Languages of the European Union

[Babbler]

So the European Union has, as it's official languages, all the official languages of its memberstates (including, IIRC, Irish Gaelic, an endangered language). Now this works okay with only a couple of memberstates, but at twenty plus it gets a little nutty, especially when minority languages clamor for the status the EU can provide. IIRC, the EU spends ~50% on translation, so cutting down on the languages would save money and give the euroskeptics on less bludgeon to bash the Union.

A couple of proposals:

* Adopt only one language (English nowadays all some people* don't like this).
* Adopt several predominate languages (English + French, English + French + German, etc.)
* Adopt an extinct or auxiliary language (Latin, Esperanto, Modern Indo-European [after all, only Indo-European people really "get" democracy], etc.)
* Keep the status quo
* Status quo + minority languages
* Some less entirely

What do you think?

 

[Godwynn]

51% of EU citizens (by their own assessment) can speak English.
32% can speak German.
26% can speak French.

Source

Those three are already the working languages of the European Commission.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, and Greek, with the first being 1st-tier official languages and the other five being somewhat lesser official languages.

 

[kulade]

Everyone should speak English (even though there are no real English-speaking nations in Europe).

 

[Bill3000]

Modern Indo European. It's a pretty nifty language, actually.

 

[Elta]

51% of EU citizens (by their own assessment) can speak English.
32% can speak German.
26% can speak French.

Source

Those three are already the working languages of the European Commission.

Statistically speaking these 3 are the logical choices.

 

[Elta]

Modern Indo European. It's a pretty nifty language, actually.

Double post because this is a cross post (I had several tabs opened and unread)


A nifty language based on 500 known words

 

[JohnRM]

It is, in my opinion, best to choose English, but I would find it to be really cool if they brought Latin back by making it the official language. I would love to see Latin become the official world language.

 

[Bill3000]

A nifty language based on 500 known words

500 roots - you can get a lot out of that many, especially one as inflectionally diverse as Indo-European. As well, it back-derives words for various concepts by starting from the word in a descendant language and cranking it back to its Indo-European form. No need for actual borrowing.

 

[Elta]

A lot of it is bull guess work.


It was part of of my Capstone course (Anthropology 299) for my AA.

If you were guessing to that level for any other language people would laugh at you.

 

[Bill3000]

A lot of it is bull guess work.

Language reconstruction is not "bull guess work"

 

[Elta]

It is for Indo European.

 

[Bill3000]

It is for Indo European.

Eh? No it's not. PIE is one of the most reliably known languages; most of its grammar has been completely described. The comparative method is very reliable.

 

[Elta]

The disagreement on the suffixes is something that would never even be discussed with any other dead language that is being investigated. At that point they would just admit that they do not know enough on the subject.

And it goes without saying that PIE is not even the most intelligible language across Europe for a random cross section of people who only speak 1 language.

If it could be fully reconstructed accurately the fact of the matter is that even among Slavic and Germanic Speakers *Latin would make more sense to them.


*On top of that interlingua would make more sense to everyone than Latin would.

 

[Jan H]

Everyone should speak English (even though there are no real English-speaking nations in Europe).

huh? the UK and Ireland? Or are you implying that they are not "in Europe"?

Imo, the "working languages" should be German, English and French, but laws and regulations translated in all those other languages. If the EU doesn't do it itself, the member countries would do it anyway.

By the way, how are things done in other multi-lingual countries, like India or South-Africa?

 

[Tee Kay]

Definitely Arabic.

 

[Echse]

German + English + French

logic just dictates that.

 

[Gigaz]

Every language that is official in a member country should be official language of the EU.

 

[Pangur Bán]

English only. There's no real point unless there's just one. And English is the biggest second language in almost all EU countries. If you add German, then the French will get pissed and think they're being discriminated against; if you add French, then the Spanish will get pissed and think they're being discriminated against; if you add Spanish, then the Italians will get pissed and think they're being discriminated against; if you add Italian, then the Poles will get pissed and think they're being discriminated against; and so on.

And we forgot Russian, Europe's biggest language, the main language of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, major language in the Baltic and Moldova, more widely known than English in many others like some of the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria (an EU country). The EU after all in principle seeks to confederate all Europe!

 

[Nylan]

Lojban, obviously. Of course, if you speak Lojban, you can only speak to the type of people who learn how to speak Lojban.