61–70 of 392 posts
I’d have thought they would have kept English as it’s effectively a neutral language at that point - it would be convenient to avoid accusations of German or French dominance should either push for their’s in English’s place
Shame there's no real-world interest in the powers that be to officialize Esperanto.
I say if you want a universal language everyone should learn Latin. Now you won't offend anyone. Except the French.
The sane thing to do after the Brexit, was to embrace English as main language, since it has not become neutral ground! According to Wikipedia we have: * Germany: 56% English speakers, 14.5% French speakers * Italy: 34% English vs. 19.43% French * Spain: 22% English vs. 11.73% French * Sweden: 89% English vs. 8% French I can't get over how bad this decision is. How can you ignore these kinds of discrepancies? [1] htt…
Only Ireland has English as their primary language of the EU so it makes sense.
English is the dominant language of Ireland, Malta (and Scotland and Wales) but as each has a "national" language and English had already been selected by the UK, Ireland nominated Irish and Malta Maltese as an official EU language. So at the moment there is no country that has claimed English as its official language for EU purposes, thus it's legally OK to ignore anything official from or within the EU that is in E…
I'm pretty sure that you can have more than one nominated language, given that Belgium and Spain have a bunch of them.
I’d have thought they would have kept English as it’s effectively a neutral language at that point - it would be convenient to avoid accusations of German or French dominance should either push for their’s in English’s place
Shame there's no real-world interest in the powers that be to officialize Esperanto.
Sometimes countries insist of fighting wars that have been over for a long time. This is one example. American attitude towards China rise is another example. Now more seriously, I think what the French are trying to do is just to avoid a complete switch to English in the EU institutions. Since the start of the pandemic, most meetings which used to be multilingual (with interpretation) are now English only and nobody…
Why are they worried? English isn't English anymore. In fact it makes sense to chose a language that isn't the native language of any EU nation. (I'm squinting regarding Ireland).
In every country children are told quite silly things about the world and, in particular, about the importance of their country in the world. This is even worse for current or former empires (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Russia, US, China...).
Children there are told they are special and superior in some way to other children who were born in other places. It's not surpising that they end up asuming those lies as something obvious and natural. The most striking example nowdays is of course the United States, just because they are the biggest superpower (China's children are not less indoctrinated, though). Most American adults believe that their country is the biggest democracy the world has ever seen (cough, cough, India), their lifestyle the highest (Scandinavia smiles amusingly with a barely hidden condescending gesture) or that their wars are fought just to defend freedom (and Irak invaded because of the mass destruction weapons, apparently).
In the case of France they take as reference the Napoleonic times where their country was dominant and their language the vehicule of culture and politics in Europe. They also think the French Revolution invented real democracy or something similar (even though American Revolution started more than ten years earlier and Greeks had true democracies a couple thousand years before that).
Of course, those days are long gone, but this is what French are tought since they are small children, so most of them end up believing it.
Nationalism is a serious disease and most countries are infected.
The sane thing to do after the Brexit, was to embrace English as main language, since it has not become neutral ground! According to Wikipedia we have: * Germany: 56% English speakers, 14.5% French speakers * Italy: 34% English vs. 19.43% French * Spain: 22% English vs. 11.73% French * Sweden: 89% English vs. 8% French I can't get over how bad this decision is. How can you ignore these kinds of discrepancies? [1] htt…
The French are (pardon my French) assholes, that's how. Even when the jury votes were announced in the 2021 Eurovision, all of the national representatives held their commentary English, except for the French representative, who did it almost entirely in French.
It's also the reason why the European Parliament can never ever abandon Strasbourg even though it makes absolutely no sense at all.
The sane thing to do after the Brexit, was to embrace English as main language, since it has not become neutral ground! According to Wikipedia we have: * Germany: 56% English speakers, 14.5% French speakers * Italy: 34% English vs. 19.43% French * Spain: 22% English vs. 11.73% French * Sweden: 89% English vs. 8% French I can't get over how bad this decision is. How can you ignore these kinds of discrepancies? [1] htt…
Having it as a work language just means that they’ll pout if whatever document they’re sent isn’t in French for the 6 months they are in charge - nothing more. No big deal.
> “We will always ask the Commission to send us in French the letters it wishes to address to the French authorities, and if they fail to do so, we will wait for the French version before sending it,” the diplomat said.
"Send us French or consider your request to be second-class and ignored until you send us French".