551–560 of 629 posts
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Well, this was 4 days ago, Spain in talks with Germany regarding the addition of official languages: https://www.politico.eu/article/catalan-basque-galician-boos...
If you can't find a common language within your own country, you shouldn't get to be one country.
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To be fair to the Frisians, there are around 40,000-80,000 native Irish speakers and 500,000+ native Frisian speakers.
Unfair comparison, imo. Irish (Gaelic) is a language which was intentionally suppressed for centuries.
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Go back and tell the founding fathers of america that. Not everyone in america was english speakers.
No, but everyone in the US was made, practically and in some ways officially, to become an english speaker.
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Part of the issue some people take with Ulster-Scots is that the current official 21st century literature doesn't read anything like the historic literature, which English speakers can easily read and understand. It's often made up of slang terms and archaic spelling, in an attempt to be as different as possible to English. Native speakers have complained that official documents and signage in Ulster-Scots are incomp…
> the current official 21st century literature doesn't read anything like the historic literature Does modern English read like historical English? > Native speakers have complained that official documents and signage in Ulster-Scots are incomprehensible to them. Sure, there are tonnes of issues with the "officialisation" of any language but the fact that there are "native speakers" involved in the debate strongly su…
If you can read and understand text from the 18th century, then yes. We're not talking about Middle English or Old English.
>but the fact that there are "native speakers" involved in the debate
I should have put native speakers in quotes as well. What counts as a native Ulster Scots speaker is someone who speaks English with an NI accent with some localisms thrown in.
Nobody speaks the official Ulster Scots that was invented because the Irish language was getting support and political leaders on the other side of the community felt they deserved something as well. The Protestant community in NI see it as a bit of an embarrassment.
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Irish is an official language of Ireland (there is signage and instructions in Irish up and down the Republic) , Frisian is not an official language of the Netherlands to the best of my knowledge Irish is certainly not a robust vigorous language but your 40,000-80,000 numbers downplay it I'd suggest. Here are some statistics from Deepseek Category Region Number of Speakers Source & Year Some Ability Republic of Irela…
> Frisian is not an official language of the Netherlands to the best of my knowledge Sorry, but it is.
Deepseek answers with, “The Constitution of the Netherlands is written in Dutch.
Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands and the language used for all primary government and legal documents, including the Constitution (Grondwet). Official Language: Dutch is the sole official language for national governance.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands: It's worth noting that the Kingdom of the Netherlands also includes the Caribbean countries of Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. While they have their own official languages (Papiamento and English), the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which governs the relationship between these countries, is also originally written in Dutch.
No Multilingual Version: Unlike some countries (e.g., Canada, Belgium, or Switzerland), the Netherlands does not have an official, legally equivalent version of its Constitution in any other language.
Therefore, the authoritative and legally binding text of the Constitution exists only in Dutch.”
The Constitution of Ireland is written in Irish and English and to the best of my knowledge where differences arise the Irish one takes precedence.
Nice, congrats. But that O looks like an ass.
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The EC is a government body. The voters do not elect the President, they elect the EC. The same way that voters elect their national governments, which then appoint the Commission.
1. The Electoral College isn’t a governing body. * It doesn’t have ongoing powers, authority, or political discretion like a parliament or the European Council. * It’s a one-time, ceremonial body that meets once every four years to cast votes reflecting (in nearly all cases) the popular vote results in each state. 2. Electors don’t deliberate or choose freely. * In almost every state, electors are legally bound (or a…
Fact of the matter is, neither the US President nor the EU Commission are directly elected. Both are appointed with one layer of indirection between them and a direct vote.
Either we call both elected or we call both unelected. To do so for one, but not the other is anti-European propaganda.
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Problem with these grant proposal things is that it favors established businesses over small founders. Establishes businesses have much more resources to go through all the legal / red tape issues. I’ve seen this in practice with innovation subsidies: small startup has to spend a lot of time to go though all the hoops, taking up significant resources, to get modest compensation for actual innovative work. Larger busi…
this! it favors established business with legal teams and (maybe more importantly) with connections. The EU is also great at creating a heavy regulatory environment. Which entrenches existing incumbents. So the EU creates barriers that favor big companies, then tries to fix it with grants that... also favor big companies. And then everyone's surprised that there's no innovation in Europe. From all the world's compani…
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The root cause of that is the lack of a true Capital Market union. In the US, you can get VC across state borders and VC can invest in any US company regardless of their location. Not in the EU. Investing in an Estonian startup from, say, the Netherlands is near impossible. And even if managed, now that NL investor has to repeat the entire process for Poland, Spain, Malta and other countries. EU Made Simple explains…
> Investing in an Estonian startup from, say, the Netherlands is near impossible If anything this would be due to Dutch regulations rather than Estonian ones. So that would be more of a problem for setting up VCs in the EU rather than attracting capital in general, as the same would apply to the rest of the world. Is it easier for a US or Singapore VC to invest in an Japanese startup vs an Estonian startup? As far as…
A texas VC can invest in a startup in Chicago and a startup in Florida can raise money from NY and so on.
> If anything this would be due to Dutch regulations rather than Estonian ones
Yes, because there's no unified capital market. You describe an effect not the cause. With 27 member states, if such regulations are bi-directional, you'd need 351 of such "regulations". If one way, you'd need 702.
In the US with 51 states, there aren't a total of 1,275 "regulation contracts" between all states, there's one, and it's federal.