[HN Gopher] European Commission English Style Guide [pdf]
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European Commission English Style Guide [pdf]
Author : nabla9
Score : 51 points
Date : 2021-03-15 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ec.europa.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (ec.europa.eu)
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| The EU needs to go further, and adopt a formal 'EU English',
| providing a framework for schools across the bloc to offer public
| education in English at all levels, at least in major cities.
|
| Adults can already move across the continent and work and speak
| English - why not children?
|
| Right now, its basically impossible to move across the continent
| with a family - you will need to send your children to expensive
| international schools.
|
| This is definitely one of the factors why the fertility rate in
| Europe is so low.
|
| For example in Bulgaria, international schooling in English in
| high school is about $12,000/year/child - more than the average
| annual salary!
|
| This is one of the major reasons the Anglosphere countries are
| such major migrant destinations - completely free Government
| education in English.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| > The EU needs to go further, and adopt a formal 'EU English',
| providing a framework for schools across the bloc to offer
| public education in English at all levels, at least in major
| cities.
|
| Never happening. You don't really understand how each country's
| language is part of our culture.
|
| > Right now, its basically impossible to move across the
| continent with a family - you will need to send your children
| to expensive international schools.
|
| Yes, it's easy, you just integrate in the country you live in
| and have your kids learn the local language.
|
| > This is definitely one of the factors why the fertility rate
| in Europe is so low.
|
| No, it's because kids are expensive and folks have less kids
| when access to birth control is decent / when folks are less
| religious, unless they have strong support from the government.
| See how having a kid and working as a mother in Germany is
| still considered shameful.
|
| My cousins back home in France didn't even think twice about
| having kids at 26-27, because they knew they wouldn't pay
| outrageous money for daycare or university.
| [deleted]
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| English is already becoming the de facto EU wide language, but
| things like schooling in English will take a lot more time.
| Local populations get a bit paranoid about the local language
| "dying" because a few foreigners choose not to learn it.
| mattmanser wrote:
| The English have now left though, perhaps they'll try and
| revive French's popularity as the language of diplomacy?
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| That's what's cemented Englishes ascendancy. No one wanted
| to give the British yet another advantage, now they're
| gone.
|
| The French have already lost that battle (English won), but
| I doubt they'll ever stop pushing their language.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| If your only goal is to attract economic migration then this
| may be fine. I'm quite happy with keeping the diversity of
| European languages intact and for someone who wants to make a
| real commitment to a country learning a language shouldn't be a
| problem.
|
| Also for what it's worth I moved around Europe as a kid coming
| from a lower middle-class background, didn't go to
| international schools, and learned two languages just fine.
| Kids pick languages up fast.
|
| Also what has speaking English or intra-european migration to
| do with fertility rates? For the European fertility rate it
| doesn't matter how much you move around in Europe.
| Morvan wrote:
| >The EU needs to go further
|
| No it doesn't. It is not within the purview of this
| supranational bureaucracy to be the gatekeeper of the English
| language. Bulgarians can stick with Bulgarian. There is a lot
| to do in that country to make it prosper on its own.
| cies wrote:
| With brexit we may want to use US spelling, just to piss m off.
|
| Also with brexit, the only country in the EU that speaks English
| is Ireland, and even they prefer to say they dont.
|
| Finally we can setup English as the language of the parliament,
| as it no longer favours one country over an other.
| esperent wrote:
| > even they prefer to say they dont.
|
| What? No we don't. Our official languages are English and
| Irish. Only something like 100k people speak Irish as a truly
| first language (as in, they use it more than English in their
| daily lives). It would take an extreme level of denial for
| someone to claim that Irish people don't natively speak English
| and I've never heard anyone say that.
| Symbiote wrote:
| English is an official language of Malta.
| hiddencache wrote:
| Malta too?
| ginko wrote:
| Personally I'd be in favor of a full orthography reform so you
| can actually write English like it is pronounced.
| _pmf_ wrote:
| Ziz iz a gud aidi.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I wonder how that will be possible without using accented
| letters. English doesn't use them but it seems like it
| should.
|
| E.g. Refuse (deny) / Refuse (trash), Permit (allow)/ Permit
| (a document of permission), Record (Vinyl)/ Record (to save)
| Rhinobird wrote:
| double a letter to add ephasis or indicate a long vowel.
|
| Reefuse / refuse, Permit / Permmit, Record / Reecord
| wl wrote:
| Which pronunciation would you codify?
|
| And we'd have to do it all over again in 200 years.
| ginko wrote:
| > Which pronunciation would you codify?
|
| How the average German fluent in English pronounces it.
| markvdb wrote:
| You're forgetting at least Malta.
| mattmanser wrote:
| I love the idea of using US spelling. Even being English
| myself, I've come to accept that the US spelling is always
| better. Although they should take y'all out back and shoot it.
| bloak wrote:
| There used to be the idea that a member state could only ask
| for one of its languages to be an official language of the EU.
| If this were true then the EU would have to drop at least one
| of: English, Irish, Maltese.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this
| will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be
| dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and
| keyboards kan have one less letter.
|
| There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when
| the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make
| words like fotograf 20% shorter.
|
| In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
| expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are
| possible.
|
| Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which
| have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
|
| Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the
| languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
|
| By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing
| "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".
|
| During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords
| kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi
| bl riten styl.
|
| Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi
| TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum
| tru.
|
| Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey
| vunted in ze forst plas.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks to D-Coder, HN users (ok, a few, and now hopefully more)
| know that this joke originated in a 1946 issue of Astounding
| Science Fiction:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12108263
|
| https://www.angelfire.com/va3/timshenk/codes/meihem.html
|
| http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57114
|
| It was traced in this 2002 article:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20050509113900/http://www.spelli...
|
| More here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23587507
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24101779
| d0mdo0ss wrote:
| Hihi, weal, francli de inglish languej culd rader be used as a
| sujestion for combaining multipl langazhes intu ei hosh-posh of
| sorts. It did lid as rader tu dis steit of afers, after ol. Hau
| abaut starting wiz pronouncin leters as dei show and no more
| funi interpreteisions and pronunsiasions.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Seeing that Ireland (and Malta) is the only English-speaking
| country in the EU right now, I'd say why bother...
| happy_path wrote:
| A phonological reform would be more appropiate than a spelling
| reform. English texts would keep the same and only the
| pronunciation would change.
| xxpor wrote:
| Ha! First we'd have to agree on the existing phonology!
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I cheerfully think that there is no way you're correct in
| this. The inertia of literature is nearly impossible to
| overcome; the nuance of phonology is impossible.
| refraincomment wrote:
| Good metaphor of what the EU represents. A 120 pages manual on
| how to be a completely dull person.
| BossingAround wrote:
| I look at the IBM style guide and Microsoft style guide fairly
| frequently these days. I wonder what does that say about the
| state of the US economy, politics, and ideology? Exactly the
| same amount as the EUC Style Guide about the EU, I'd wager.
| [deleted]
| cromka wrote:
| Sure. How about 441-pages long US counterpart?
|
| https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2016/pdf...
| mhh__ wrote:
| And? Don't you want your politicians to be boring, really
| Tor3 wrote:
| A 120-page manual about good writing practices - and that makes
| the reader a dull person?
|
| I read through the beginning of the document and it looks good
| to me. It seems to be a well-written readable document which
| can be immediately useful for people writing company
| documentation (such as myself - occasionally I have to pause
| writing code all day).
| Uberphallus wrote:
| And most importantly, consistency among documents produced by
| the same body.
| pavlov wrote:
| Legislation that needs to be translated into 24 languages is
| better off dull than ambiguous.
| Morvan wrote:
| >Legislation that needs to be translated
|
| Maybe that's your real problem right there.
| refraincomment wrote:
| Don't make me laugh about accuracy.
|
| EU is the most incompetent AND dull institution in the world.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| I'll never understand why some British people feel the need
| to loudly and obnoxiously rail against the EU, especially
| post Brexit.
|
| Is your current situation not the utopia you once imagined?
| Or was/is the idea that the EU must be destroyed at all
| costs, one taunt at a time, if necessary?
|
| Either way, good luck.
| cromka wrote:
| I think they progressed from denial onto anger nowadays.
| ithkuil wrote:
| But they will gladly fund a research into whether what you
| just said is correct or not.
| cromka wrote:
| We're all eagerly awaiting the most recent "World survey:
| the assessment of incompetence and dullness of the para-
| governmental organizations" report you forgot to link to.
| Uberphallus wrote:
| You don't really want to be creative when producing legal
| documents. Other (supra) government bodies have similar style
| guides.
| me_me_me wrote:
| Try MTV or any other reality tv then.
|
| > A 120 pages manual on how to be a completely dull person.
|
| Trump is what you get otherwise. Popularity contest with hollow
| interior.
| schuke wrote:
| Why say lot word when few word do trick? When me president, they
| see, they see.
| eplanit wrote:
| Very glad to not see any new silly woke rules regarding
| capitalization.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Don 't introduce flamewar topics unless
| you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated
| controversies and generic tangents._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| statstutor wrote:
| The fact that you needed to check for a particular rule
| suggests that it is perfectly suitable for a style guide.
| dash2 wrote:
| I immediately looked for the Commission's ruling on the Oxford
| comma. They approve it in only limited circumstances:
|
| "An additional comma before the final item is sometimes essential
| to help clarify the sense. Compare the examples below:
|
| X may not be added to beef, ham or processed meat and milk
| products [unclear]
|
| The use of X is forbidden in beef, ham or processed meat, and
| milk products"
|
| Bold, EC, very bold. But could this spark a backlash?
| me_me_me wrote:
| haha, I just glanced at the contents section and then caught
| myself reading the same section. But got work to do :)
|
| So dull as this document sounds, I find it interesting reading.
| klodolph wrote:
| Neither option (Oxford comma or no Oxford comma) is a bold
| choice. Both alternatives are endorsed by various style guides.
| Oxford comma is more common in the US, omitting it is more
| common in England, but every style guide agrees that the comma
| should be added / removed as necessary to fix ambiguity.
|
| There are definitely cases where introducing the serial comma
| creates ambiguity, because it can look like an appositive.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| Maybe are some irony in have "Oxford" coma use in America.
| Not use in Britain.
| nwellnhof wrote:
| It's interesting that after Brexit, only 1% of EU citizens are
| native English speakers. That's less than Bulgarian:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...
| rev_d wrote:
| That seems a little incorrect, considering that Ireland is non-
| English only on paper.
| makomk wrote:
| Ireland is quite small compared to the current size of the
| EU.
| secfirstmd wrote:
| Yep we are about 1 percent or just over I think.
| cies wrote:
| But it has 2/3 the population of Bulgaria.
| saberdancer wrote:
| That's exactly the point. Ireland is only larger country in
| the EU with native English speakers.
| esperent wrote:
| Ireland has English as an official language, along with
| Irish.
| xxpor wrote:
| I'm genuinely shocked only 43% know English as an additional
| language. I guess it depends on what level of knowledge they're
| looking for.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Eastern Europe used to be under USSR influence, which made
| English language education a rarity. Russian and French were
| much more popular. The public signs often had French as
| foreign language, not English.
|
| Older generations often know some French, Russian,German and
| even Spanish but rarely know any English. Minorities often
| speak the language of the country they live in, their mother
| tongue and 1 or 2 of the language listed above.
|
| For younger generation it's completely different of course,
| most speak the local language, the mother tongue and English
| + the language of the country they work if they are working
| abroad.
| gpvos wrote:
| In Slovakia, I met a waitress of about 25 years old who
| only spoke Slovak, Hungarian and a third language that I
| also didn't speak, maybe it was Russian. In a night train
| from Poland to Germany, I met someone of about 30 who only
| spoke Polish and German. So it can still differ a lot per
| person. (I only speak several western European languages.)
| iagovar wrote:
| You can have an entire life in and out of the internet with
| spanish, without need of English. I'm not saying it's the
| optimal choice, but only if you get technical you'll miss
| something.
|
| And this is even when localized results separate sites for
| Spain and Latin america. There's a bit of cross-interaction,
| but not that much.
|
| I guess this is possible with other languages to a varying
| degree.
| esperent wrote:
| I think that's a little misleading though, since virtually all
| north western Europeans (Netherlands, Scandinavia, Switzerland,
| Germany, Belgium etc.) that I've met who are under 35 or so
| speak English at very close to a native level. You can't say
| that about Bulgarian.
| mattmanser wrote:
| Being half-dutch, I wouldn't say fluent. Have you actually
| been to those countries, are are you just going by travellers
| you met?
|
| Even in Holland, which has an extremely good English
| education from 7 or 8 has plenty of people who are good, but
| not fluent, and for the older generations it's much, much
| lower level, broken sentences, much smaller vocabulary.
|
| When I was in France last time, 3 years ago, still plenty who
| struggled after I'd exhausted my terrible French. I've also
| noticed the French tend to speak French in game voice chat
| where almost everyone else will be using English, apart from
| Italians and maybe Arabic or Turkish or something (I don't
| really recognise the language).
| jobigoud wrote:
| Interestingly it's now quite similar in number to Catalan,
| which after all these years is still not an official EU
| language despite being spoken by ~10M people (~4M natively) in
| multiple countries.
| happy_path wrote:
| All Spaniards can speak Spanish according to Spanish
| Constitution.
|
| Thus, Catalan is a regional language. If the EU should have
| to provide translations and material in each of the regional
| languages, the cost of coding laws would be quite a bit high.
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