an advantage when you are ahead!

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

#190

Post by Xylakant »

jacquesm wrote: post #98
Xylakant wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dictat…

I see your point, but I’d prefer if that was resolved in a different way. I’m absolutely in favor of translating all important records to all official languages in the EU.
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