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

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

#321

Post by pyuser583 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:07 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #74

coldcode wrote: post #52

I say if you want a universal language everyone should learn Latin. Now you won't offend anyone. Except the French.

Joking aside, it's a shame Esperanto didn't catch on. One of its features is that it's fairly easy to learn, unlike something like Latin.

Latin is pretty easy to learn. That’s one reason it was a second language for so long.

Latin even has a large amount of texts written at a basic level. Works like Summa Theologica and the Vulgate Bible were written in extremely simple language.

It has a very small vocabulary. There are some weird edge cases (imperative plural, for example), but even they follow common rules.

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

#322

Post by tsimionescu » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:07 AM UTC

nescioquid wrote: post #257

tsimionescu wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, there are two: 'o' (as in 'bon') and 'eau' (as in 'beau').While that's one more than it should have been necessary, it's not that bad I think.

maux? culot? I feel like we can find more ;-) But I have learned I had a misconception about what a phonetic spelling is. I had thought that a phonetic spelling had the property of every sound in the language having one way to spell it, but that is not the case; instead for every grapheme there is one sound. As a native English speaker, learning a little French (after German and Latin) opened my eyes to the horrors o…

Forgot about 'au'; I think the x and t in these examples are misleading, they are just part of the general rule that final consonants are not pronounced (though there are exceptions to that rule).

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

#323

Post by estaseuropano » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:09 AM UTC

svieira wrote: post #204

tagrun wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because "lingua franca" derives from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca which has nothing to do with French, apart from people who didn't understand it mistook it for "French".

Part of the empire the Franks founded was named "France" and France still traces its origins to Frankish kings. So connecting a trade language spoken by the empire-before-the-empire with the empire of France doesn't seem that far off-base to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks

French was a minority language in modern day France for most of the region's history.

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

#324

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

akmarinov wrote: post #79

kelnos wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, the article says: > “We will always ask the Commission to send us in French the letters it wishes to address to the French authorities, and if they fail to do so, we will wait for the French version before sending it,” the diplomat said. "Send us French or consider your request to be second-class and ignored until you send us French".

Before that it says: > The unnamed diplomat said all high-level meetings of the Council – the body which helps sets the political agenda in Brussels – will be conducted in French instead of English during the six-month presidency. It’s only during the Council, outside of the Council every country expects documents in their language.

Those meetings anyway have interpreters.

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

#325

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:10 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #264

varajelle wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luxembourg has its own language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourgish

Yes but it's not their "official" EU language. I don't know if they nominated German or simply didn't nominate one at all as German was already official.

[deleted]

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

#326

Post by estaseuropano » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:11 AM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #144

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…

My dad told me some time ago that for certain "low risk" documents, the EU distributed them in Norwegian to the Danish and Swedish camps, despite Norway not being in EU. The point being that both can read Norwegian sufficiently, and it saved one translation. Not sure if it's still done this way.

Definitely not. All documents have to be in the official languages.

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

#327

Post by skywal_l » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:27 AM UTC

mbroncano wrote: post #278

Koshkin wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish is an almost ideal modern language - it is straightforward in all important respects, while 90% of its vocabulary should be familiar to pretty much everyone.

Un ironically, Spaniards are too modest to even suggest this, but Spanish seems like an ideal solution to this issue.

And used by ~600m people in latin america.

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

#328

Post by 1_player » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:31 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #286

throwaway-571 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why does it seem to be impossible for other cultures to compete with the Americans in the realm of movies, tv shows, music, etc.? Is it just a matter of money? Couldn’t the EU fund their own version of Hollywood?

Nah, the EU is too busy forcing upon its member states a new language and other political posturing.

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

#329

Post by 1_player » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:35 AM UTC

silicon2401 wrote: post #51

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…

Anecdotally I can confirm those stats for Sweden. Some of the things I was blown away by in Sweden are: 1) Everyone's beautiful 2) Everyone's super tall. I'm 184cm and saw multiple women every day that were taller than me, let alone men. In the US it's quite rare for me to see women taller than me. 3) Everyone's rather slim. It's nice to see a population at healthier weights than what I'm used to in the US 4) Not onc…

What do point 1, 2 and 3 have to do with this thread?

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

#330

Post by JProthero » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:45 AM UTC

tgragnato wrote: post #268

Bayart wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a reasonable choice would be to opt for languages related to cultures of more practical rationality That's essentialist nonsense. How are German or Scandinavian cultures more « practically rational » in an empirical sense ? Is there anything to it beyond short-sighted stereotypes ? That's not even getting to the fact that rationalism and positivism have French input stamped all over it, with German philosophy genera…

Please do not attribute to me things I did not write. I did not mention positivism, which is not necessarily embedded in the political environment we have today. The main contributions in rationalism and empiricism are not French. German philosophy is not generally positivist, but that’s not what I wrote.

> The main contributions in rationalism and empiricism are not French.

Are you certain of this? I can think of many contributions to rationalism and empiricism made by French speakers that I feel are important. The metric system, for instance, was in large part a French project [01].

Here are a few French rationalists and empiricists that came to my mind when I read your comment:

Alain Aspect

Contemporary exerimentalist known for work in quantum optics [02]

Louis de Broglie

Quantum physicist known for pioneering wave-particle duality [03]

Nicolas de Condorcet

Mathematician and leading figure of the enlightenment [04]

Rene Descartes

Philosopher and mathematician known for the Cartesian co-ordinate system [05]

Pierre de Fermat

Mathematician known for his eponymous last theorem [06]

Joseph-Louis Lagrange