We should adopt English and move on; majority of people know it and study it. Why regress?
The point of using a language in the first place is to understand each other.
Everyone learning a new language that will just substitute English would be an immense waste of time.
Seems odd, surely you could argue it was because of British imperialism (which also brought English to the US)? The British empire once covered 1/3 of the globe, it seems far more likely a cause.
The British Empire dominated large parts of the world, but it never dominated continental Europe. English was not widely spoken or taught in Europe until the end of WW2, when American culture became highly influential (although the UK did have its part through pop music).
The final push for English came with the internet and thus again from the US, I think. In many European countries there is a big divide in terms of English proficiency between people who grew up in pre or post internet era.
If this were the reason, then English should already have been the lingua franca in 1900. But it wasn't.
But the previous spreading of the English language by the English Empire certainly helped when the US emerged as one of the main beneficiary of WW2.
Even at its peak, English language wasn't as widespread as now. The French language was, especially in 18th and 19th century, having substituted Latin.
After WW2, US absolutely dominated the world coming off as the only victor in WW2 (that's my personal opinion) and used their position to place English language as #1 language of the world (over time), undisputed. The end of the cold war cemented this even further.
We can argue that British imperialism helped somewhat, that I agree with.
People who speak different lanaguges litteraly "think differently" and diversity of thought is absolutely essential to humanity progressing.
It's been positied that "Asians are better at math" because their languages have a more logical naming system for numbers giving many a small early advantage that accumulates over time. Other languges possess other attributes that impart such advantages or disadvanges giving us diversity of thought so that we can have new ideas about things and new perspectives.
This widely held belief is absolutely not a proven fact. It's called linguistic relativity or linguistic determinism [1] and the strong form (language determines thought) has not been taken seriously by researchers in the field for a while.
The weak form (language can have somewhat of an impact on the way you think) has not been proven or disproven and is a topic of debate. You just state it as if it was known, even though the causal relationship of most examples you could name can easily be the other way around (culture / thinking affects how a language develops).
I'd argue that everyone learning and speaking the same language would have immense benefits for a global society. You can keep recordings in museums and linguistic researchers to keep a historical record of languages, just like we have for other tools and methods that we no longer have any use for.
This is obviously not a very popular opinion of mine...
"English is the JavaScript of natural languages: easy to begin with, entirely bonkers, but used so widely you can't really avoid it."
[1] https://twitter.com/aerotwist/status/1129820477667586051
I would like this EU English to evolve in the direction of keeping a simple grammar and going towards a more regular pronunciation. Basically it would become a new form of Esperanto, except that differently from Esperanto it would actually have a viable path for many people to learn it.
I know I like to dream, but maybe...
I take that as a powerful argument against granting it any official preference: English is doing fine with or without being forced upon anybody. That would just provoke organized resistance.
"We should adopt English and move on; majority of people know it and study it. Why regress?" - Sorry but I have to disagree here. While I think it is important to study English, I am not convinced it would be a great idea to abandon other languages in favor of it. Languages are part of a culture and it's traditions. Abandoning the language might lead to a progressive death of certain cultural aspects of one's identity and that wouldn't be progress, imho, that would be the exact opposite.
Where are you getting that number? Ethnologue [1] claims 1.1B speakers, 1B of which live in China, 0.9B being native speakers.
And tomorrows language is mandarin. Let's not write off that 1.1B speakers. With the rate China is expanding its influence in the world, I wouldn't be surprised if in 100 years not speaking mandarin wouldn't look a bit odd.
But I think you were downvoted for the wrong reasons, since otherwise the argument is fairly sound. Chinese influence is continually increasing world-wide. It's mainly the writing system that prevents a wider spreading of Mandarin, and the Chinese cannot give it up because it unifies their nation. Another possible scenario is that other languages of China die out even more quickly than they already do now, thus paving the way to full mutual comprehensibility via Mandarin, which would then allow a drastic reform of the writing system. However, this seems unlikely to occur within the next 100 years.
But for children, and families, it is impossible. How can a child move and be expected to learn a new language immediately?
This seems like a huge disconnect. National governments need to start to offer (for parents that opt-in) primary and secondary education in English, with the entire curriculum and exams in that language as well.
Universities degrees are already offered in English, and at the very least fluency in the language is required to study most courses, since all of the articles, case studies and reference materials are in that language. It is time that that same flexibility was extended to the earlier years of education.
I've seen children do this repeatedly and without any issue whatsoever, it is the adults that struggle.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7735/865e2ea8fd8d9662f3916f...
This already exists in many places. European countries are used to offering education in multiple languages. Multilingual schools or schools teaching in something other than the local language have existed for hundreds of years.
It's extremely offensive to suggest that English is progress and other languages are a 'regression'.
A "neutral" language like Esperanto is a nice idea, and I would also like Latin as the EU language, as it can be argued to be the language that historically shaped Europe the most. But let's not fool ourselves, no one is going to stand for learning a new language from scratch (even if it's easy) when English pretty much Just Works(tm), and provides a lot of utility also outside the EU.
Personally, I'm from Spain and I'm not annoyed or upset about English being the lingua franca. I think we should abandon the idea of English "belonging" to its native speakers. When I talk to people from Germany, from China, or from Vietnam, for example our common language is almost always English, even if neither of us are natives. English is useful for us and belongs to us, as much as to someone from Gloucestershire.
I wonder to what extent coming up with a new name for it would help adoption.
The main difference is the accent (when I was staying in California as an Englishman they couldn't understand me when I said "Kettle" and their pronunciation sounded more like "Keddle")
But accents will always be an issue regardless of which language is chosen.
I think they should continue using English as it's pragmatic but also introduce Esperanto as another working language and encourage its use (I used to speak Esperanto and my Grandfather is fluent so I'm a bit biased I suppose)
The English tend to speak English better and have better grammar than Americans in my experience, but I do prefer American spelling (disclaimer: I'm American)
Why is there an absolute must to only have one official language? Why not chose several most widely spoken ones, including English, and let each speaker chose the one that suits them best?
I live in a country where we have 4 national languages and 3 official ones. Our members of parliament can express themselves in the language of their choosing and their speech/intervention is translated for the rest. That way people can express themselves in the language they are most comfortable in (that is often not English, unless it's their mother tongue) and that does not put older generations (who never learnt English) at a disadvantage.
Having one single language in a multicultural setting can be tricky.
We have this in Canada, and outside of Quebec, nobody cares about the French language. In fact, many manufacturers specifically avoid Canada in some cases due to the requirement to put both English and French on the packaging. All government communication has to be written twice. Government employees must have fluency in both languages.
All that waste, and for what? A language that nobody else uses.
Agreed. The EU should do the needful.
It would be like deja veni vidi vici all over again.
Examples:
Mi aeroglissator es plen de anguillas.
Multo ben, gratias. E vos?
Contente de facer vostre cognoscentia!
Il es un placer facer vostre cognoscentia!
Amarea vos dansar con me?
Parla plus lentemente, per favor
Patre nostre, qui es in le celos, que tu nomine sia sanctificate; que tu regno veni; que tu voluntate sia facite como in le celo, etiam super le terra.
Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. Its benefits are clear, it only needs a political support to thrive.
Both of these statements are not true, arguable at minimum.
Sorry for not explaining properly but if you do say something like this, is very likely that you are aware of the discussions around it and knows that this is very far from consensus in the linguistics field.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/studies-in-second-la...
Why do we all need to learn a new common language? We already have a perfectly serviceable one.
In any case, if we're going to go for a different common language then that really should be my native Greek because it's the language of the country who gave birth to European civilisation, and it was already the lingua franca of the people of Europe in ancient times, so there (i.e. everyone in Europe will have an argument to support their own language being the new common tongue).
___________
* And French and Italian and my native Greek
For example, compare the Interlingua wikipedia to the Esperanto one.
> Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language.
...only for many Indo-European speakers.
There are probably many cases where it would be easier for a native of some language to learn a specific similar language (i.e. for a Dutch speaker to learn German, or a Portuguese speaker to learn Spanish), but I would not be surprised if Esperanto minimizes the cost function for the net effort required for all native speakers/all second languages.
None of those advantages only apply to Indo-Europeans. It's not even fair to say Esperanto fits in the European language family. http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiat...
China is also one of the largest state supporters of Esperanto. You can take classes in it at University and Radio Peking has regular news broadcasts in it.
For example removing the 'U' from words like Colour.
Ireland is also an English speaking country in the EU.
And I don't know how much of the sentiment of "Let's Americanise!" Would be popular.
[1] https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti...
It really won't, especially the French.
> After a brief introduction in French, M. Seillière, the [French] president of the EU employers' federation, said he would speak in English because it was the international business language. Without saying a word, the French President left with the French foreign minister and finance minister. He only returned when the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, began speaking in French.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/outraged-by-...
We have a huge inferiority complex, and our own cainistic version of the black legend, that makes us revere anything foreign as better than the local version. We have petty fights re. official languages about whether traffic signs should read “A coruña” or “La coruña”; or whether the national news anchor should say “Gerona” or “Girona” when speaking in spanish. We have regional governments that push spanish out of their regions. We as a nation obsess over english; we dream of speaking it better, we make it sound cool in the ads. We mock our leaders for not speaking it properly.
No one seriously pushes in a coordinated manner for spanish being used in the EU as seriously as the french or german do. At most, we aspire to be the proxy for latin america relationships.
As soon as anyone proposes to use english, we will see it as the opportunity to not have half of europe speak in french.
At least Spanish is spoken by an order of magnitude more people than German, though (Latin America, and nowadays a third of USA as well)
Maybe. Definitely not to the extent France will.
I'm not sure it is actually an issue, it just feels weird as a French person to discover that French is not even required in your own country.
And why should it be? In big cities people tend to be more adaptive towards this than outside. If you go outside to the country side the situation will rapidly change.
But in every major European capital it is most likely possible to get around on just English.
I always make an effort when in France, Germany and Poland to speak the local language but more often than not the locals speak English much better than I speak their language and after a sentence or two the switch is made. Of course making an effort is appreciated anyway but there definitely is no expectation of being able to hold a full conversation in the language of the place you visit.
I'm not OP, but also at a Berlin tech company. I always say I'm glad I learned German (in a much smaller city elsewhere in Germany) before moving here. You absolutely can learn German here, and I know people who have, but I also know people who've lived here for years and don't know enough to buy a loaf of bread in a bakery. The problem is that you can get away with it: your colleagues can all speak English (and some of them can't speak Germany, in some workplaces, including mine); as an expat, you probably live in a neighborhood with lots of other expats, where the staff in restaurants and shops speak English (and it's not uncommon for waiters to be unable to speak German); you can make your friends exclusively in expat communities, and if you arrive in Berlin speaking no German, that's a lot easier than integrating into the local community without yet knowing its language. It's especially bad if your accent gives away that English is your native language.
Watercooler talk is usually english unless I am around a group of people where I know that they all speak good german, but that rarely happens tbh. It's more likely to hear another group talking portuguese, spanish or arabic :)
It sucks, because it's harder to learn German, because you don't use it on daily basis. Myself including. But I find it ridiculous that some people after many years are not able to handle A1. Come on.
Anyone who thinks that EU skepticism is exclusive to the Brits is in for a nasty nasty surprise.
Around 25 percent of Americans want their state to secede (1). A lot of Italians want Northern Italy to part with Southern Italy. Spain has Catalan and Basque separatists. The UK has Scotland, and perhaps even Northern Ireland.
There are many people in many places that think they would be better off in a more (formally) independent state.
For now, the EU skeptics are a small minority in most EU countries. I for one hope it stays like that. The EU has shown remarkable unity when met with Brexit.
1: http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in-four...
- British state doctrine has always been: We are the empire, the natural rulers of the world. We only live by chance near the rest of Europe, so we have to interact with the continent at bit more
- Britain was a net payer. We may strive for that to not be relevant, but if you pay you have influence
- Britain got many exceptions to the usual rules that allowed them to further their position
No other country has that combination, so the EU "skepticism" of others countries is less important, though there's still danger. We'll see how that plays out in the end, but still: GBs position was in many ways unique. Even if GB rejoined in a few years it probably wouldn't be the same.
Can you explain what you mean?
Even among very pro-EU political parties and countries across Europe, there has been no appetite for a new EU treaty since the Lisbon treaty. I'm willing to bet that there will be no further EU treaties for a decade or more.
And without a new treaty, there is little or no scope for further EU integration. The EU is a highly legalistic construct where powers are strictly defined by its multi-lateral treaties.
The idea that the EU civil service (commission) can just grab powers from national governments is anti-EU fud. Even within areas judged to be within the competence of the EU, the principle of subsidiarity (that power should remain with national governments unless absolutely necessary) is explicity a general principle of EU law.
But my point was (typing on mobile so maybe I skipped a beat there) that although I like these languages, I think they are indeed impractical and we should just adopt English or Mandarin.
Edit: also, where does that statement 'horrible to learn' come from? Honest question; I'm not sure how it works; not trolling here. We (the Dutch) are quite lenient with languages and I know why I am anyway; my German is as good as my English and my French and it did not take much effort learning these. I was not a very smart or particularly hard working student but when I grew up there was UK television, German television (the best of the bunch), Dutch television, Belgian television (was very good and original compared to Dutch tv as well, and with shows like Undercover very much back in the game) and French television; I learned most of my practical languages from watching scifi and horror when I was a kid.
Also, whenever I write CSS and type 'color', I think, this was developed in America so they have complete right to spell it however they damn well please.
Well just so you know, it was mainly developed on the Franco-Swiss border (at CERN) by Norwegian, Dutch and English citizens.
The largest role of America in CSS is influencing the spelling because of its cultural weight, but not developing the language.
In some ways, it's a dilemma of where to draw the line between "this is a person who hasn't experienced enough language and therefore is deficient in its use" and between "this is a person who's language has adapted to his micro-cultural/social/etc. context".
I could go on and on about this. I think it's a fascinating, relevant subject.
https://www.politico.eu/article/english-only-try-au-revoir-f...
Petty squabbles such as these diminish the EU.
You left out one important word: "only". Traditionally, all important meetings and records in the EU are translated into the major languages, some of them are available in most, if not all official languages. That makes it easier for all european citizens to read the actual records. English might be widely spoken, but fluency varies massively among the population. There's an argument to be made that this makes sense. I certainly wouldn't trust quite a few german politicians to negotiate in english, given the lack of grasp on the language that some have repeatedly demonstrated.
English gives an unfair advantage to native english speakers not to mention that it has a lot of legacy stuff that makes it hard to learn. Non-native speakers will always be seen as outsiders/2nd class.
> Non-native speakers will always be seen as outsiders/2nd class.
Not in my experience. But how would you measure that; in my personal experience, the Spanish and Brits treat my wife and me like their own.
Of course you can measure that! Try to get a job where communication and/or "presentation" skills are important(i.e lawyer, PR, media, investment banker etc)and see how it goes. Even the accent may cost you the job. The language skills are a handicap for any non-native speaker in the job market and not only.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperant...
Esperanto is a nice idea, but I think too few people could be convinced to learn it, if the utility of it remains questionable.
English is a global language due to its history (largely grounded in the British Empire's colonial history). Mandarin on the other hand in a global context as of today is still largely irrelevant because it's only spoken in one country, even as that country is as globally relevant as China.
That might change in the future but unless you specifically deal with China and Chinese businesses Mandarin is no more relevant on a global level than - say - Russian or German.
Chinese is not mandatory anywhere in Europe.
If countries offered Government services including education in English, it would hugely assist the movement of people and capital throughout the continent.
Consider: you are from Spain, and have been offered a job at a great company in Germany. You will speak English at the office and probably get around the city speaking English. But: your children need to learn German, fluently and immediately, in order to continue their schooling?
An official EU English would help pave the way for National Governments to offer services in both the local language and English.
If on the other hand you want all services to be available in English everywhere, then I don't think that's a realistic expectation, since it would require all public-facing government employees to speak decent English.
Because you're not only learning the language you study, but also the culture, norms, and values of the people speaking the language. One might be able to translate "Gezellig" (Dutch, cozy) of "Fika" (Swedish, afternoon tea) into English, but context and understanding will be lost in the process unless the English listener knows these distinctive words and their meaning within the cultural context.
Dutch and Swedish are still closely related to English by language as well as culture, imagine languages with no relation to English whatsoever; this "lost-in-translation" effect will be more pronounced.
A future universal translator might be incredibly good at translating, but will never be a substitute for human cultural understanding without having to explain every caveat and cultural intricacies to the user.
By all learning English, we can have a shared language, we're all able to understand each other in real-time, without technology, with less cultural ambiguity when interpreting.
And why wouldn't we learn English? Learning a second language is very achievable when you're taught in school as a child, and Engish seems like a good compromise between Romance languages and Germanic languages since English has a shared vocabulary with both.
Finally, I'm of course biased towards learning English, coming from a country where English is a mandatory subject in school. That being said; I assure you that no matter how good the translator; Seinfeld sucks in German.
Being able to classify europeans in first class (allowed to work), and second class EU citizens (PIGs, yellow jackets,... etc), probably.
- a language that is nobody's mother tongue: YEEEY!
- language that is not attached to any one culture: 10x YEEY!
Think about it! This could help global not just European unity: all the people of Asian and African origin who already speak fluent English could instantly embrace and join in and start building the new pan-European culture that will grow into a new and rich global culture. Freed from the tyranny of national-language-culture, this could be the first truly global culture Humanity has the chance to produce!
One thing Globalism 1.0 did wrong was trying to destroy culture. We know now that this leaves a void that attracts trash like racism, xenophobia and isolationism to get filled by these - culture too abhors vacuum! Now Globalism 2.0 can start right in the EU by constructing a new culture around a language that is nobody's own, at least on the cultural front. If this would ever work it will coagulate around it a new literature, then media etc. And finally we'd have a non-trash global culture that will be able to keep us united enough to properly address global issues like pollution and climate change!
</dream>
"Thanks for giving us this tongue that has allowed us to transcend as humans, now GTFO"
(Though, tbh, "international high-English" as spoken has a very latin vocabulary, with non-native-English speakers often choosing the latin variant of words instead of the "native UK/US" phrasal verbs and such, eg. "we're accelerating" instead of "we're speeding up" or "we're gaining up speed", "inadequate" instead of "unfit", "superfluous" instead of "useless" etc. Not sure if to love or hate it, mostly loving myself it I think, but it's interesting and sort of contributes to more precise/explicit communication.)
Could you expand on this, I'm not sure what you're referring to?
You need to CREATE ideas/stuff etc., and be occasionally violent/offensive with them (just be sure to offend everyone), otherwise unifomization and standardization will just destroy whatever is there to start with by diluting it out of existence.
The "globalism destroys culture" is a fav meme of the "other side" now, but it's not without base! If you pour water into wine, or if you mix all wines in equal proportions, you basically "destroy" wine. What you want is an authentically new kind of wine! And you can only build this on some neutral / owned-by-nobody foundation, otherwise everyone will want "wine 2.0" to be their style of wine, and you'll end up with some "designed by democratic committee" crap, instead of something designed by individual creative geniuses competing among themselves and building on top of this new neutral foundation.
If you really want to alienate the EU from the average EU citizen, make English its official language. And adopt a version only a tiny minority really speaks too, just to salt the wound! I'm not sure whether to be scared or laugh.
The fact that the EU has 24 official languages isn't meant to make its proceedings cumbersome or to necessarily facilitate national pride (although, it's certainly also that!), but to make it available to the general public. The official nature of all the member states' languages means you can submit documents in all those languages.
Everyone on Hacker News speak English, but it's not a majority in the EU who speaks or understands English comfortably. But it's easy to forget our privilege. Even as younger generations get more and more accustomed to learning, reading and speaking English around Europe, most are still more comfortable reading technical, political and legal texts in their own language.
They may understand the dialogue in Game of Thrones well enough, but can an Estonian farmer understand an EU agriculture subsidy determination, if it was written in English?
But a majority is comfortable with German or French?
Also, I can promise you that at least for Sweden, a vast majority of population would prefer English being the official language of the EU to something like French. We may not always be completely comfortable speaking English, but it's a language just about anyone will understand with a little effort.
UPDATE: just checked, Ubuntu's United Kingdom uses Metric system actually, no idea why was I thinking it'd be Imperial before.
In many international business settings in Europe English is the norm. Why should politics be different?
Unless you are bilingual the lost productivity of having to use non native language in business context would easily dwarf any cost savings, due to misunderstandings, miscommunication, not "Punkt genau" documentation etc ...
Heck, anyone can just try to do an IQ test in non-native language and see how the score drops.
Because politics is not business. Business is done with the criteria of efficiency, politics use the criteria of fairness. You should be able to speak to the EU institutions with whatever language you want. Not everybody speaks English.
Also, I don't know how many times you actually did business in an international context, and especially consumer facing stuff: you need to master the local language and good localization are often the key to success.
For example, the Spotify team did a great job customizing their product in different contexts, creating playlist that are clearly made by natives with the help and the insight of their data.
So it is absolutely not true that international business just happens in English: it might at a high level, but you need translations and cultural awareness to make it work.
This is exactly the reason why English (nor any other language) can be the EU official language.
That cannot happen and wont happen for at least a couple generations.
Most of that revolution is attributed to Noah Webster. To give some example of how it just made sense, he favored "or" over the British "our" in words such as "color" and "odor", "ter" over "tre" in "theater" and "center", "z" over "s" in "civilization" and "analyze", "e" vs "ae" in "archeology" (Brits write it "archaeology") and "paleontology" ("Palaeontology"). And many more.
As for your other questions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo.... Also feel free to look up specifically Noah Webster.
Meanwhile, Macron's proposal is impressively hypocritical(/real-political?), considering how much he has done to pump up English and diminish French...
Reasons like "then it's fair for everyone" doesn't make any sense when the UK is gone anyway, it would make sense right now since one country has an advantage, but not after brexit.
> It will be taking advantage of [the current] situation [since it] is already spoken by pretty much everybody.
Is the author saying it's more difficult to read or write british english than it is to read an as-of-yet-undefined EU english?
> It will rid the French or the Germans of the temptation try to make their language the dominant one
Right, once we adopt a currently fictional en_EU, they'll know they lost the battle. But the same would be true if we adopt de_EU or fr_EU or keep en_UK. Whatever decision is made, it won't lessen any discussion until said decision has been made.
> It will rid the Europeans of some of the oddities of British English which make it a tiny bit more complex
You mean adding silent letters to words like 'color' (colour) or 'no' (know)? To make the letters match the pronunciation, it needs an overhaul quite a bit larger than switching away from british english.
> It will give the Europeans some “closure” with the Brits
frowns
> It will give the EU a chance [words words words] to finally make widely understood some of the terms and notions that are specifically EU / European but are nowhere to be found in British or American English.
Like what? I have no idea what the author is talking about.
> It will give the EU a chance [words words words] to gain a stronger popular culture position on the world stage.
I think our various languages add a lot of culture rather than forking English. (Though I'd personally rather be rid of all the languages: fewer language is more convenient than yet another language.)
> It will further enable the EU’s communication with the entire rest of the world
Surely you're joking. Speaking a different language just for the sake of it helps international communication how?
> because guess what (working) language they already speak[: English]
... precisely, so why change it?
> expressions, idioms, etc. can be too specific, or “too British” [words words words], quite often those might be misunderstood or even completely missed out. Occasionally, that might be true of American English as well, but to a substantially lesser extent.
This is approaching sense. So let's have some examples? Because I still have no idea what the author is talking about, even if 80% down the article I did find the first and only sensible reason, assuming the mentioned understood-by-the-British-only expressions, idioms, etc. exist.
I'm wondering if this post is satirical or serious. Could be that I'm playing amazingly deep on someone's joke, but the other comments seem to treat it as a serious idea... not sure.
The Wikipedia article isn't very clear on what the language officially is. I don't see where I can find a reference of the changes it makes, aside from a few examples of ways to make English mainly more like French. It honestly looks as though it is just an excuse for people to use words incorrectly just because they have words in their own language that sound similar but mean something else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_entities_w...
Please also combine anglic with a conservative spelling reform: color, beautyfull, burocracys, enouf, allready...
Basically look at the most common spelling mistakes and chose those variants which are more logical than the current spelling.
The language should be called Anglic/Anglish, after the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles
It's already more of an ethnonym than a loconym. And ethnonym more in the sense of shared language and culture than common genes.
I'd even go as far as to propose adopting English as the main language for legal matters, public administration, business and education in each of the EU member countries.
The language barrier is the predominant obstacle preventing a closer integration between EU countries and collaboration between businesses across borders.
A single, unified language over time could remedy that problem.
This is exactly the point the article makes.
Hollywood movies and pop music already proved this after all. And for the youngsters, video games and memes.
Nice- a little controversial barb hidden in a larger, already controversial (but less so) article. Who is this Ivan Dikov? He sounds like a man who likes to stir the pot just to watch it boil over.
(Not that I don't fully agree with him, mind- but it's still a controversial and rather mean opinion).
Also, I would rather propose using Irish English as an official EU English dialect after Brexit. Not as boring as the American one.
I'm from Belgium and speak Flemish, our neighboring country is the Netherlands. We officially speak the same language. We have the same spelling, same rules, etc. Of course there are dialect variations, but the official language is exactly the same.
I always wondered why other countries don't try to do the same. For example Slovakia and Czech Republic. It almost is exactly the same language, and I know Slovaks were able to understand Czech. But it seems newer generations are unable to do that. So it's weird that these languages evolve away from each other, instead of towards each other.
The world is becoming smaller every day, so why not try to standardize at least the English language, which is mostly used in international settings?
But I guess it's also an ego thing, where neither UK or US (No idea which official variant they use in Australia/New Zealand) want to adopt the other countries rules.
Echt jetzt? Oh, really?
Why no fucking Esperanto, or Marain, Klingon, Elfish?
