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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)

#251

Post by anoncake »

barking wrote: post #210
nabla9 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd suspect that a monoglot german speaker would understand nothing of that. Even an english speaker and despite our huge borrowing from french it's not too easy.

Not a chance. I don't understand more of that than of any romance language.

Speakers of romance languages probably feel the same way about Folkspraak:

> All mensklik wesings âre boren frî on' gelîk in werđigheid on' rejte. Đê âre begifted mid ferstand on' gewitt on' skulde behandele êlkên in en gêst av brôđerhêd.

Surprisingly, the language has been invented after the invention of keyboards with finite space for diacritics. In so far as it actually has been developed at all.

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

#252

Post by ktpsns »

aarroyoc wrote: post #130
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

Oh. I thought about written language, not about localization (as it comes up when being used in graphical user interfaces). As a non-native speaker in science, we always write out units (3 km or 3 miles), we write out dates clearly (July 2nd or 2018-07-02), the same with units (USD 3 or 3 EUR). As a non-application-writer, I don't see the point. As a programmer, I do, of course.

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

#253

Post by barking »

jobigoud wrote: post #236
barking wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a dystopian future to me.

A dystopia where every human can speak to any other? Imagine it was the other way around. There is a single language humans speak and someone suggests we should instead split in hundreds of non mutually intelligible ones. Why would any one want that?

Because it's more interesting I think. Like I find europe more interesting than USA because the cultures are more varied and a big reason for that is the language variation. Sadly we are becoming more homogenised already. Dialects are disappearing and it's becoming possible to speak English everwhere as well as to dine in MacDonalds.

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

#254

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #248
s_dev wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I'll bite. Computer languages are more about building a machine than communicating a human idea. Human languages are more about human things. We're all human and therefore should speak the same language. Computer languages are sometimes so similar and help you build a similar type of machine. Think of ruby, JS, python, etc. All work very similar internally. I really wish we could pick one language (in a particular do…

Think about hiring a team of people for you next programming project. They each speak a different language and none can communicate effectively. Doesn't sound so good to me.

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

#255

Post by lifthrasiir »

akvadrako wrote: post #247
lifthrasiir wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, both sound farfetched because "easier to learn" does not imply "easy to learn". Those characteristics do make the language easier to learn, but its Indo-European lineage (that I have detailed in the sibling comments) makes it much harder to learn for non-Indo-European speakers.

The point is it's easier than all other human languages, not that it's easy in some objective sense - I don't even know what that would be.

Your point is still not substantiated. There are many language pairs closer than Esperanto (I mean, there exists x and y such that `d(x,y) < max(d(x,eo), d(y,eo))`), even after the easiness due to the artificial origin is accounted for.

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

#256

Post by DuskStar »

anoncake wrote: post #244
liopleurodon wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

No. Like everyone else, Americans by definition speak their native language perfectly. There may very well be stylistic differences and you can aesthetically prefer a dialect, but native speakers do not commit grammatical errors.

There are multiple dialects of english even within the US and many of them have different grammar rules.

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

#257

Post by anoncake »

DuskStar wrote: post #256
anoncake wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Like everyone else, Americans by definition speak their native language perfectly. There may very well be stylistic differences and you can aesthetically prefer a dialect, but native speakers do not commit grammatical errors.

There are multiple dialects of english even within the US and many of them have different grammar rules.

Of course.

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

#258

Post by akvadrako »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #255
akvadrako wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is it's easier than all other human languages, not that it's easy in some objective sense - I don't even know what that would be.

Your point is still not substantiated. There are many language pairs closer than Esperanto (I mean, there exists x and y such that `d(x,y) < max(d(x,eo), d(y,eo))`), even after the easiness due to the artificial origin is accounted for.

Of course there are languages that are so close together speakers can understand each other without even studying.

But I'm sure there is no language (with at least 1 million speakers) which is easier than Esperanto to learn for the average Asian. It isn't a European thing.

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

#259

Post by GenericsMotors »

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…

And it shall be named Newspeak.

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

#260

Post by afiori »

alexgmcm wrote: post #209
achamayou wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The differences are trivial though? The main difference is the accent (when I was staying in California as an Englishman they couldn't understand me when I said "Kettle" and their pronunciation sounded more like "Keddle") But accents will always be an issue regardless of which language is chosen. I think they should continue using English as it's pragmatic but also introduce Esperanto as another working language and…

Also the differences between American English and British English are significantly smaller than the difference between Italian English and French English or Chinese English.
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