Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everybody should use google because it's the most used search engine.
What is a category mistake?
Have you heard of Google?
French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’
211–220 of 392 posts
Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’
#212The 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…
You're sampling the wrong population - what you're doing is akin to finding the most popular "development environment" in a company by asking the entire staff complement (including those in marketing, facilities management and finance) their proficiencies. You're likely to settle on Excel as the preferred tech platform. Instead of asking everyone, ask your developers who'll be doing the actual work.
Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
184cm = 6ft
I appreciate the translation, but you should annotate your post, otherwise you risk someone thinking you did it spitefully, as though cm were lesser units. I ~think~ that's why someone downvoted you.
Forgive my trespass. I meant no spite or ill will.
As an American, I had to converted the number to mm and the divided it by 25.4 and again by 12. I figured I save somebody else the trouble.
(I upvoted you.)
Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
For Sweden and Germany all (guess >99%) of the french speakers speak english way better then french. The amount of english we're exposed to is so massive and the french is basically non-existent. This is such a useless egoistic move from the french, just accept that english is the lingua franca.
I’m french and most of the content i watch is also in english, made mostly by americans with an american point of views and ways of resolving problems. Sometime in british english with british point of view. I think it’s sad that that you don’t seem to realize that it’s a problem that most of the content we are exposed comes from a single culture. As for the move, it’s totally useless, and if they wanted to be strong…
> you don’t seem to realize that it’s a problem that most of the content we are exposed comes from a single culture.
I don't think GP's desire to minimise language barriers among 27 co-operating governments implies that they are oblivious to cultural bias.
I do think the latter is an issue worth addressing, but this is probably not an effective or appropriate way to do it.
Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’
#215The 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…
I'm curious what do you mean by "bad" in that context? In my book, asking people to practice or learn a new language is not inerently bad.
Decision-making should not be reduced to the law of the majority. If Europe wants to push people to learn and practice more foreign languages, I'm all for it. (Disclosure: that starts with me, I speak 3 languages and I'm learning a fourth one).
Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’
#216But French is even worse. To hell with these non-phonetical languages. I am serious. I'd take Latin over these unpredictable monstrosities any day of the week
Literary French is quite phonetic, at least outside proper names. What are some examples where you feel that French writing is not in a one to one relation with pronunciation?
Apart from all the silent letters, which are fairly regular (and I assume is what you're getting at) there's a fair number of pronunciation exceptions.
See the different ways of pronouncing "tous" or the different words that have irregularly silent "l"s (e.g. fusil) and other irregularly silent consonants in the middle of words (e.g. automne).
French has quite a lot of exceptions to its pronunciation rules in addition to its already fairly complex regular relationship between letters and sounds.
EDIT: Oh I forgot my pet peeve: there are so many exceptions to the pronunciation of "er" that it's kind of misleading to give its pronunciation as the equivalent of an English "a" as in "slate" (hiver, cher, cancer, mer, the list goes on and on and on).
Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’
#217I can see the logic, since UK isn't part of the EU anymore, but considering over all amount of people who can speak and understand English vs France EU wide this is pretty silly show of power. After all even if EU matters were done purely in french it wouldn't be "the killer feature" to make french be taught much more in schools since english is the universal business language. And even if EU states decided that they…
The UK left, sure. But Ireland still exists
Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm French and honestly I don't really care that much about that but for some reason if I had to choose, I'd rather have EU things done in German for example than English, that would make much more sense to me (even though I speak some English and really no German).
Can you elaborate on your reasons?
It's hard to say but somehow it feels to me that English is the language of "the competition" (the US). It might feel anecdotal to many people, but language is a powerful tool. It's how so many French people consume so many US series and music (and btw we are probably one of the country which are the most protective on this). And https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/opinion/france-cnews-amer...
It's not by chance that many invaders tend to force their language to country they invade (the French being no exception, they did both in former colonies and in our own current territory during the French revolution - that's actually a very hot topic currently in France, as some "immersive teaching" of regional languages were found unconstitutional a few days ago)
And well, I'd rather be more German than more American. But I'm one of those who feel more EUropean than french, so maybe that's why :)
Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’
#219Somehow this made wonder if Esperanto or at least the idea behind it that we can come up with one common language to use worldwide. If that was actually successful we might have less of this nonsense but then again good luck having everyone agreeing on something ... Hmm oh well
I would take English and make it make some sense... It's not horrible, if you make it regular and fix the spelling.
And the pronunciation. All those inconsistencies are a minefield. Now I'm off eating some Ghoti.
Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’
#220The irony here is that English is widely spoken mainly because it is the dominant language in America, a superpower where people resolutely refuse to learn any other languages.
Even if France's motivations are purely nationalistic, it's really no different or worse than how we arrived at the status quo.