[HN Gopher] French set to replace English as EU's 'working langu...
___________________________________________________________________
French set to replace English as EU's 'working language'
Author : nomoreplease
Score : 137 points
Date : 2021-06-09 18:03 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.independent.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.independent.co.uk)
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Why not Latin?
| twic wrote:
| The Greeks wouldn't like that.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Ah, a return to the diplomatic norms of the 178th century.
| Literally a lingua franca, after all.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Not literally, no. The literal Lingua Franca spoken across the
| eastern meditarranean was named for the "Franks", which simply
| meant "Western Europeans" to the people speaking in lingua
| franca; but was mostly based on Italian, with slavic and Greek
| influences. So the French, the Prussians, the Venetians,
| probably even the Polish were "Franks" in the sense used in
| Lingua Francia.
|
| In turn, the use of the term Frank to refer to western
| europeans was in relation to the Frankish Empire, a
| confederation of germanic tribes. France is one descendant of
| the Frankish Empire, Germany being another. The Franks
| themselves spoke a germanic language.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Time traveler detected.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Only Ireland has English as their primary language of the EU so
| it makes sense.
| docdeek wrote:
| Malta has English as an official language, too.
| Tehnix wrote:
| Yet by far the biggest shared language in the EU is english, no
| contest.
| tinomaxgalvin wrote:
| It makes no sense at all.
| gm3dmo wrote:
| What if you want to make organisations who need English
| translations of EU documents foot the bill for translating
| into a non Official EU language?
| TX0098812 wrote:
| That would be everyone.
| TX0098812 wrote:
| What makes sense is for everyone to use the single language
| that people are able to effectively use to communicate across
| Europe, namely English.
| gumby wrote:
| English is the dominant language of Ireland, Malta (and
| Scotland and Wales) but as each has a "national" language and
| English had already been selected by the UK, Ireland nominated
| Irish and Malta Maltese as an official EU language.
|
| So at the moment there is no country that has claimed English
| as its official language for EU purposes, thus it's legally OK
| to ignore anything official from or within the EU that is in
| English.
|
| Malta has the population of Oakland, but most of the people
| there apparently speak Maltese. Ireland has about half the
| population of the Bay Area but only about 40% of them claim to
| have some facility in Irish. In both countries it appears
| English is universally understood and spoken. (all this info
| from Wikipedia FWIW).
|
| I think it would be smart for the EU to nominate an English (of
| some sort) as the supranational language as it would elevate no
| member state over another. This same approach has worked pretty
| well for India, where the use of that language has a far more
| fraught history. But Malta or Ireland could simply take one for
| the team and switch their nominated language.
| dmurray wrote:
| Malta and Ireland benefit from having an official language.
| The EU employs Irish and Maltese translators in extremely
| well paid tax-free jobs.
|
| Maybe Austria would do it? It's the only EU country I can
| think of that doesn't claim to have its own language. Edit:
| also Belgium and Luxembourg.
| varajelle wrote:
| Luxembourg has its own language
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourgish
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > But Malta or Ireland could simply take one for the team and
| switch their nominated language.
|
| I'm pretty sure that you can have more than one nominated
| language, given that Belgium and Spain have a bunch of them.
| madia_leva wrote:
| Not really. Every EU Member State could only nominate one
| language. Some of them nominated an "alternative" one
| because their main one was already an official language
| (e.g. Irish).
|
| This is the reason the only Spanish language which is an
| official EU language is Castillian. The other three
| (Galician, Catalan and Basque) are not EU official
| languages. Same happens to many other languages spoken in
| Europe.
| [deleted]
| gm3dmo wrote:
| It seems Ireland's official language of the EU is Irish:
|
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2018-00402...
| gdsdfe wrote:
| Somehow this made wonder if Esperanto or at least the idea behind
| it that we can come up with one common language to use worldwide.
| If that was actually successful we might have less of this
| nonsense but then again good luck having everyone agreeing on
| something ... Hmm oh well
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Esperanto is the Linux of languages.
| mannerheim wrote:
| That's way too generous. Linux at least dominates in servers
| and smartphones.
| tygrak wrote:
| And Linux is much more sensible than Esperanto. It is also
| very eurocentric, which would be ok in this context. But it
| really is mostly just romance/germanic language based,
| slavic and other languages are basically ignored.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I would take English and make it make some sense... It's not
| horrible, if you make it regular and fix the spelling.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| And the pronunciation. All those inconsistencies are a
| minefield. Now I'm off eating some Ghoti.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Or, you could just switch to French!
| qsort wrote:
| > if that was actually successful
|
| It was successful. That language is English, the obvious choice
| agreed upon by everyone who isn't interested in playing idiotic
| political games.
| gdsdfe wrote:
| Yeah for you yes, for others it's synonym with colonialism,
| and armed invasion.
| leke wrote:
| A single, permanent auxiliary language will never be
| implemented as long as people can make a repeated choice. Like
| with this storey, official languages will flip-flop based on
| power struggles. If there ever was an official auxiliary
| language though, I would wish it to be Ido.
| dvh wrote:
| I didn't learn English to understand British. I learned it to
| understand Americans. So nothing changed for me.
| coldcode wrote:
| I say if you want a universal language everyone should learn
| Latin. Now you won't offend anyone. Except the French.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| In case there are any other French-reading Latin-philes out
| there: https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/culture/et-si-la-langue-
| officiel...
| cheph wrote:
| Pretty offensive to me.
| kelnos wrote:
| Joking aside, it's a shame Esperanto didn't catch on. One of
| its features is that it's fairly easy to learn, unlike
| something like Latin.
| leke wrote:
| Well it's a growing movement, so it's still catching on. Who
| knows, it could become popular enough one day.
| lamontcg wrote:
| They should just flip the ECs English Style Guide to use
| Americanisms whenever possible (short of flipping the date and
| numerical formats or using freedum units).
|
| Teach everyone to spell it "color" in Europe if you want to be
| petty back at the Brits.
| TX0098812 wrote:
| France going for the tower of Babel.
| sidpatil wrote:
| I'm reminded of this clip from ST:TNG:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KlhzX7UKKNU
| yardie wrote:
| After getting the middle finger from the UK they are slowly then
| quickly excising the English out of their lives.
| adventured wrote:
| France is sitting on an economy that hasn't net expanded in
| inflation-adjusted terms since approximately 1980. Forty years
| of stagnation, you'd think a nation would consider what it's
| doing wrong. Their position and importance in the world has
| collapsed over the past half century - and that's only going to
| get worse yet.
|
| It's pretty clear how that middle finger exercise is going to
| turn out for France. The British at least, for their part, are
| riding the global language (which gives them all manner of
| advantages, not least of which is cultural export which helps
| to maintain relevance).
|
| (and no, Mandarin does not have a future in that language role,
| China's population will rapidly decline and Mandarin is
| extremely difficult to learn, while simultaneously the global
| population that speaks English will continue to expand; in 50
| years more people will be speaking English and fewer people
| will be speaking Mandarin)
| kmlx wrote:
| > the global population that speaks English will continue to
| expand; in 50 years more people will be speaking English and
| fewer people will be speaking Mandarin
|
| interesting. any sources where i could find out more?
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yeah, good luck with that. Easier said than done.
|
| Brexit makes the case for English even stronger as it is more of
| a neutral common ground than before (since Ireland and Malta have
| it as official languages - though not the "first" official
| language of Ireland, in theory, of course)
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I'm currently reading a book about the Congress of Vienna and
| it's amazing that the Russian Tsar argued with the English
| ambassador in French. Here were all the rich and powerful men of
| Europe dividing up the continent and there wasn't a single
| translator needed.
| d0mine wrote:
| Russian tsars are likely not even native Russian speakers. I
| listened to a recording recently -- the accent is obvious.
|
| Same family https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/king-george-tsar-
| nicholas-1...
| amilios wrote:
| Interesting -- what kind of accent is it? Would it be most
| similar to the accent a German native speaker would have
| speaking Russian today?
| kleton wrote:
| That would have been Aleksandr I's first language even.
| j7ake wrote:
| The aristocrats in Russia back then probably spoke French as
| well as or better than Russian if Tolstoy books are to be
| believed.
| dgaaaaaaaaaa wrote:
| ^ This is right. It happened because of Peter the Great's
| westward alignment of the royal machinery and continued till
| the last Tsar.
| tjalfi wrote:
| That sounds like an interesting read, what's the title of the
| book?
| madia_leva wrote:
| Sometimes countries insist of fighting wars that have been over
| for a long time. This is one example. American attitude towards
| China rise is another example.
|
| Now more seriously, I think what the French are trying to do is
| just to avoid a complete switch to English in the EU
| institutions. Since the start of the pandemic, most meetings
| which used to be multilingual (with interpretation) are now
| English only and nobody seems to have a big problem with that. If
| anything, it makes interactions more natural (talking through
| interpreters is a pain in the ass). French are probably worried
| that this could be here to stay and are just trying to go back to
| the status quo.
| galgot wrote:
| I think from the French Gov it's just a way to express how fed
| up they are with UK Gov Brexit policy. They very well know that
| English is now the predominant language, Macron is in fact the
| first French president speaking English so well in public. Long
| gone is the "francophonie" policy of the 80's, the number of
| French peoples speaking English have increased considerably in
| the last 15/20 years. I see no "worries" about French being
| less used from the French officials, more a give up, which is
| kind of sad. So this move is very political.
| madia_leva wrote:
| I don't really think that they care about British on this
| one. They are gone, after all.
|
| What really happens is that in the 15 last years English has
| gained space foot in the EU institutions, to the point that
| they are quickly becoming just English speaking. You have a
| service which used to homd all meetings in English, a new
| Croatian, Hungarian or Polish staff member who doesn't speak
| French arrives and suddenly all the meetings and mass emails
| are written in English. The opposite doesn't really happen.
|
| After the start of the pandemic French suddenly lost almost
| all space in meetings with Member States representatives or
| just multiple services present. They have become English
| onlycause there is no interpretation anymore and many people
| can't speak or even understand French. Many people that chose
| to speak French in meetings (mostly as a matter of principle)
| now speak English. The change in the last year was huge.
| French just want to go back to the previous status quo.
| tinomaxgalvin wrote:
| Why are they worried? English isn't English anymore. In fact it
| makes sense to chose a language that isn't the native language
| of any EU nation. (I'm squinting regarding Ireland).
| madia_leva wrote:
| Well, it's history and education.
|
| In every country children are told quite silly things about
| the world and, in particular, about the importance of their
| country in the world. This is even worse for current or
| former empires (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece,
| Russia, US, China...).
|
| Children there are told they are special and superior in some
| way to other children who were born in other places. It's not
| surpising that they end up asuming those lies as something
| obvious and natural. The most striking example nowdays is of
| course the United States, just because they are the biggest
| superpower (China's children are not less indoctrinated,
| though). Most American adults believe that their country is
| the biggest democracy the world has ever seen (cough, cough,
| India), their lifestyle the highest (Scandinavia smiles
| amusingly with a barely hidden condescending gesture) or that
| their wars are fought just to defend freedom (and Irak
| invaded because of the mass destruction weapons, apparently).
|
| In the case of France they take as reference the Napoleonic
| times where their country was dominant and their language the
| vehicule of culture and politics in Europe. They also think
| the French Revolution invented real democracy or something
| similar (even though American Revolution started more than
| ten years earlier and Greeks had true democracies a couple
| thousand years before that).
|
| Of course, those days are long gone, but this is what French
| are tought since they are small children, so most of them end
| up believing it.
|
| Nationalism is a serious disease and most countries are
| infected.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| 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 obvious. 150
| years ago, not many people spoke French in France : they
| spoke Basque, Breton, Occitan, Corsican, Alsacian, and
| various forms of patois. What brought French everywhere was
| compulsory education led by missionary style teachers,
| world war I, and forbidding people from speaking their
| regional language. In essence, the language was a political
| tool to unify the country, and the French never stopped
| considering language as a political tool.
|
| You may assume that this is 'arrogant nationalist French'
| behavior, but I will disagree.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Unfortunately (or fortunately), English is practically the
| native tongue of Ireland now (and has been since the 18th
| century, to be honest).
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| I guess that is one of the few good things to be colonized by the
| Brits as a colony - they gave us fish & chips , tea , soccer ,
| cricket and their language.
| favorited wrote:
| Wait until you learn where they got the tea...
| tgv wrote:
| > the taste and pride of multilingualism
|
| For everybody but the French, that is.
|
| > that ersatz of the English language, which narrows the scope of
| one's thoughts, and restricts one's ability to express him or
| herself
|
| And the ability to formulate a new policy with a subtle twist in
| your favor that no-one gets until it's too late.
|
| Embarrassing.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| > that ersatz of the English language, which narrows the scope
| of one's thoughts, and restricts one's ability to express him
| or herself
|
| This sounds awfully close to Sapir-Whorf
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
| Tsiklon wrote:
| I'd have thought they would have kept English as it's effectively
| a neutral language at that point - it would be convenient to
| avoid accusations of German or French dominance should either
| push for their's in English's place
| twic wrote:
| Are the Irish a joke to you?
| smcl wrote:
| It's worth remembering that in addition to _not_ being one of
| the two historic mainland European powers whose languages
| happen to be the other working languages of the EU (and
| therefore unlikely to be jostling for supremacy in a post-
| Brexit EU), Ireland has been famously neutral during its
| existence as an independent nation. So I don 't see what the
| problem is with characterising English as a "neutral"
| language in this context.
| occamrazor wrote:
| Every country in the EU can choose one language as the
| national language. Ireland chose Irish.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Bear in mind, this kind of French bloodymindedness is why we
| have "UTC" - because if they couldn't have "temps universel
| coordonne" (TUC) then we damn-sure weren't going to have
| "coordinated universal time" (CUT).
| mywittyname wrote:
| UTC works out better anyway. TUC and CUT are both terrible
| choices. With UTC the focus is on Universal Time and nobody
| cares what the C is for.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Shame there's no real-world interest in the powers that be to
| officialize Esperanto.
| w0de0 wrote:
| A language with no literature or culture has no business in
| the halls of state. Such a language is arguably not even a
| language in the real sense, but a code. A vernacular is
| needed - language must live and evolve.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Esperantists have tried, creating a pale imitation of the
| real thing, as if culture were something you could
| bootstrap by mixing the right ingredients as you would some
| sort of cake.
| mannerheim wrote:
| What would be the point? Might as well make Klingon an
| official language.
| Semiapies wrote:
| Too many people actually speak Klingon, and it was invented
| in the US. Non-starter.
| chillacy wrote:
| If Klingon were invented in Europe and designed to be a
| pan-european easy-to-learn language, sure. Otherwise,
| Esperanto has some desirable attributes as a universal
| second language.
| Avamander wrote:
| "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.
| leke wrote:
| True. I struggled with Esperanto for 10 years, only to
| give up and try Ido.
| beebeepka wrote:
| What's your native tongue? I guess that would make non
| insignificant difference
| mannerheim wrote:
| There are other, better-designed conlangs than Esperanto.
| Nobody speaks them, sure, but nobody speaks Esperanto
| either. And if we're going by popularity, might as well
| pick English anyway.
| leke wrote:
| Esperanto has a pretty big, organised and active
| community. But you're right. I also think popularity
| should be the decider. If Esperanto thinks it should be
| the chosen auxiliary language, it will have to earn it.
|
| Personally though, I prefer Ido over Esperanto.
| mnouquet wrote:
| Define "pretty big".
| tdeck wrote:
| Esperanto is considerably easier to learn than Klingon.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It _would_ be a cool sci-fi reference, yep.
| kergonath wrote:
| Quenya would be a much better sounding option.
| ben_w wrote:
| One is designed to be easy to learn, to be regular and
| logical and use roots familiar to European ears, the other
| is designed to sound alien.
|
| (Does Klingon have a word for bridge-of-a-ship and not
| bridge-over-water, or is that just an urban legend?)
| bawolff wrote:
| https://www.kli.org/about-klingon/new-klingon-
| words/date/# says that QI is klingon for bridge over
| water.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Doing so strikes me as being impractical in the extreme.
| English would still be the the lingua franca in every other
| domain, so it would just mean that Europeans would have one
| additional lingua franca to have to learn. It doesn't matter
| how easy that language is to learn, it's still an extra, and
| almost certainly redundant, effort.
|
| I'm not going to bother finding the hyperlink for the
| relevant xkcd comic, because we've all seen it before.
| [deleted]
| ben_w wrote:
| Si. Esperanto havas problemojn, kaj tio estas la plej gravan.
| leke wrote:
| Esperanto havas problemojn. La Ido estas la solvo :P
| ben_w wrote:
| To some of them, sure. But even fewer have heard of it.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Se ti sabir Ti respondir Se non sabir
| Tazir, tazir
| Koshkin wrote:
| No... We don't deserve this (not yet).
| leke wrote:
| Or Ido.
| throw737858 wrote:
| Why not arabic? French is kind of obsolete.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Is Arabic the official language of any EU country? Acording to
| Wikipedia[1], its not. Seems like a bizarre choice for official
| government business.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...
| ben_w wrote:
| I've been trying to learn Arabic since 24 September last year.
| Notwithstanding that my effort so far has been merely one
| Duolingo lesson per day, I still can't even manage the Arabic
| alphabet.
|
| (Also: Obsolete? What?)
| gumby wrote:
| Mandarin would open the EU to the largest number of speakers.
| Spanish would be a good second, if English is politically
| untenable, but of course it's already an official EU language
| so choosing it might annoy the other states.
|
| Romansh is an European language not used in the EU; choosing it
| would level the playing field (and would not be so politically
| complex as another such like Basque).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Mandarin would open the EU to the largest number of
| speakers.
|
| No, making Mandarin the working language of the EU
| bureaucracy wouldn't open the EU up to any additional people,
| and the vast majority of Mandarin speakers are subject to one
| government or another that has no interest in the EU (and
| particularly, for instance, being accountable to the European
| Convention on Human Rights.)
|
| > Romansh is an European language not used in the EU;
| choosing it would level the playing field
|
| No, it wouldn't. In terms of making communication within the
| levels of the bureaucracy to which it applies all but
| impossible, sure.
|
| Not sure why that would be the goal, though.
| adventured wrote:
| > Mandarin would open the EU to the largest number of
| speakers
|
| More people speak English than Mandarin and that language
| base represents a dramatically larger economy than Mandarin
| does.
|
| The long-term trends favor English over Mandarin, not least
| of which is due to the difficulty of learning Mandarin vs
| English. The demographics underpinning Mandarin use are
| exceptionally bad in terms of direction, whereas the
| demographics underpinning English use globally are
| exceptionally good. The past 20 years has more than
| demonstrated the _very_ low interest globally in Mandarin,
| despite the huge increase in China 's importance and economy
| there has been no corresponding boom in the pick-up of
| Mandarin outside of China. In the next 20 years Mandarin will
| become a contracting language, while English will continue to
| expand globally. Over the time that China has been rapidly
| rising (since ~1990), English has only become more important
| globally, not less. Eventually, across this century, nearly
| as many people in China will speak English as Mandarin
| (they're very hard at work on achieving that; it'll be to
| their benefit and they full well know it).
| drannex wrote:
| Obsolete? French is one of the most spoken languages in the
| world, accounting for nearly 300M daily speakers, and a few
| hundred million more secondary speakers (120M learning, and
| 70-100m partial speakers).1
|
| French is also the official language in 29 countries, which
| puts it in second place behind English, and is the official
| procedural language for EU courts and one of the core main
| languages for the UN.
|
| Not only this, but several reports are saying that by 2050
| nearly 700M will be speaking French2
|
| 1. https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-many-people-speak-
| fre...
|
| 2
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2014/03/21/...
| beebeepka wrote:
| But French is even worse. To hell with these non-phonetical
| languages. I am serious. I'd take Latin over these unpredictable
| monstrosities any day of the week
| Bayart wrote:
| French writing is quite phonetic and regular, but there's an
| extra layer of etymological orthography which confuses people
| who need to learned digraphs and trigraphs. But English has
| them too, and there's much more irregular.
| [deleted]
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Literary French is quite phonetic, at least outside proper
| names. What are some examples where you feel that French
| writing is not in a one to one relation with pronunciation?
| nescioquid wrote:
| How many ways are there to spell the sound o (as in l'eau) in
| French? I once read that it was over 30, but it might have
| been a tongue-in-cheek joke, like "ghoti" as an alternate
| spelling of "fish"[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti
| tsimionescu wrote:
| As far as I know, there are two: 'o' (as in 'bon') and
| 'eau' (as in 'beau').While that's one more than it should
| have been necessary, it's not that bad I think.
| nescioquid wrote:
| maux? culot?
|
| I feel like we can find more ;-)
|
| But I have learned I had a misconception about what a
| phonetic spelling is. I had thought that a phonetic
| spelling had the property of every sound in the language
| having one way to spell it, but that is not the case;
| instead for every grapheme there is one sound.
|
| As a native English speaker, learning a little French
| (after German and Latin) opened my eyes to the horrors of
| English. Really French is very tame in comparison.
| jjgreen wrote:
| compare with "ough"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(orthography)
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| Apart from all the silent letters, which are fairly regular
| (and I assume is what you're getting at) there's a fair
| number of pronunciation exceptions.
|
| See the different ways of pronouncing "tous" or the different
| words that have irregularly silent "l"s (e.g. fusil) and
| other irregularly silent consonants in the middle of words
| (e.g. automne).
|
| French has quite a lot of exceptions to its pronunciation
| rules in addition to its already fairly complex regular
| relationship between letters and sounds.
|
| EDIT: Oh I forgot my pet peeve: there are so many exceptions
| to the pronunciation of "er" that it's kind of misleading to
| give its pronunciation as the equivalent of an English "a" as
| in "slate" (hiver, cher, cancer, mer, the list goes on and on
| and on).
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Those are some good examples, you're right. It is quite a
| bit less regular than I remembered from my high-school
| days.
|
| For 'er' though, isn't the rule essentially that it is
| pronounced 'a' at the end of verbs, and 'ar' otherwise? I
| realize that is not a phonetic rule, though.
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| Unfortunately no. See e.g. boulanger, cahier, etc.
| (Although I do believe you're correct about verbs, I
| wasn't able to think of any verbs that pronounce "er"
| irregularly).
|
| I don't know of any regular, even semantic, rule off the
| top of my head that covers when it should be pronounced
| which way for non-verbs. I wonder if someone more versed
| in French etymology could find one.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Granted, my experience with French is rather limited and the
| language could be pretty consistent internally. But there's
| lots of utter madness such as "beacoup" which is literally
| "buku".
|
| Sorry for being blunt but pronouncing 50% of the letters is
| extremely non phonetical. There's just no other way of
| putting it
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Beaucoup is 'boku', not 'buku'. And having groups of
| letters be pronounced as a single sound is not the opposite
| of being phonetical, as long as the groups are used
| consistently (e.g. -eau- is always pronounced 'o', -ou- is
| always pronounced 'u', final consonants are never
| pronounced etc.) .
|
| Granted, the sibling comment lists quite a few exceptions
| to these rules, but it is still quite a regular language.
|
| The system of silent consonants is quite useful in keeping
| the language have somewhat regular
| declensions/conjugations. If they were not preserved, it
| would seem that French conjugations are mad, inventing
| consonants out of thin air. For example, coup/coupee,
| meaning to cut/ cut (up), are pronounced ku/kupe. This
| would make it seem like the participle is adding -pe to the
| infinitive (and it would add -te or -ze or many others),
| when in fact the participle is almost always adding -e,
| which forces the consonant in the root to be pronounced,
| since French really hates hiatuses.
|
| If anything, French phonetics are the real problem,
| aggressively dropping consonants of the end of words, but
| loathing hiatuses, sometimes even between words in literary
| contexts (where sometimes a 't' or 'z' sound is added
| between a word ending in a vowel and the next word
| beginning with a vowel, 'la liaison').
| maleldil wrote:
| I think you're confusing things. A difference between the
| number of written characters and the number of phonemes
| doesn't make a language "non-phonetic" if you mean
| consistency between spelling and pronunciation.
|
| What matters is that a sequence of symbols _consistently_
| matches a phoneme. For example, you'll find that the "u"
| phoneme is often written as "ou" in French. Same thing for
| the "o" sound and "eau" (you misspelt "beaucoup").
|
| What I would consider "non-phonetic" is the set "though",
| "through", "thorough", and "thought" in English, where
| "ough" has four different sounds.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Spanish is an almost ideal modern language - it is
| straightforward in all important respects, while 90% of its
| vocabulary should be familiar to pretty much everyone.
| bww wrote:
| The irony here is that English is widely spoken mainly because it
| is the dominant language in America, a superpower where people
| resolutely refuse to learn any other languages.
|
| Even if France's motivations are purely nationalistic, it's
| really no different or worse than how we arrived at the status
| quo.
| heinrichhartman wrote:
| The sane thing to do after the Brexit, was to embrace English as
| main language, since it has not become neutral ground!
|
| According to Wikipedia we have:
|
| * Germany: 56% English speakers, 14.5% French speakers
|
| * Italy: 34% English vs. 19.43% French
|
| * Spain: 22% English vs. 11.73% French
|
| * Sweden: 89% English vs. 8% French
|
| I can't get over how bad this decision is. How can you ignore
| these kinds of discrepancies?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_distribution_of_F...
| dharmach wrote:
| Everybody should use google because it's the most used search
| engine.
| cheph wrote:
| What is a category mistake?
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Have you heard of Google?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake
| posterboy wrote:
| * France: 0% proper English, 99.9% French
|
| their English is terrible
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Anecdotally I can confirm those stats for Sweden. Some of the
| things I was blown away by in Sweden are:
|
| 1) Everyone's beautiful 2) Everyone's super tall. I'm 184cm and
| saw multiple women every day that were taller than me, let
| alone men. In the US it's quite rare for me to see women taller
| than me. 3) Everyone's rather slim. It's nice to see a
| population at healthier weights than what I'm used to in the US
| 4) Not once did I find somebody who couldn't speak English,
| from workers at train stations to museums to airports. It was
| crazy. In contrast, Germans being about 50/50 matches up with
| my experience. Italy felt lower than 1/3 even in Venice, but I
| spent much less time there.
|
| Sweden sure is amazing; can't wait to visit again.
| vmception wrote:
| The other side of this is that there are some truly strange
| looking people as well. Like, almost matches the ideals in
| American media (which has been filled with Swedish models for
| nearly a century, setting our ideals from a young age) but an
| otherwise discarded iteration that would never be invited
| through our borders by the people already here. (The modeling
| agency, the au pair household, the guys.)
|
| You can experience it in advance with Tinder Passport.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| > Not once did I find somebody who couldn't speak English,
| from workers at train stations to museums to airports. It was
| crazy
|
| It's crazier than that. I've moved to a small village in
| northern Sweden in the middle of nowhere, and everybody
| speaks English here, too.
|
| > Everyone's rather slim.
|
| Agreed, but Austria beats it - there, everyone is ripped :)
| chrisbennet wrote:
| 184cm = 6ft
| adenozine wrote:
| I appreciate the translation, but you should annotate your
| post, otherwise you risk someone thinking you did it
| spitefully, as though cm were lesser units.
|
| I ~think~ that's why someone downvoted you.
| chrisbennet wrote:
| Forgive my trespass. I meant no spite or ill will.
|
| As an American, I had to converted the number to mm and
| the divided it by 25.4 and again by 12. I figured I save
| somebody else the trouble.
|
| (I upvoted you.)
| bawolff wrote:
| At some point people need to stop reading malicious
| intent into things without evidence.
| bogeholm wrote:
| > as though cm were lesser units.
|
| To be fair, a cm _is_ less than a foot
| shock wrote:
| The irony of this comment on this article is underrated.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Okay, so this makes me wonder something.
|
| So 6 foot tall (72in) is like a magic number for American
| men. That's like the threshold for manliness in popular
| culture. If you were to plot the self-reported heights men
| in America, you'd absolutely see a dip at 70 and 71 inches,
| then a big spike at 72in.
|
| What's this magic number in various metric countries? 185cm
| seems like a sound choice, but I could see it being 190 in
| some places.
| [deleted]
| throwaway-571 wrote:
| I think embracing english as the main language of the EU is the
| worst idea since Brexit. It's anything but neutral. It's a
| concession made to the brits and a trojan for the Americans.
| They left, they can f right off and take their piss poor excuse
| of a language with them. It works for programming, insults and
| not much else. If they hadn't joined the EU to sabotage it,
| maybe english wouldn't be as popular in the EU.
|
| Let's force the 3 letter agencies to improve their deep
| learning NLP models for other languages.
|
| Nobody speaks it in the EU, but if we're going with popular
| languages i also don't think mandarin would be an appropriate
| language.
|
| I'm french and I think there should be a common EU language,
| and for political purpose it should a truly neutral language,
| like Esperanto or another novlang.
|
| (Or maybe french should become the lingua franca of the EU if
| French official communications to the EU could only be in
| German)
|
| Latin is rooted in catholicism, which is anything but neutral
| in terms of history and human rights.
|
| Let's level the playing field a bit, there is enough english in
| the world.
|
| [this post made in english, and I write most often in english
| because nobody reads french compared to english]
| maleldil wrote:
| > I write most often in english because nobody reads french
| compared to english
|
| The irony.
| fumblebee wrote:
| What a depressingly resentful and scornful take against op's
| well reasoned comment. Taking a position is fine, shouting
| through your keyboard is discouraged.
| throwaway-571 wrote:
| I have nothing against op's well written and documented
| comment but it is describing the status quo.
|
| it's like saying cobol is the most used programming
| language, why use java or python?
| throwaway-571 wrote:
| OP is describing the logical reason for english, i'm
| presenting the emotional reasons against it.
| pizzazzaro wrote:
| The UN uses French and English as working languages, so there
| is a precedent for French or English as the working language.
|
| No primarily English-speaking nation is a part of the EU.
|
| The skill gap will be resolved. Until then? Traslators are
| already a normal part of the working process.
| sangnoir wrote:
| You're sampling the wrong population - what you're doing is
| akin to finding the most popular "development environment" in a
| company by asking the entire staff complement (including those
| in marketing, facilities management and finance) their
| proficiencies. You're likely to settle on Excel as the
| preferred tech platform. Instead of asking _everyone_ , ask
| your developers who'll be doing the actual work.
| gip wrote:
| I'm curious what do you mean by "bad" in that context? In my
| book, asking people to practice or learn a new language is not
| inerently bad.
|
| Decision-making should not be reduced to the law of the
| majority. If Europe wants to push people to learn and practice
| more foreign languages, I'm all for it. (Disclosure: that
| starts with me, I speak 3 languages and I'm learning a fourth
| one).
| lefstathiou wrote:
| In the real time strategy world (eg Starcraft, Warcraft), this
| strategy is called "turtling". Perceived as low risk... it's a
| defensive move aimed at creating moats in hopes that you buy
| enough time to out tech your competition; it rarely results in
| a win against any real player (which the US, Germans, Russians
| and Chinese are) and wastes everybody's time by creating
| unnecessary friction. Reason often prevails over the long term
| thankfully.
| forty wrote:
| I'm French and honestly I don't really care that much about
| that but for some reason if I had to choose, I'd rather have EU
| things done in German for example than English, that would make
| much more sense to me (even though I speak some English and
| really no German).
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Can you elaborate on your reasons?
| forty wrote:
| It's hard to say but somehow it feels to me that English is
| the language of "the competition" (the US). It might feel
| anecdotal to many people, but language is a powerful tool.
| It's how so many French people consume so many US series
| and music (and btw we are probably one of the country which
| are the most protective on this). And
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/opinion/france-cnews-
| amer...
|
| It's not by chance that many invaders tend to force their
| language to country they invade (the French being no
| exception, they did both in former colonies and in our own
| current territory during the French revolution - that's
| actually a very hot topic currently in France, as some
| "immersive teaching" of regional languages were found
| unconstitutional a few days ago)
|
| And well, I'd rather be more German than more American. But
| I'm one of those who feel more EUropean than french, so
| maybe that's why :)
| throwaway-571 wrote:
| i would guess "anything but english", and German is more
| spoken in the EU than french.
| pier25 wrote:
| I'm from Spain (but also a native French speaker) and I totally
| agree.
|
| I haven't done the math, but I'd bet in the EU there are
| probably more English speakers than any other native language.
| based2 wrote:
| Language arrangements at the Court of Justice of the European
| Union
|
| https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/Jo2_10739/en/
|
| "The Court needs a common language in which to conduct
| deliberations. That language is, by custom, French."
| Camillo wrote:
| It's not actually a decision yet, is it? It's just something
| the French want to do. Presumably everyone else will oppose it,
| for the reasons you gave.
| cipher_system wrote:
| For Sweden and Germany all (guess >99%) of the french speakers
| speak english way better then french. The amount of english
| we're exposed to is so massive and the french is basically non-
| existent.
|
| This is such a useless egoistic move from the french, just
| accept that english is the lingua franca.
| gip wrote:
| I think that is your personal interpretation and I am
| surprised at how angry your comment is.
|
| I lived in the Netherlands, worked for an international
| organization and I still have a lot of friends who works (or
| worked) in Brussels. Few comments:
|
| 1. The level of profentiency in foreign language of people
| working for the European institutions is orders of magnitude
| higher than readers of HN. Not too mention translators. It's
| not rare to meet people speak 6 languages totally fluently.
| Switching languages for some working documents is almost a
| non-event beyond signaling. There will be zero impact for the
| rest of us.
|
| 2. I totally support a Europe where people speak foreign
| languages beyond English.
| throwaway-571 wrote:
| I'm french and most of the content i watch is also in
| english, made mostly by americans with an american point of
| views and ways of resolving problems. Sometime in british
| english with british point of view.
|
| I think it's sad that that you don't seem to realize that
| it's a problem that most of the content we are exposed comes
| from a single culture.
|
| As for the move, it's totally useless, and if they wanted to
| be strongest against english they should have said "we'll
| only accept communication in french or german" but that would
| have meant most of the communications would have been in
| german.
| ciarcode wrote:
| I don't understand, you think that switching to French will
| expose us to each single European country culture?
| ptr2voidStar wrote:
| Haha, OP has no awareness of his/her bias!
| foresto wrote:
| > you don't seem to realize that it's a problem that most
| of the content we are exposed comes from a single culture.
|
| I don't think GP's desire to minimise language barriers
| among 27 co-operating governments implies that they are
| oblivious to cultural bias.
|
| I do think the latter is an issue worth addressing, but
| this is probably not an effective or appropriate way to do
| it.
| tgragnato wrote:
| I'm quite disillusioned about the future of the Union
| because of ridiculous stunts like this.
|
| Using English exposes people to a certain way of thinking
| that is more linked to a set of cultures or traditions.
| It's an undeniable fact, both semantics and linguistics
| teach us that.
|
| But if the aim is to help politicians think from a
| different perspective, French is a bad choice. If that was
| the purpose, a reasonable choice would be to opt for
| languages related to cultures of more practical
| rationality.. German or Scandinavian languages
|
| Of course it's the French politicians who have the nerve to
| try impose their language. Perhaps it has something to do
| with the fact that French culture is one of the most
| pedantic and nationalistic in Europe, to the detriment of
| the other members.
| Bayart wrote:
| >a reasonable choice would be to opt for languages
| related to cultures of more practical rationality
|
| That's essentialist nonsense. How are German or
| Scandinavian cultures more << practically rational >> in
| an empirical sense ? Is there anything to it beyond
| short-sighted stereotypes ? That's not even getting to
| the fact that rationalism and positivism have French
| input stamped all over it, with German philosophy
| generally pulling in the exact opposite direction.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Having it as a work language just means that they'll pout if
| whatever document they're sent isn't in French for the 6 months
| they are in charge - nothing more.
|
| No big deal.
| kelnos wrote:
| Not really, the article says:
|
| > _"We will always ask the Commission to send us in French
| the letters it wishes to address to the French authorities,
| and if they fail to do so, we will wait for the French
| version before sending it," the diplomat said._
|
| "Send us French or consider your request to be second-class
| and ignored until you send us French".
| akmarinov wrote:
| Before that it says:
|
| > The unnamed diplomat said all high-level meetings of the
| Council - the body which helps sets the political agenda in
| Brussels - will be conducted in French instead of English
| during the six-month presidency.
|
| It's only during the Council, outside of the Council every
| country expects documents in their language.
| azinman2 wrote:
| It's seriously the most French thing ever
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _How can you ignore these kinds of discrepancies?_
|
| The French are (pardon my French) assholes, that's how. Even
| when the jury votes were announced in the 2021 Eurovision, all
| of the national representatives held their commentary English,
| except for the French representative, who did it almost
| entirely in French.
|
| It's also the reason why the European Parliament can never ever
| abandon Strasbourg even though it makes absolutely no sense at
| all.
| dang wrote:
| Nationalistic flamewar will get you banned on HN. No more of
| this, please.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Hamuko wrote:
| I don't see it as a "nationalistic flamewar" as much as
| "calling spade a spade".
| dang wrote:
| I totally get that, but the thing is: what determines
| whether you're making a high-quality/substantive or low-
| quality/flamewar contribution has not only do with your
| perspective, but also that of the reader--or rather the
| distribution of reader perspectives that your comment is
| landing with.
|
| The key thing to understand is that the value of a
| comment is the expected value of the subthread it forms
| the root of: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0
| &prefix=true&sor....
|
| If you want an in-depth explanation of this, the best one
| I know of is this lengthy interaction I had a few weeks
| ago with a commenter in a similar situation:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27161365. The in-
| depth portion starts here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27162386.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Let's not forget about Ireland.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| If you give Dutch politicians the choice of speaking French or
| Dutch with translators in an international meeting they will
| use English.
|
| But I don't think the French really care about how other
| cultures work. It's all nationalist nonsense and living in the
| glorious past for them. See Strasbourg.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This behavior isn't limited to France. French Canada sure
| would like it if more people spoke French.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Perhaps this can be generalized? Language entitlement seems
| to be a thing among French speaking regions. Whether it's
| French Canada, French Belgium or France?
| Bayart wrote:
| Funny to see so much drab posturing about our supposed <<
| language entitlement >> while almost calling for
| languages to be rolled over and wiped out by English.
|
| I'm quite certain the position of French-Canadians has
| little to do with << entitlement >>, and more with how
| trapped they feel. Not that Anglo-Canadians would give a
| rats ass about the _actual_ motives of Quebec 's cultural
| policy, as long as it can get weaponized for political
| currency.
|
| Frankly this entire thread _reeks_.
| throwawayay02 wrote:
| Honest question, what about Strasbourg?
| SllX wrote:
| 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.
| anticensor wrote:
| Did you mean Strassburg?
| based2 wrote:
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/19/why-does-
| parli...
| WalterBright wrote:
| Isn't it ironic that English is the Lingua Franca?
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| Thank you! I'm always saying "English is the Lingua Franca of
| the tech world"...and no one _ever_ gets the joke.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Haha. What's sad, my galvanized friend, is the younger
| generation doesn't get my cataclysmic Wizard of Oz
| allusions. I'm just consulting with the rain.
| [deleted]
| vram22 wrote:
| Bon mot. Let's make French the Lingua Anglia (or should that
| be Langue Angleterre). #PardonMyFrench #PardonnezMoi
| tagrun wrote:
| No, because "lingua franca" derives from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
| which has nothing to do with French, apart from people who
| didn't understand it mistook it for French.
| nescioquid wrote:
| Great comment! I always presumed the term was an 18th-19th
| century coinage referring to French; had no idea it
| referred to a pidgin originating in the late middle ages.
| Thanks for the enlightenment!
| svieira wrote:
| Part of the empire the Franks founded was named "France"
| and France still traces its origins to Frankish kings. So
| connecting a trade language spoken by the empire-before-
| the-empire with the empire of France doesn't seem that far
| off-base to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks
| fulmicoton wrote:
| Not really. Lingua Franca is not really related to French.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Ireland: 99% English
| [deleted]
| melesian wrote:
| I doubt it's as low as that!
|
| Malta and the Netherlands are other countries where a large
| majority also speak English.
|
| In some places in the EU the UK's union jack flag is being
| replaced with the Irish tricolour on bank ATM's display of
| language choices, which amuses the Irish.
| Macha wrote:
| If you consider the alternative to be monolingual Irish
| speakers, for sure they're way less than 1%, but I imagine
| if you group them with monolingual Polish/Chinese speakers,
| you might get up to a whole percent
| SllX wrote:
| The EU has a 6-month rotating Presidency of the Council of the
| European Union.
|
| So this is the President of France postulating that when his
| country takes the Presidency next year, he will use that to
| push French to be the next working language. I don't know what
| the President of the Council of Europe does besides Chair
| meetings, but apparently it includes setting the language for
| which the meetings will be held in.
|
| So this isn't something the EU as a whole has determined will
| be policy going forward, more like the first guy to drop his
| pants in a newly opened frontier for dick-waving. If this was
| something the President of the Council of the European Union
| could do unilaterally anyway, then my read is that Emmanuel
| Macron would have pulled this stunt, Brexit or no Brexit, and
| Brexit is just convenient political cover.
|
| More likely this won't last more than the 6 months that France
| has the Presidency, and it will be amusing to see if say,
| Hungary the next time they have the Presidency insists on high
| level communications in Hungarian.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Its the most French thing I've seen in a long time, and it make
| me inordinately happy.
|
| The french political class: "It eez time to stick eet to ze
| germans and ze eengleesh"
| Koshkin wrote:
| This has just reminded me about this:
|
| http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/jokes/european-commission.html
| fangorn wrote:
| I suppose the next logical thing is for them to say: "I fart
| in your general direction".
| Koshkin wrote:
| But French sounds like poetry: _Je pete dans votre
| direction generale!_
| magicalhippo wrote:
| My dad told me some time ago that for certain "low risk"
| documents, the EU distributed them in Norwegian to the Danish
| and Swedish camps, despite Norway not being in EU. The point
| being that both can read Norwegian sufficiently, and it saved
| one translation.
|
| Not sure if it's still done this way.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| It looks even worse outside of Western Europe. Bulgaria,
| Hungary, and Lithuania are more like 1 or 2% francophone, but
| at least 1/5 anglophone.
|
| I'm no expert on international politics, but it seems like that
| would severely disadvantage these countries, wouldn't it? With
| a smaller pool of politicians and technocrats who are
| proficient in the working language of the EU, they'll have to
| rely more on translation, and will consequently be less able to
| communicate efficiently when representing their respective
| countries.
| ggggtez wrote:
| This is just a nationalist policy. Even the French don't think
| it's actually practical. It's just "see, France can push other
| countries around too".
| akmarinov wrote:
| > when it takes over the Council of the European Union presidency
| in 2022
|
| So it's only for 6 months, then back to English.
| justaguy88 wrote:
| What does Ireland think of this?
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| I can see the logic, since UK isn't part of the EU anymore, but
| considering over all amount of people who can speak and
| understand English vs France EU wide this is pretty silly show of
| power.
|
| After all even if EU matters were done purely in french it
| wouldn't be "the killer feature" to make french be taught much
| more in schools since english is the universal business language.
| And even if EU states decided that they needed to start teaching
| another language besides english to their kids to prepare them
| for future employment I would actually go for chinese instead of
| french. Because that will be the next actual global language by
| the end of this century unless humanity nukes it self out of
| existence.
| kergonath wrote:
| > After all even if EU matters were done purely in french
|
| That is not going to happen. Nothing is done purely in one
| language in the EU. The language rules are deeply embedded in
| the treaties; changing this would require quite a lot of
| countries to agree formally. The three work languages of the
| Commission are English, French, and German, and that's not
| going to change. What can change is which one of these is used
| the most.
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| Ireland, however, is still a part of the EU.
| 3836293648 wrote:
| The UK left, sure. But Ireland still exists
| dzonga wrote:
| as a non-chinese person, in Taiwan currently I would say
| otherwise. with Chinese learning english to remain competitive.
| And currently english schools demand a premium. And likewise
| foreign english teachers are paid more than locals. Taiwan for
| example wants to become bilingual by 2030. though, personally,
| I don't see that happening.
|
| Majority of business communication worldwide is already in
| english so are technical docs. well, unless it's electronic
| stuff which is in chinese | german. Culturally america's most
| known exports are in english.
|
| So yeah, what France is pushing is largely stupid, though i'm
| an ardent listener of French hip hop.
| allendoerfer wrote:
| So we have massive economic problems, some states on the verge of
| bankruptcy, a lost generation in Southern Europe, a currency
| under constant attack, autocratic tendencies and overall
| differences on social issues in the East, an immigration crisis
| from Africa and the Near East, threats to the sovereignity of
| neighbouring countries, literal slums in Rumania and Bulgaria. We
| are losing the economic battle against the US and China, the
| militiary one against Russia. We cannot convince either of those
| to do anything meaningful against climate change.
|
| Apparently we can now add an infantility problem to the list.
| moomin wrote:
| This is a non-story. There are three working languages of the EU:
| English, French and German. Everyone in Brussels will roll their
| eyes, use French for six months and then revert to English
| because it's the one most people speak.
|
| Would they have done this if Brexit hadn't happened? Yes, they
| would. France has a chip on its shoulder about French being
| replaced as the world's lingua franca, but stunts like this
| aren't going to bring it back. Not even in Brussels.
| yorwba wrote:
| > Not even in Brussels.
|
| Most people in Brussels already speak French...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francization_of_Brussels
| dariusj18 wrote:
| Brussels being an phrase often used to mean EU governmental
| officials and diplomats.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Most of them live in Brussels and speak at least casual
| French.
| smcl wrote:
| I am quite sure they do. But the point was that those EU
| institutions will revert to using English as their main
| working language as they have been before the French turn
| at presidency of the EU begins.
| varajelle wrote:
| You can live in Brussels just fine without speaking
| French
| [deleted]
| Aissen wrote:
| Indeed, it's mostly a non issue. There are so many translators
| working for EU institutions, that I don't see how it would
| change much.
| wrnr wrote:
| Yes this is political trolling, and should France get it way
| Hungary will counter troll and insist we adopt their language
| for 6 months next time around.
| bonzini wrote:
| Hungarian is not a working language.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Great, well then I suggest that we just repeat this process
| whenever a new presidency takes over. Wonder when it's Denmark's
| turn again - we really missed the opportunity in 2012 by being so
| darn agreeable all the time.
| galgot wrote:
| Are there other countries than Denmark speaking danish in the
| EU , or elsewhere ?
| Tehnix wrote:
| I take it that GPs point is that it makes just as little
| sense, to change the working language to danish, purely based
| on presidency.
| tgv wrote:
| There's no other country in the EU that speaks French,
| either. And by numbers, German should prevail.
| meesles wrote:
| Your first point is incorrect: Belgium, Switzerland,
| Luxembourg, and Monaco [1]
|
| http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/languages
| /...
| madia_leva wrote:
| Parts of Belgium. Just ~35% of Belgiums are French
| speakers. Most speak Dutch. Same for Switzerland, most
| Swiss speak German.
| TX0098812 wrote:
| Flemish I think. Although it's pretty similar to Dutch.
| Avalaxy wrote:
| Flemish is not a language, it's a dialect. The language
| is Dutch.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Switzerland and Monaco aren't in the EU
| tgv wrote:
| How could I forget Belgium. Damn!
| tinomaxgalvin wrote:
| Don't tell the Belgians.
| tgv wrote:
| Part of them agrees, probably...
| pjerem wrote:
| Belgians agreeing ?
| akmarinov wrote:
| There's Belgium and Luxembourg, but sure...
| mannerheim wrote:
| It's a recognised minority language in Germany, specifically
| in Schleswig-Holstein.
| popsicum wrote:
| If the request is for longer than 6 months, then I don't get the
| argument.
|
| How is this multiculturalism? I and many other people that rely
| on English as a language to communicate across nations feel left
| out. Looking at the comments, there seems to be a distorted
| impression that EU=France (or any major Western country) and on
| top of that, the rest of the countries should be grateful for
| being given a chance to be put in uncomfortable situations that
| require a costly readaptation, aka, be glad your language skill
| is now obsolete because we decided so.
|
| It's ignorance towards the rest of EU member states. I don't even
| have a problem with French per say, I speak French and understand
| the urge to speak your own language. Just the approach of
| assuming that one of the member states knows best is mind-
| boggling to me and disrespectful. Looking forward to see the
| upcoming countries, each getting cocky about forcing their
| language. That's going to take us nowhere... So much for
| democracy.
| [deleted]
| Koshkin wrote:
| I love French, but I think Spanish would be the best choice.
| After English.
| atc wrote:
| Utter stupidity and nonsense gesturing from an increasingly
| fractured "union".
| th3h4mm3r wrote:
| La grandeur.
| justnotworthit wrote:
| The only thing to see here is the humor of the highest French
| diplomats reforcing extreme ethnocentric stereotypes about the
| French people -- the man on the street will snobbishly ignore
| your request of directions if not attempted in French first -- on
| the global stage: The EU president will ignore your country's
| pleas if not communicated in French first.
| laszlokorte wrote:
| Ultimately it will be JavaScript anyway :)
| BozeWolf wrote:
| We will invent something to transpile english to french.
| [deleted]
| bsd44 wrote:
| This is too funny to take seriously.
| pavlov wrote:
| Nobody should take any reporting about EU in the UK press at face
| value.
| smcl wrote:
| Ok so Politico then?
| https://www.politico.eu/article/in-2022-make-french-language...
| beebeepka wrote:
| This site is hilarious. It says .eu but supposed European
| news are just UK news. Need I sa more?
| smcl wrote:
| The front page is covered in non-UK news though? So yes you
| _really_ need to say more I think. I think we 're beyond
| speculation that this is a story concocted by the UK media
| - it's picked up in France too
| https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/la-presidence-francaise-
| de...
| holyknight wrote:
| are they retarded?
| ksec wrote:
| Tl;dr
|
| > _Drawing up plans_ for French to replace English as the
| official "working language" of the EU in 2022.
|
| We could pretty much move on until this actually go somewhere or
| _anywhere_. And there are enough ( obvious ) reasons listed in
| other comments.
| bouzouk wrote:
| Anyone living in France and knowing how Emmanuel Macron has
| behaved those past few years can say without a doubt that this
| article cannot be further from the truth. He has been scorned
| several times for using English too much, eg for diplomacy
| between non English speaking countries
| https://www.francetvinfo.fr/politique/emmanuel-macron/video-...
| (sorry, in French :) )
| holyknight wrote:
| are they retarded or something?
| mkl95 wrote:
| I have had French coworkers at a couple of jobs and all of them
| speak decent English. Can't be arsed to learn French.
| quattrofan wrote:
| I love France, the food the wine, even the cars. But why is it
| that they manage to be such wankers sometimes about their
| language?
| Lio wrote:
| One thing English has going for it is fault tolerance.
|
| You can speak it pretty "badly" and still be understood with a
| bit of patience.
|
| Speak like Yoda you could and still be understood.
|
| French is a beautiful language but seems to have a harder time
| dealing beginners mangling its grammar or pronunciation.
|
| (I still really want to learn French though regardless).
| redler wrote:
| > "...Globish - that ersatz of the English language, which
| narrows the scope of one's thoughts..."
|
| So the EU's argument in _Le Figaro_ is basically the Sapir-Whorf
| hypothesis?
| szundi wrote:
| Fun fact, english in England and in the US is spoken badly. The
| real majority decides, that is... India!
| surfsvammel wrote:
| I used to be against the French protectionism of its language, or
| the fact that research papers in China was written in Chinese.
| 'Why not just all speak English?', I thought back then. But then
| I learned French. More importantly I learned that when you speak
| another language, at a certain level (close to fluent), you
| realise that language is not only about communication. Language
| is also about thinking. You realise that thinking in another
| language actually is totally different. It gives you different
| perspectives, different ways to understand things and, I would
| argue, different thoughts altogether.
|
| From that point on, I am now of the opinion that we need to
| protect, and use, more languages, not fewer. Not because of their
| cultural and historical value but because of their possibility to
| open up for completely seperate ways of thinking.
| holyknight wrote:
| Almost no-one has english as first language in EU. Also most
| younger people speak at least 2 languages. Only older folks and
| people that lives in rural areas speak only one language.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| I know. I am European. I've been bilingual my entire life.
| Today I speak four languages. The point was not that speaking
| two languages is enough, what I meant is that I believe
| having more languages around in general increases the
| diversity also of our ideas and thoughts. That is why I,
| today, feel like protecting languages have a very valid
| point.
| Hamuko wrote:
| English is already a second language to most of the people in
| the European Union.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The weird thing is that the EU doesn't have a rule on languages
| already set in a way which puts this out of the reach of an
| arbitrary dictat of the current holder of the rotating
| Presidency.
|
| Though I suspect this might be thr impetus for changing that once
| France's term expires.
| blocked_again wrote:
| As a non European I find this hillarious and childish.
| ardit33 wrote:
| It is a typical French thing. Since they don't have a global
| influence anymore since WW2, all they can do is throw hissy
| fits.
| smcl wrote:
| I'm not sure it's quite that simple - they've held the
| Presidency multiple times in this period but as far as I know
| they've not performed an action like this. There's certainly
| something going on, but it's not just a hissy fit. As others
| have mentioned it's only for the duration of the French
| presidency, it'll probably get switched to English when the
| Czech presidency begins.
| ardit33 wrote:
| The next Presidential elections are early next year, that's
| why. Macron wants to look more important/relevant, and a
| keeper of french values and cultural importance.
| smcl wrote:
| Put that way it doesn't sound much like a typical French
| thing or a hissy fit, but the sort of thing politicians
| everywhere do. It's dumb and petty and will probably
| backfire somehow, but there we go.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-06-09 23:02 UTC)