Wednesday, April 24, 2013

English as the Official Language of the European Union?

There's a move afoot to have English declared the common language of the European Union and it's a German who is pushing the idea.   Here The Guardian gives a pretty clear reason why a common language might be helpful when representatives of the constituent nations sit down to parlay.

Money talks, especially in Brussels. A billion euros are usually "mil milhoes de euros" in Portuguese, or a thousand million. In Spanish, likewise, "billón" means a million million, so billion is "mil millones de euros". Confusingly, "billion" translates as "milijarde" into Croatian, or "miljard" into Dutch. When the French talk of "un billion", they are referring to what Britons call a trillion. Oh, and a German "Billiarde" is a French "quadrillion". Of course.

And so the suggestion of a common language to cut out the translation and communications nightmares.  Why English?  Because that's the language younger Euros are increasingly favouring.

In a keynote speech on the future of European integration in February, Joachim Gauck suggested English should become the EU's official language: "It is true to say that young people are growing up with English as the lingua franca. However, I feel that we should not simply let things take their course when it comes to linguistic integration." It was music to the ears of federalists and fiscal hawks: with English spoken in the corridors of Brussels, the EU would become more streamlined and more efficient.

But how realistic is it? To an extent, it would just confirm a trend already taking place. Since the "big bang" of eastern European enlargement in 2004, the use of French has declined in conference meetings – and German is these days an "official language" on paper only. 

It's a sensible proposal, no question, but that doesn't translate into universal acceptance.  The French, for example, are said to fear creeping Anglo-Saxon influence on notions political and economic.

6 comments:

Bill Chapman said...

Serious consideration should be given to Esperanto instead.
Esperanto may not be perfect, but I've used it successfully in Africa, South America and Europe, and it does the job.

The Mound of Sound said...

They are considering that option, Bill, but it seems hard to overlook the movement of young Europeans to English.

Brian Barker said...

Esperanto should, as Bill Chapman suggests, be given attention. Esperanto is more widespread than people imagine. It is now in the top 100 languages, out of 6,800 worldwide according to the CIA World Factbook. It is the 29th most used language in Wikipedia, ahead of Danish and Arabic. It is a language choice of, Skype, Firefox, Ubuntu and Facebook. Now that Google translate recently added this international language to its prestigious list of 64 languages it has ceased to be just a hobby.
Their online course http://www.lernu.net has 125 000 hits per day and Esperanto Wikipedia enjoys 400 000 hits per day. That can't be bad :)

ketz said...

In small countries like Finland and Scandinavia english is more important than Germany, France and Italy because they have large number of native speakers.

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Unknown said...

I think that languages like Esperanto should be given more attention. I dont understand why there are people who think that English is a good candidate for official language of EU. It would just make the English speaking people dominate the whole thing and intervene what other people think.

Unknown said...

I think languages like Esperanto should be given more attention.
There are still people who think English is the best candidate for the official language of EU. How pathetic!