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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)

#231

Post by lifthrasiir »

akvadrako wrote: post #230
lifthrasiir wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Esperanto is easy to learn because it's very regular, has a small vocabulary, phonetic spelling, etc... I had delved into Esperanto enough to see that this is not necessarily true. (I'm a native Korean speaker with a working knowledge of English as you can see. And I'm not even opposing to Esperanto in general.) It would be great to have concrete numbers to backup this claim; by comparison, it seems that the prior…

>> Esperanto is easy to learn because it's very regular, has a small vocabulary, phonetic spelling, etc... > I had delved into Esperanto enough to see that this is not necessarily true. Do you mean esperanto doesn't have those features (regular, small vocab, phonetic) or that those features don't make a language easier to learn? Because either claim sounds farfetched.

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.

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

#232

Post by born2discover »

kstenerud wrote: post #196
born2discover wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that there are smaller countries where packaging has to be in more than one language and companies that seek to enter that market are fine with it. If your only argument against doing business in a country because of the language requirements, you aren't a good businessman/woman. Because you are sacrificing a market share for something that can be easily done: translate once, print indefinitely.

It's not just the words themselves; you need a completely different package design. It's not like in Europe where the package is mostly the same except for some language-specific section. In Canada, you need to translate EVERYTHING, including the slogan [1], and even the name in some cases. Every English sentence must be translated and presented in equal size in French. You can call it good/bad business practice all…

I see! Then I do understand why you'd be in favor of dropping French as it seems to me that Quebec might be doing a bit of a protectionism dance there.

Where I live (Switzerland) the minimum to have is the information text translated (the one at the back). But the brand itself can remain as it is. Usually however, you do see a bit more translated, such as subtitles or things like what type of product that is, like "whole-grained bread" and things like that.

Also we're lucky to be in the middle of Europe, so companies that export to France and Germany tend to create one double translated product for both countries and it's imported to Switzerland as well.

But yea, if you force double work on the companies without any rational reason behind, then they might try to reduce costs by simply avoiding the market altogether.

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

#233

Post by sys_64738 »

kstenerud wrote: post #151
born2discover wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical - Sorry but I have to disagree here. Look at UN, they have Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish as official languages. Why is there an absolute must to only have one official language? Why not chose several most widely spoken ones, including English, and let each speaker chose the one that suits them best? I live in a country wh…

Because having multiple official languages adds more layers of bureaucracy to everything and amounts to a colossal waste of time and money. We have this in Canada, and outside of Quebec, nobody cares about the French language. In fact, many manufacturers specifically avoid Canada in some cases due to the requirement to put both English and French on the packaging. All government communication has to be written twice.…

Quebec is big is population and land size so saying 'nobody cares' is being disingenuous. It's an official language so can't be ignored.

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

#234

Post by jobigoud »

Jonnax wrote: post #3

This doesn't really make sense. American English which they propose adopting is removes more of the European roots of words. For example removing the 'U' from words like Colour. Ireland is also an English speaking country in the EU. And I don't know how much of the sentiment of "Let's Americanise!" Would be popular.

Don't you mean "let's Americanize"?

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

#235

Post by jobigoud »

NotPaidToPost wrote: post #121
Majestic121 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the progress part is about having a common language, not about this common language being English. If the common language was wolof, people moving back to their own (Spanish, French, German, whatever) would be regression, as now a discussion between French, Spanish and German people would be much much harder to have.

Well, the wording is rather clear that it was about English. Note that the author stealthily added a precision to his comment (which originally ended at "why regress?") since then to make clear it was about having a common language. But he has not removed the offending part.

Adopting another language as our lingua franca when English is already filling that role would be a regression. It's not saying other languages are inferior per se, they might be superior. But using any other would be an inferior choice now. It doesn't mean we can't add local flavors to it.

I am a French native speaker and I also think we should just use English and move on as a species. Interpersonnal communication is hard enough that we don't need artificial complications. Let's tackle more interesting problems. Same reason we should use a single measurement units system, mains current standard, a single currency, etc.

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

#236

Post by jobigoud »

barking wrote: post #64
Creationer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For adults it is easy to move across the EU: you can work and socialise using in English. But for children, and families, it is impossible. How can a child move and be expected to learn a new language immediately? This seems like a huge disconnect. National governments need to start to offer (for parents that opt-in) primary and secondary education in English, with the entire curriculum and exams in that language as…

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?

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

#237

Post by mekoka »

antientropic wrote: post #167
mekoka wrote: post #141

Looking into the history of American English hints at why it's so powerful. It was designed for pragmatism over elitism, to favor a broad adoption of a writing system for a population of then recent immigrants, many of whom were not native English speakers or had had little access to education. Its original purpose is practicality. It only gradually became considered a viable intellectual alternative to British Engli…

I don't get it. How is a word like "civilization" less elitist / more pragmatic than "civilisation"? How is that a revolution? Is there any evidence that these minor spelling difference had an effect on the success of American English?

Because 'z' is unambiguous. If it sounds like a 'z' it must be a 'z'. Especially from the perspective of a non-native speaker, or someone who needs to learn to read and write as an adult.

As for your other questions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo.... Also feel free to look up specifically Noah Webster.

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

#238

Post by anoncake »

jacquesm wrote: post #227
tannhaeuser wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 la…

I really can't follow your argument. The EU laws are brand new and not usually connected to the civil code of the countries of the EU, who all have their own take on a lot of stuff. Case in point: the GDPR. The English text is used as the reference by the various countries that have now implemented it, there are translations but anything before the EU courts will most likely be conducted in English and use the Englis…

> The English text is used as the reference by the various countries that have now implemented it,

Is it? All EU laws are published in the official languages of all members. Legally, there are no translations but 22 texts that have equal status and the same meaning.

Don't ask me what happens if the meanings turn out not to match exactly in a relevant way.

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

#239

Post by jacquesm »

anoncake wrote: post #238
jacquesm wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't follow your argument. The EU laws are brand new and not usually connected to the civil code of the countries of the EU, who all have their own take on a lot of stuff. Case in point: the GDPR. The English text is used as the reference by the various countries that have now implemented it, there are translations but anything before the EU courts will most likely be conducted in English and use the Englis…

> The English text is used as the reference by the various countries that have now implemented it, Is it? All EU laws are published in the official languages of all members. Legally, there are no translations but 22 texts that have equal status and the same meaning. Don't ask me what happens if the meanings turn out not to match exactly in a relevant way.

Has there been a case before the EU high court yet where there was a meaningful discrepancy between a local version and another that was deemed to be leading?

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

#240

Post by koonsolo »

I don't understand why they didn't try to unify the English language across the borders. Why are there different official variants of the same language?

I'm from Belgium and speak Flemish, our neighboring country is the Netherlands. We officially speak the same language. We have the same spelling, same rules, etc. Of course there are dialect variations, but the official language is exactly the same.

I always wondered why other countries don't try to do the same. For example Slovakia and Czech Republic. It almost is exactly the same language, and I know Slovaks were able to understand Czech. But it seems newer generations are unable to do that. So it's weird that these languages evolve away from each other, instead of towards each other.

The world is becoming smaller every day, so why not try to standardize at least the English language, which is mostly used in international settings?

But I guess it's also an ego thing, where neither UK or US (No idea which official variant they use in Australia/New Zealand) want to adopt the other countries rules.

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