Languages of the European Union

[MagisterCultuum]

What don't I say? 1/4 or 1/5 of the population has a nice ring to it.

He means that you seem to be designing it specifically so that your native language will be chosen and so you don't have to deal with anything even a little less popular than it.

 

[Steph]

He means that you seem to be designing it specifically so that your native language will be chosen and so you don't have to deal with anything even a little less popular than it.

Oh? Now that you mention it, I've just realized that, indeed, using 20% or 25%, French would be an official language, but not Italian or Spanish. What a weird coincidence.

 

[Bill3000]

I just calls em likes I sees em.


I wouldn't have any problem with even children of the Americas learning PIE. As long as everyone agrees to the rules of the language, then it is fine by me.

But to say that we can accurately resurrect a language that old when we can't even agree on whether or not base 8 or base 10 was used for counting is laughable.

Well the point isn't to have a form of PIE that is completely accurate. The point is to use it as a neutral, naturalistic language that can create a common identity - and you really can't get more common than the common ancestor of most European languages. Modern Hebrew is very different from the Ancient Hebrew that it imitated while it was revived - an easy example is in how the ancient and modern phonologies differ - and if the language changes once it is revived, that's fine. The point is to get one close enough. If you read the grammar outline that I posted you can see that it's extremely trivial to create words and concepts that did not exist in PIE through back-deriving words into their MIE constituents.

Hell MIE doesn't even attempt to be an exact model of PIE - it's an imitating of a specific dialect and uses new constructions that would be helpful for modern european speakers, such as the creation of separate past and future tenses; PIE did not have temporal tenses; the "tenses" were primarily aspectual.

 

[gangleri2001]

Garbagedayish [/thread]

 

[Pangur Bán]

There's still a difference between a useful tool like a lingua franca and an official language.

There shouldn't be.

 

[Arwon]

Oh man, save us from armchair social engineers and their quest for some mythical "efficiency".

 

[Shadylookin]

That is a bit unfair to the Germans and French though isn't it? Germans in particular, where it is the official language of 4 European countries and large populations of 9 other countries speak it/ learn it in school.

What's fair got to do with anything? The most well known language is English therefore it makes sense to do everything in English and have individual nations translate from there.

The only thing you'll accomplish like that is that we all submit in our individual languages, and translate according to our needs. Which is pretty much what's going on right now, except that horsehockey attitude of yours of course, which must be a boon in itself I take it?

Well they would submit everything in English and all business would be done in English. Then if for whatever reason a country decides they want to translate all that stuff into Gaelic they can personally waste their time doing so. Don't hate me because I picked the right language first

 

[MagisterCultuum]

As English comes from a creole of a German dialect and a French dialect (although with significant influences of other languages too), it seems like it would be a reasonable compromise between French and German even if it were not better known than either of those languages.


I'd still prefer Latin though.


MIE looks potentially interesting, but I don't have time to delve too deep into it now.

 

[Bill3000]

As English comes from a creole of a German dialect and a French dialect (although with significant influences of other languages too), it seems like it would be a reasonable compromise between French and German even if it were not better known than either of those languages..

False; English is most certainly not a creole. While there was a lot of shifts in the vocabulary, the language remained fundamentally FGermanic (and English). It's not a mixed language, just a Germanic language with a lot of romance vocabulary. English was never a pidgin, so it could never be a creole.

Old English was already a separate language, so you can't say that it came from a "German dialect" anyway considering that they were separate languages for the past 700ish years.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

As English comes from a creole of a German dialect and a French dialect (although with significant influences of other languages too), it seems like it would be a reasonable compromise between French and German even if it were not better known than either of those languages.


I'd still prefer Latin though.


MIE looks potentially interesting, but I don't have time to delve too deep into it now.

I'm not sure you know what creole means.

 

[Elta]

Well the point isn't to have a form of PIE that is completely accurate. The point is to use it as a neutral, naturalistic language that can create a common identity - and you really can't get more common than the common ancestor of most European languages. Modern Hebrew is very different from the Ancient Hebrew that it imitated while it was revived - an easy example is in how the ancient and modern phonologies differ - and if the language changes once it is revived, that's fine. The point is to get one close enough. If you read the grammar outline that I posted you can see that it's extremely trivial to create words and concepts that did not exist in PIE through back-deriving words into their MIE constituents.

Hell MIE doesn't even attempt to be an exact model of PIE - it's an imitating of a specific dialect and uses new constructions that would be helpful for modern european speakers, such as the creation of separate past and future tenses; PIE did not have temporal tenses; the "tenses" were primarily aspectual.

I can get behind this

 

[ParkCungHee]

I vote for Basque.

It just seems reasonable.

 

[Verbose]

Well they would submit everything in English and all business would be done in English. Then if for whatever reason a country decides they want to translate all that stuff into Gaelic they can personally waste their time doing so. Don't hate me because I picked the right language first

Nej, jag skulle skriva mina brev, e-postmeddelanden, eller vad det råkar vara på svenska, och sedan får du lista ut vad det betyder.

Moderator Action: English speaking forum, provide translation
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Pangur Bán]

Verbose, not all of us understand the Skandinaviska ...

 

[CodeMasterMike]

Nej, jag skulle skriva mina brev, e-postmeddelanden, eller vad det råkar vara på svenska, och sedan får du lista ut vad det betyder.

Jag håller fullständigt med dig!

Moderator Action: This is an English speaking forum. All messages not in English must come with a translation.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Verbose]

Verbose, not all of us understand the Skandinaviska ...

Of course not. Just making the point that this is what communication will look like, if you somehow try to decree everyone must communicate in English, with no resources to enforce it.

We use the lingua franca out of choice because it's convenient. I'm fine with English being it, though why it's English is purely a matter of historical circumstance, and has nothing to do with anything resembling inherent qualities.

Try to make us use it beyond the extent that we chose to? Then we have a choice. You figure out what it means, if it matters enough to you. Face it, I'm the one with options, opting to play nice here. Native English speaker didn't pick anything, chose anything, and don't have a choice in the matter.

It's still a world of difference between opting to use a lingua franca out of convenience, and adopting an official language.

 

[Luso]

Each country would keep his own language learning only 1 "foreign" language to use in Europe and that could be Esperanto makes more sense, because its unfair that some have to learn more languages than others.

 

[Winner]

Esperanto is ugly and the resurrected proto-indo-european sounds like a tribal muttering of some savages.

English should be used for the time being, but gradually we should develop some reasonable form of Latin to be reintroduced as the official language in the empire Union.

 

[Fuzzz]

We'll just adapt English, as native English speakers can't get past "oui", "gutentag" and "tequila".

 

[Luso]

Esperanto is ugly and the resurrected proto-indo-european sounds like a tribal muttering of some savages.

English should be used for the time being, but gradually we should develop some reasonable form of Latin to be reintroduced as the official language in the empire Union.

French,german, spanish are also ugly and its used in the european union, whats the prob of esperanto? I think its a matter of being used with it, just like english, we are used to it because of the music and movies, but its not fair that english dont have to learn others languages, so Esperanto would be a new language for everyone without exceptions, my grandfather said years ago that Esperanto is a Universal language, more than english, but noone use it.