Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

european-views.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 267 posts

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

#191

Post by born2discover »

kstenerud wrote: post #183
barking wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would argue that there are smaller countries where packaging has to be in more than one language and companies that seek to enter that market are fine with it.

If your only argument against doing business in a country because of the language requirements, you aren't a good businessman/woman. Because you are sacrificing a market share for something that can be easily done: translate once, print indefinitely.

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

#192

Post by jacquesm »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #171
anoncake wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's exactly why English is such a success. By losing nuance in the words but making up for it in the sentences the language becomes a lot easier to learn.

I'd much rather have the common language of the EU be English even without an English representation in the EU than to have to parse EU legal documents in French or German. The occasional contract is bad enough. At least with English there is a level playing field.

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

#193

Post by kstenerud »

born2discover wrote: post #188
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.…

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 languag…

I do agree that multiple languages are a good thing in general. I speak English, French, and Japanese fluently, and am now learning German.

However, I also believe that bureaucracy should be minimized, especially at the federal level. And when it actively impedes the flow of goods and services (as it does in Canada because it's such a small market), you're throwing away far more than you gain.

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

#194

Post by theandrewbailey »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #145
kowdermeister wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There are many reasons why Mandarin will not become the next lingua franca, most importantly the writing system which unifies China but is even hard for Chinese to learn. As it looks now, it seems more likely that more and more Chinese will become fluent in English and that some English - possibly including a lot of Chinese loannwords - will be the most widespread language in the 100 years from now. But I think you w…

A drastic reform of the writing system happened 50 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters

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

#195

Post by born2discover »

valb wrote: post #173
ttoinou wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland ?

AFAIK Switzerland has 4 official languages

Yes, we have 4 national languages: French, German, Italian and Romansh. However only three of them bear the title of official language, that is, language used in official communications.

Romansh is spoken only in one of our "provinces" (Canton Graubünden) thus is considered too tiny to be supported on the national scale for official purposes.

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

#196

Post by kstenerud »

born2discover wrote: post #191
kstenerud wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would argue that there are smaller countries where packaging has to be in more than one language and companies that seek to enter that market are fine with it. If your only argument against doing business in a country because of the language requirements, you aren't a good businessman/woman. Because you are sacrificing a market share for something that can be easily done: translate once, print indefinitely.

It's not just the words themselves; you need a completely different package design. It's not like in Europe where the package is mostly the same except for some language-specific section. In Canada, you need to translate EVERYTHING, including the slogan [1], and even the name in some cases. Every English sentence must be translated and presented in equal size in French.

You can call it good/bad business practice all you want. Real manufacturers do make conscious decisions to avoid the Canadian market due to these costs. The reality is that we suffer because of this policy.

There is one silver lining, however: Online retailers like Amazon seem to be exempt.

[1] http://blog.generalmills.com/wp-content/uploads/Honey-Nut-Ch...

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

#197

Post by taejo »

7952 wrote: post #169
kayoone wrote: post #61

Living in working in the Berlin tech world, English is already the official working language in most companies. Even as I german i have no problem with this, my only gripe is that it makes it very hard for my non-german colleagues to learn german.

Why exactly is this? Are there really that many non Germans speakers that you need to use English? And would you use English to have a chat at the water cooler, or down the pub (or locally relevant alternative).

> Are there really that many non Germans speakers that you need to use English?

I'm not OP, but also at a Berlin tech company. I always say I'm glad I learned German (in a much smaller city elsewhere in Germany) before moving here. You absolutely can learn German here, and I know people who have, but I also know people who've lived here for years and don't know enough to buy a loaf of bread in a bakery. The problem is that you can get away with it: your colleagues can all speak English (and some of them can't speak Germany, in some workplaces, including mine); as an expat, you probably live in a neighborhood with lots of other expats, where the staff in restaurants and shops speak English (and it's not uncommon for waiters to be unable to speak German); you can make your friends exclusively in expat communities, and if you arrive in Berlin speaking no German, that's a lot easier than integrating into the local community without yet knowing its language. It's especially bad if your accent gives away that English is your native language.

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

#198

Post by dep_b »

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 will fight tooth and nail as well. And Germany too.

Dubbing movies meant for an adult public doesn't automatically make you a nation of retards. And what the hell is Spain to you anyway? Are we speaking about people from Barcelona, Andorra, the center?

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

#200

Post by tannhaeuser »

Svip wrote: post #186

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 o…

Absolutely, and the EU was founded on principles of federation and preserving cultural heritage and differences. Most definitely the EU hasn't given power to sacrifice even a single language for the convenience of EU institutions and nobody in the EUP/EUC wants to change that in the slightest.
Post reply on HN