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French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’

independent.co.uk

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Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’

#331

Post by 1_player »

mywittyname wrote: post #161
chrisbennet wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

184cm = 6ft

Okay, so this makes me wonder something. So 6 foot tall (72in) is like a magic number for American men. That's like the threshold for manliness in popular culture. If you were to plot the self-reported heights men in America, you'd absolutely see a dip at 70 and 71 inches, then a big spike at 72in. What's this magic number in various metric countries? 185cm seems like a sound choice, but I could see it being 190 in s…

190cm (6'3) being a threshold for "manliness", as you say, has no bearing on actual human average sizes and might just be your personal bias showing.

I think there's definitely a threshold around 6' in English cultures, possibly 180 cm in Europe, but in my personal experience it's not seen an important metric as the magic 6' number in Anglo cultures.

Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’

#332

Post by ben_w »

bawolff wrote: post #112
ben_w wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is designed to be easy to learn, to be regular and logical and use roots familiar to European ears, the other is designed to sound alien. (Does Klingon have a word for bridge-of-a-ship and not bridge-over-water, or is that just an urban legend?)

https://www.kli.org/about-klingon/new-klingon-words/date/# says that QI is klingon for bridge over water.

QI? Curiously, that’s the name of the TV show where I think I heard the claim. I wonder if it was added and given that form as a direct result of that appearance on that show? (The timing is plausible, but I don’t have a detailed enough memory to find which episode).

Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’

#333

Post by ageofzfarm »

Bayart wrote: post #254
beebeepka wrote: post #159

But 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

French writing is quite phonetic and regular, but there's an extra layer of etymological orthography which confuses people who need to learned digraphs and trigraphs. But English has them too, and there's much more irregular.

There is something contradictory and insincere about being so concerned about the eminence of French in multilingual European institutions. Multilingualism is the reality today in Europe, English being only a neutral enough language of convenience for international communication. A tiny comparison of French and English orthography seems a bad argument for promoting French in Europe.

Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’

#334

Post by TX0098812 »

Avalaxy wrote: post #224
TX0098812 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flemish I think. Although it's pretty similar to Dutch.

Flemish is not a language, it's a dialect. The language is Dutch.

That's an opinion, not a fact, and one that depends on who you ask and where. If you go to the Flanders region people will certainly tell you they speak Flemish.

Language researchers can argue all they want about how languages should be grouped, but they sound different, they use different words, and people call them different things. It is simply incorrect to state that people in Belgium speak Dutch. Might as well just expand the group to include German and English (etc) and say they speak Germanic.

Fun fact, the Dutch call their language Nederlands and refer to German as Duits ("Dutch").

Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’

#335

Post by JProthero »

SllX wrote: post #305
skissane wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t know what the President of the Council of Europe does besides Chair meetings, but apparently it includes setting the language for which the meetings will be held in. Please excuse my pedantry, but you've misspoken here: the European Council, the Council of the European Union, and the Council of Europe are three different things; and here you've accidentally said the third when you meant to speak of the seco…

> Please excuse my pedantry, but you've misspoken here: the European Council, the Council of the European Union, and the Council of Europe are three different things; and here you've accidentally said the third Yes, yes I did and I did not catch it, and I’m outside the Edit window as well. It seems not even I can keep up with Europe’s love of councils.

This comment brightened my morning.

I'd like to add something substantive, but the two parent posts already noted everything I would have.

Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’

#337

Post by carlmr »

skissane wrote: post #299
SllX wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has a 6-month rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union. So this is the President of France postulating that when his country takes the Presidency next year, he will use that to push French to be the next working language. I don’t know what the President of the Council of Europe does besides Chair meetings, but apparently it includes setting the language for which the meetings will be held in. S…

> I don’t know what the President of the Council of Europe does besides Chair meetings, but apparently it includes setting the language for which the meetings will be held in. Please excuse my pedantry, but you've misspoken here: the European Council, the Council of the European Union, and the Council of Europe are three different things; and here you've accidentally said the third when you meant to speak of the seco…

Just the number of councils with similar sounding names makes the whole EU project sound like satire.

Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’

#338

Post by ranguna »

sangnoir wrote: post #212
heinrichhartman wrote: post #19

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…

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.

I don't think those numbers would change a lot if you asked people from the working demography.

I know very little people my age that speak enough French to be able to work, however, everyone I know my age speaks English.

Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’

#339

Post by popsicum »

toyg wrote: post #266
popsicum wrote: post #242

If the request is for longer than 6 months, then I don't get the argument. How is this multiculturalism? I and many other people that rely on English as a language to communicate across nations feel left out. Looking at the comments, there seems to be a distorted impression that EU=France (or any major Western country) and on top of that, the rest of the countries should be grateful for being given a chance to be put…

Calm down. This is obviously going nowhere. Nothing is going to change, the French are just sending up some lead balloons for their own media, right before an election year (April 2022 presidentials). Do you really think 26 countries (most of whom don't speak French nor trade primarily with France) will just let Paris lord over them? Of course not. The working languages will stay the same; some overzealous French bur…

It will not happen overnight but it does fuel nationalistic ideologies which is counterproductive for EU as a whole. Just because a politician got butt hurt and wants to save his face, doesn't mean it's acceptable.

I was really looking forward to see the EU flourish for years now and all I see is them concerning with offense, accusations and procrastinating issues or matters that don't serve the union but rather a part of it. EU, just get over it, Brexit happened, whatever.

Re: French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’

#340

Post by akvadrako »

mannerheim wrote: post #289
akvadrako wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around year 2000 there were about 2 million speakers. It's way above any other conlang.

That's akin to being the biggest fish in a fishbowl. There are minor dialects of minor languages with more speakers.

The question was about conlangs, which have the advantage of being designed to be easier to learn.

Esperanto is so easy it can be learned in negative time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Espera....

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