French set to replace English as EU’s ‘working language’ • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by esyir » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:37 AM UTC

Aerroon wrote: post #285

I think that in the long-term it might be better if English didn't become the main language of the EU. It ties us too closely with the US culturally, because the US is a massive native speaker of it. I have no idea what we would replace it with though. Everything seems to have massive problems.

English is already the de facto auxiliary language of the world. The point of a language, above all others, and especially so for governing a union of countries, should be maximising the ease of communication.

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

#312

Post by s17n » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:37 AM UTC

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #23

I 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…

I think English as the universal language is probably a done deal at this point. Then again people probably thought that about French back in the day.

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

#313

Post by pyuser583 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:54 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #283

gip wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The head of the English department of my local community college (in the US) told me that it takes about 7 years of study for an average immigrant's English to get good enough that native speakers start wanting to have conversations with the immigrant. Some people require much less time, but for most people, learning a new language (particularly learning to speak it and not just read it) is a very large investment in…

I’ve worked with lots of non-native English speakers. We “dumb down” our language the the level of the least fluent.

It isn’t really English. It’s “work English.”

I bet a lot more people speak “work English” than are fluent in the full language.

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

#314

Post by pyuser583 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:56 AM UTC

melesian wrote: post #120

CodeGlitch wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ireland: 99% English

I doubt it's as low as that! Malta and the Netherlands are other countries where a large majority also speak English. In some places in the EU the UK's union jack flag is being replaced with the Irish tricolour on bank ATM's display of language choices, which amuses the Irish.

That is funny.

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

#315

Post by estaseuropano » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:58 AM UTC

Nonsense article. France is pushing for this but the other EU countries have no reason to go along with it. Especially in the East no one speaks French, so their citizens and companies would be at a severe disadvantage - from getting people into EU jobs to the various funding calls for reaearch, digitalization, etc everything is currently in English and most Europeans would suffer from a switch to French. Even Germany has no reason to go along with it as it would downgrade German (currently there are three working languages: EN, FR, DE). The EU still retains two countries with English as official language (Ireland and Malta) and clearly it is the most widely spoken second language.

In short: no chance.

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

#316

Post by pyuser583 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:58 AM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #115

Tsiklon wrote: post #15

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

Bear in mind, this kind of French bloodymindedness is why we have "UTC" - because if they couldn't have "temps universel coordonné" (TUC) then we damn-sure weren't going to have "coordinated universal time" (CUT).

I did not know this was a thing! Fascinating!

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

#317

Post by pyuser583 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:00 AM UTC

hulug wrote: post #269

Avamander wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Easy-to-learn" is very subjective. There's a lot of different languages spoken in the EU and the accessibility of a language environment matters.

> "Easy to learn" is very subjective Not really. For example, a language that has no grammatical gender is inarguably easier to learn than a one that has.

All other things being the same. English doesn’t have much grammatical gender, but is a mess.

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

#318

Post by hutzlibu » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:02 AM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #282

MichaelZuo wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for providing some insight into the inner workings. It’s worrying seeing one of the nominal leaders of a union of over half a billion people succumb to these pressures. Clearly he is intelligent and perceptive enough to understand the consequences. And besides the long term costs that can be reasoned out, all sorts of emotions, insecurities, etc., will undoubtedly come flying out from many quarters. I doubt if…

> Clearly he is intelligent and perceptive enough to understand the consequences. Yes. The consequences are hopefully getting re-elected as a moderate at a time when right-wing populism and nationalistic rhetoric is popular. The next French election is next year. If this is what it takes to keep Le Pen out then consider ourselves fortunate.

I mean, this language stunt is quite harmless, but you can only appease the rightwing nationalist a certain way, before you become one of them.

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

#319

Post by anoncake » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:05 AM UTC

gdsdfe wrote: post #255

qsort wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if that was actually successful It was successful. That language is English, the obvious choice agreed upon by everyone who isn't interested in playing idiotic political games.

Yeah for you yes, for others it's synonym with colonialism, and armed invasion.

Not an issue in Europe.

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

#320

Post by estaseuropano » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #91

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…

If you give Dutch politicians the choice of speaking French or Dutch with translators in an international meeting they will use English. But I don't think the French really care about how other cultures work. It's all nationalist nonsense and living in the glorious past for them. See Strasbourg.

Strasbourg is probably more about economics than politics. Yes it would be a political loss but they could probably find an alternative (e.g. France said they'd be happy to give up Strasbourg if the ECB moves to France instead), the real deal is the billions it brings to the city.