Earlier quoted context omitted.
Antivirus software is quite strong in EU: Avast and AVG (acquired by Avast) come to mind.
Eset too
F-secure
EU countries team up for semiconductor push
661–665 of 665 posts
Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push
#662Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The younger Europeans I met were all very eager to learn English... English IS the lingua franca in Europe, right now, at this moment, no question about it. Even the in remotest parts Generation Z and younger speak and understand a little bit, it is only the older folks who still remember the EU with borders are reluctant to speack anything else other than their own language. And there are more and more people pick…
> No more awkward meetings where 20 people understand each other reasonably well, but not the single UK representative... (true story) I'm confused by this. Are you saying that the native English speaker in the room was the one having difficulty understanding what the other non-native speakers were saying?
This is generally true, native english speakers are usually less equipped to understand weird accents while non-native speakers are used to conversing with non-native speakers. non-native speakers are by definition bilingual which might help.
Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push
#663Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you have any references of English actually being phased-out in EU? It's not clear yet if it will be used in official documents after Brexit agreements will be signed, but UK was the only country who chose English as an official language. There's an hard requirement in EU to translate every official document in every language spoken in the EU, if English is not an official language, that requirement will cease t…
What language the EU documents are written in is entirely irrelevant for the EU citizens though (they'll get translations anyway). What matters is what people choose as their second language, and I'm pretty sure English is and will remain the most popular choice. (and the US cultural influence is the main reason for this, the UK doesn't really matter much in that regard since around the 19th century).
Yes and no.
First of all, I'm European.
Use of English as a second language, it might surprise you, dropped in the past 10 years, it was spoken by 52% of the population in 2012, now it dropped to 44%.
Not native speakers, English is the fourth language in Europe for number of native speakers, after German, French and Italian (if we don't count Russian, largely first with 120 million native speakers)
Secondly, things can change rapidly.
20 years ago the most studied second language in Italian schools was French.
Thirdly, in Europe countries have spoken to each other for centuries, when I go to Spain I speak Spanish, when I go to France or Belgium I speak French, I can also speak some German.
Of course not perfectly, but we still understand each other better than through English, because of similarities in the languages.
So yes, second language counts, but only when other options are worse (I speak English with Sweds or Dutch - I've been studying Swedish on my own but my progress with the language have been very slow)
In many schools we study more than 1 foreign language.
I studied French in primary and middle school then English and German in high school.
They were regular public schools, far from the best.
It's quite common elsewhere.
My cousins live in Belgium, their kids study French, Flemish and of course Italian in school.
Many Italian researchers, for example, move to Germany and they learn German because it's better to know it when you live there, English is used to bootstrap the social life and at work.
CERN is in Switzerland and even though I believe everyone there speaks English, in Geneva the official language is French, it helps a lot outside of work to learn it, more than English. Move a few Kms and they speak German, go South and they speak Italian and you will still be in small Switzerland.
Where many people are naturally bi or trilingual.
Adding English as a third/fourth it's very easy for them.
Eventually everybody will learn some English, undoubtedly, but it's gonna be foreigners' English, that it's different from proper English and sometimes it's pure nonsense for native speakers and viceversa.
Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push
#664Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an American, I was surprised by the amount of English education I encountered in European. Though the places I visited: Sweden, Rome, Greece, Netherlands, France, Spain, Vienna, Ukraine, Berlin all have above average levels. Do you see the Brexit changing this? Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_in_Europe
Nah, the amount of English education across Europe is a function of global business and cultural production (Hollywood and the internet). Those will not change even after Brexit.
China is the largest producer of cultural products in the World right now, Hollywood itself made blockbusters there, financed and co produced by China.
It has already changed, before Brexit was even a thing.
From 2013
China is now the lead exporter of cultural goods, followed by the United States. In 2013 the total value of China's cultural exports was US$60.1 billion; more than double that of the United States at US$27.9 billion.
Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push
#665Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mostly it exists so we don’t kill each other -European imperialism is a direct outgrowth of being the most warlike continent for hundreds of years. When they talk about “civil war times” in the history of China ... that’s the whole history of Europe. I have 300 castles around my hometown ... I can find WW2 bombs and Munition from the 30 years war in the forest.
You severely underestimate Asian warfarers.
So true - and the comparison might not even be possible, but Europe had very small units fighting each other and at the same time there was a feeling of common religion and culture. That is pretty unique and uniquely stupid. So let’s state it a bit differently we are complete idiots and we were mostly governed by 5 families over 1000 years and these 5 families fought each other and burned everything into the ground and then married each other. So to be no longer governed by complete idiots that fight each other mostly for entertainment there is the EU.