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

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

#371

Post by SllX » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #362

SllX wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the two capitals of the EU. Why does the EU need two capitals? Because France wanted a win. The European Parliament would love to pick up and leave Strasbourg, but it is legally bound to meet there several times a year for a full session despite the majority of its work being in Brussels.

> One of the two capitals of the EU. Why does the EU need two capitals? Because France wanted a win. Yes, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Strasbourg is the capital of a region which was highly contested between France and Germany and changed hands multiple times in the last two centuries and is seen as a symbole of the reconciliation between the two countries. It's also not linked at all with the f…

As a general principle, the capital is wherever the seat of the Executive and Legislature is based from. The European Parliament is split between two cities, spending a minority of its time in Strasbourg. You don’t have to put it on paper to call it a capital.

The symbolic rhetorical cover is interesting, irrelevant, and fulfilled by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and other CoE institutions. More importantly, the European Union already symbolically represents a reconciliation between its member nations encompassing more than merely Germany and France.

Basing the European Parliament out of Strasbourg for a time may have made sense as it could share a building with an existing pan-European institution, but to keep it legally bound to continue spending a minority of the year there when the bulk of the EU’s institutions that the European Parliament is concerned with are in another city in another country is just silly and entirely rectifiable.

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

#372

Post by Aerroon » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

esyir wrote: post #311

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.

And in the process it kills off the smaller languages in said union along with their culture? Look at France and what happened to their local languages in just a few hundred years.

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

#373

Post by Avamander » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:32 PM 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.

Yes really. About your example, what have you heard about the difficulty of learning Finnish and Estonian?

That aside, there's no way there's an universal easy-to-learn language. Language families are very different.

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

#374

Post by dang » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

holyknight wrote: post #175

are they retarded or something?

Your comments have been breaking the site guidelines. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, so we don't have to ban you?

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

#375

Post by thu2111 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #348

popsicum wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

> It will not happen overnight but it does fuel nationalistic ideologies Sadly those ideologies fuel themselves. This is in fact an attempt at a propaganda victory, in an electoral year, to try and stop the ultraright from conquering the French presidence next April. > all I see is them concerning with offense, accusations and procrastinating issues All you see is what the anglo press wants you to focus on. The Union…

Marine le Pen doesn't give a shit what language the EU uses, that claim is a distraction. Her and others like her think France needs to care about the EU a whole lot less, and the EU should be much less important in France, so she's really the last kind of person who would expend political capital on such a thing.

BTW the EU sucks at peace and settling disputes. If it was good at the whole "peace in Europe" thing it wouldn't be constantly rolling boulders down the hill at the UK and Switzerland but rather, find ways to work amicably with them as productively as possible. It doesn't of course, it just threatens them and tries to force them into the EU's power structures regardless of popularity or the creation of resentment, which is exactly why the "ultra-right" as you put it (lol) is constantly gaining ground. Someone has to care what voters think, after all.

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

#376

Post by Avalaxy » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 10:03 PM UTC

TX0098812 wrote: post #334

Avalaxy wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

> If you go to the Flanders region people will certainly tell you they speak Flemish.

And they would be right. They do indeed speak the Flemish dialect.

> That's an opinion, not a fact, and one that depends on who you ask and where

I don't see how it is "an opinion" if Flemish literally adheres to "Standaardnederlands" (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standaardnederlands). Your analogy to German doesn't make any sense here. The Dutch language doesn't adhere to some "Germanic" standard language or anything, and barely has any grammar rules in common with German (even though the languages are very similar).

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

#377

Post by string » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

mahkeiro wrote: post #300

posterboy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* France: 0% proper English, 99.9% French their English is terrîble

The ability of a native english speaker to speak any other language than their own is abysmal…

Not exactly surprising given the ubiquity of the English language. I always find it funny how it's used as a criticism of English speakers. We are no less able to learn other languages, it's just far less of a necessity. I can speak a bit of German, a bit of French, a bit of Japanese, a bit of Lingala, etc. Inevitably whenever I attempt to speak these languages in their native environments, I am spoken to in English. So I can learn them as a hobby but need to far less out of necessity.

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

#378

Post by toyg » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 12:10 AM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #375

toyg wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It will not happen overnight but it does fuel nationalistic ideologies Sadly those ideologies fuel themselves. This is in fact an attempt at a propaganda victory, in an electoral year, to try and stop the ultraright from conquering the French presidence next April. > all I see is them concerning with offense, accusations and procrastinating issues All you see is what the anglo press wants you to focus on. The Union…

Marine le Pen doesn't give a shit what language the EU uses, that claim is a distraction. Her and others like her think France needs to care about the EU a whole lot less, and the EU should be much less important in France, so she's really the last kind of person who would expend political capital on such a thing. BTW the EU sucks at peace and settling disputes. If it was good at the whole "peace in Europe" thing it…

The point is precisely that LePen's platform claims the EU is a net negative because it ignores French interests. By pursuing the old Mitterrandist project of having an EU under French leadership, Macron is trying to negate that platform.

As for the "constantly rolling boulders", I think you're not being objective. Both Switzerland and Britain agreed on a set of rules decades ago, and are now reneging on them. Surely it's their responsibility to find solutions for the new problems they've created? And once solutions are agreed, surely they should implement them? The only answer from the Anglo press is "no, because everyone must accommodate us", which is frankly embarrassingly juvenile. Even inside the UK a lot of people don't agree with this English manoeuvreing, and absolutely everyone in Northern Ireland knew that the Brexiteers' promises were as unrealistic and unrealizable as they turned out to be. The attempt to unload responsibility for their own actions on a third party is like a child shouting "It wasn't me!" when caught with a hand in the jar and jam all over his face.

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

#379

Post by Agingcoder » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 6:41 AM UTC

madia_leva wrote: post #343

Agingcoder wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I don't understand why the French government wants to do that - it's quite ridiculous. However, I also suspect that it has to do this kind of public stunt to satisfy the conservative right wing, especially with the presidential election next year. Furthermore, I think you are missing something quite fundamental here - French is pretty much one of the core building blocks of France, and no, this is not o…

I agree with you, in fact. The issue is that the fact they decided to impose a single language to all the country is another example of the nationalism I was talking about. Deciding to erradicate existing languages and cultures for nationalistic reasons. That is cultural genocide. It's not unlikely of what Chinese are doing. You can contrast this with the case of Switzerland or India where you see you can have a stro…

Understood.

I agree with the cultural genocide part, however I'm not sure if they did it for nationalistic reasons ('my country' s great and better') , or for practical reasons ('it would be much better if we spoke the same language and our soldiers could actually communicate' ,etc) unfortunately driven by the hypercentralism which has permeated throughout French history, and still plagues the country to this day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_%28politics%29?wprov=s...

Interesting discussion, I'll read a bit more about French history and language politics!

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

#380

Post by WastingMyTime89 » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

SllX wrote: post #371

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the two capitals of the EU. Why does the EU need two capitals? Because France wanted a win. Yes, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Strasbourg is the capital of a region which was highly contested between France and Germany and changed hands multiple times in the last two centuries and is seen as a symbole of the reconciliation between the two countries. It's also not linked at all with the f…

As a general principle, the capital is wherever the seat of the Executive and Legislature is based from. The European Parliament is split between two cities, spending a minority of its time in Strasbourg. You don’t have to put it on paper to call it a capital. The symbolic rhetorical cover is interesting, irrelevant, and fulfilled by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and other CoE institutions. More…

> As a general principle, the capital is wherever the seat of the Executive and Legislature is based from.

That's what people call a de facto capital. Still the EU intentionaly has no capital in its laws.

> The symbolic rhetorical cover is interesting, irrelevant

It's in no way irrelevant nor a cover. It's the reason Strasbourg was selected as the seat of the parliement in the 50s.

You can't discard facts because they don't suit your worldview. I will personally stop this pointless discussion.