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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)

#201

Post by akvadrako »

scrollaway wrote: post #25
Zrdr wrote: post #10

If we want to use only one official working language, it should be Esperanto. This would be neutral for any country (including Ireland and Malta). This would not be a threat to other languages and cultures. Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. Its benefits are clear, it only needs a political support to thrive.

Even if we apply your logic, Esperanto is still a bad choice. Interlingua would be a better one in a European context.

Interlingua is not a practical alternative. It hasn't been shown to have any real-world advantage over Esperanto and the number of speakers and material is orders of magnitude less.

For example, compare the Interlingua wikipedia to the Esperanto one.

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

#202

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

achamayou wrote: post #81
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #47

I don't think English will stop being EU's lingua franca any time soon. Agreeing on a replacement would be politically impossible (the Germans wouldn't accept French, the French wouldn't accept German, the Spanish would have good arguments to make in any of both cases); and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical (you cannot realistically expect every EU citizen to know their native langu…

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.

I would be fine with American English, but I'm not sure one has to go to the trouble to specify an official dialect. In the written form, it's trivial to understand British English if you have learned American and vice versa. In the spoken form, it might be harder but this is something that commonly happens, even within monolingual countries.

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

#203

Post by derriz »

gumby wrote: post #122
rofo1 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

British empire was (almost) 1/4 - it was never close to 1/3 of the world. Even at its peak, English language wasn't as widespread as now. The French language was, especially in 18th and 19th century, having substituted Latin. After WW2, US absolutely dominated the world coming off as the only victor in WW2 (that's my personal opinion) and used their position to place English language as #1 language of the world (over…

> The French language was, especially in 18th and 19th century, having substituted Latin. Hence the use of the Latin term “lingua franca”

Not exactly - "Lingua Franca" was originally a trading argot/pidgen used by mediterranean traders with more of an Italian basis. Later it came to mean a generic term for "common language". Only centuries later did French became a lingua franca for European diplomacy.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca

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

#204

Post by tannhaeuser »

jacquesm wrote: post #192
tannhaeuser wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fie…

But a major practical concern is that after Brexit the EU doesn't have Common Law countries left (except maybe Ireland and Malta, but I don't know really). For law and contract texts, Code Civil (Napoleonic Law) will be even more prevalent than before. So I can't see a good reason to stick to English which is simply an awkward language for expressing continental civil law concepts when there's a very large body of law and court language use in the respective native language.

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

#205

Post by Majestic121 »

jacquesm wrote: post #116
Majestic121 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same issue in Paris, I know some coworkers who have been living in France for more than 8 years, and still can't speak a reasonable French : barely able to order at a restaurant for exemple, definitely not able to hold a conversation. I'm not sure it is actually an issue, it just feels weird as a French person to discover that French is not even required in your own country.

> it just feels weird as a French person to discover that French is not even required in your own country. And why should it be? In big cities people tend to be more adaptive towards this than outside. If you go outside to the country side the situation will rapidly change. But in every major European capital it is most likely possible to get around on just English. I always make an effort when in France, Germany and…

I agree for a place of visit, and I do the same when I can, but for a place to live in, that's a different beast.

Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but this realisation was quite surprising to me

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

#206

Post by pry86 »

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).

Germany needs qualified and cheap employees. A lot. Therefore especially in tech there is lot's of companies where most of the workers are foreigners. So they have to speak in English. Otherwise nobody would come :D

It sucks, because it's harder to learn German, because you don't use it on daily basis. Myself including. But I find it ridiculous that some people after many years are not able to handle A1. Come on.

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

#207

Post by lifthrasiir »

Oreb wrote: post #182
lifthrasiir wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(While Zamenhof tried hard, unfortunately,) False. - The vocabulary is a big part of the language learning and it is hard to even begin with when the target vocabulary resembles nothing in your original tongues. It can be probably argued that ESL learners can learn Esperanto more quickly, but it still represents only about 1/4 of the total human population. - Rhotic consonants are particularly hard to pronounce corre…

> - The vocabulary is a big part of the language learning and it is hard to even begin with when the target vocabulary resembles nothing in your original tongues. While this is true for Esperanto, it is also true for any other language, natural or constructed. And the idea of Esperanto is to reduce the effort learning vocabulary not through familiarity, but by deriving its vocabulary from a minimal set of roots and a…

> In Esperanto, if you know the word for "big", you automatically know how to say "small", "huge" and "tiny". This is not the case in most natural languages.

Oh? I have heard that "granda" means big, "giganta" or "kolosa" means huge and "eta" means tiny... :-)

Of course I know what you want to say. One can derive "malgranda" (non-big, i.e. small), "grandega" (more-big, i.e. huge) or "malgrandega" (tiny) from a single root "granda". But that alone does not explain all other words! For example, the Zamenhof's original dictionary [1] lists both "grand-" and "et-" as root words while "gigant-" or "kolos-" are missing (probably later additions, haven't checked). Why the heck do you need to know both "grand-" and "et-" when one is an antonym to the other? [2]

I'm not an esperantisto and I'm not able to discern the nuance behind all those different words, but I see a sign of the mature language here: once regular, now naturalized. It is not necessarily bad and the artificial origin can still help learning, but I would be rather careful to claim that it is "easier to learn than any naturally evolved language". And that leads to...

> But far more than 1/4 of the total population of _Europe_, which is the only thing that matters in the context of this discussion.

You have said universally, even though you didn't seem to realize it. And even when we concentrate to Europe, the actual number of ESL learners is not too different: 38% [3].

But yeah, most Europeans can speak either Romance, Germanic or Slavic languages [3] that form the Esperanto grammar and vocabulary. Still, in the same census most Europeans seem to be much more interested in ESL than others [4] and it would be very hard to convince them to learn Esperanto instead.

[1] http://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/universala_v...

[2] Of course, the answer is that it isn't. "et-" is described as "marque diminution, décroissance" i.e. "marks decrease or reduction" and not strictly an opposite of "grand-". It is therefore a fault of fellow esperantistos to use it as "tiny"!

[3] http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/e... (2006, p. 4)

[4] Ibid., p. 9

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

#208

Post by derriz »

peteretep wrote: post #6

> the rest of the EU will be freed of the British veto and able to get as integrated as it wishes Anyone who thinks that EU skepticism is exclusive to the Brits is in for a nasty nasty surprise.

Indeed but it's not just EU skepticism.

Even among very pro-EU political parties and countries across Europe, there has been no appetite for a new EU treaty since the Lisbon treaty. I'm willing to bet that there will be no further EU treaties for a decade or more.

And without a new treaty, there is little or no scope for further EU integration. The EU is a highly legalistic construct where powers are strictly defined by its multi-lateral treaties.

The idea that the EU civil service (commission) can just grab powers from national governments is anti-EU fud. Even within areas judged to be within the competence of the EU, the principle of subsidiarity (that power should remain with national governments unless absolutely necessary) is explicity a general principle of EU law.

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

#209

Post by alexgmcm »

achamayou wrote: post #81
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #47

I don't think English will stop being EU's lingua franca any time soon. Agreeing on a replacement would be politically impossible (the Germans wouldn't accept French, the French wouldn't accept German, the Spanish would have good arguments to make in any of both cases); and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical (you cannot realistically expect every EU citizen to know their native langu…

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 encourage its use (I used to speak Esperanto and my Grandfather is fluent so I'm a bit biased I suppose)

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

#210

Post by barking »

nabla9 wrote: post #184
barking wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also like Latin as the EU language It would be like deja veni vidi vici all over again.

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.
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