12 ms·

EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)

153 points by Creationer 7y ago

jacquesm 7y ago
It should, but as recently as April last year a French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him: https://www.politico.eu/article/english-only-try-au-revoir-french-ambassador-tells-council-philippe-leglise-costa/ https://www.politico.eu/article/english-only-try-au-revoir-f... Petty squabbles such as these diminish the EU.
- grenoire 7y ago
  Pettiness aside, I guess this is the same kind of response you'd give to someone who complains about OSS lacking a certain feature: Write a patch and make a PR—to the European English language repository.
- oauea 7y ago
  Of course it'd be the French.
  - pulse7 7y ago
    Lingua franca: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
    - xavieralexandre 7y ago
      The 'franca' of Lingua Franca do indeed refer to the same 'Francs' who gave their name to France and the French language. But as stated in the Wikipedia Article the Lingua Franca language used in the Ottoman Empire didn't had much relation to French itself. It was a creole language heavily influenced by Italian who dominated trade at that time. 'Francs' designated western people in general, not specifically French people. Lingua Franca then become 'more french' in some regions of Ottoman Empire were France was more dominant like Lebanon.
- Xylakant 7y ago
  > French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him You left out one important word: "only". Traditionally, all important meetings and records in the EU are translated into the major languages, some of them are available in most, if not all official languages. That makes it easier for all european citizens to read the actual records. English might be widely spoken, but fluency varies massively among the population. There's an argument to be made that this makes sense. I certainly wouldn't trust quite a few german politicians to negotiate in english, given the lack of grasp on the language that some have repeatedly demonstrated.
  - erk__ 7y ago
    It is pretty known that the parliment have an army of translators. Both live translating and translating law documents into most languages.
    - Xylakant 7y ago
      Absolutely. But the decision that the Ambassador objected to was to use english-only for the records. And citizens don't have access to that army of translators and might be interested in the records too.
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        The same held for all the other countries. Except for the UK of course.
        Xylakant 7y ago
        Well, I have no objection on english being the de-facto lingua franca. But my position on english being the only official language is certainly not as simple. And the same is true for german, french or any of the other official languages of the EU - neither of them are or should be the only official language in such a multilingual construct as the EU. So I share the ambassadors rejection of the notion to only use english and I do not regard that as pettiness harmful to the EU. Sure, translation costs money, but it also makes records more accessible to the citizens, and I regard that as a good thing.
Jonnax 7y ago
This doesn't really make sense. American English which they propose adopting is removes more of the European roots of words. For example removing the 'U' from words like Colour. Ireland is also an English speaking country in the EU. And I don't know how much of the sentiment of "Let's Americanise!" Would be popular.
- bitL 7y ago
  You probably don't know that 'u' in colour is a more recent British development than the standard US English is based on. US English is more original than the current British one.
  - lifthrasiir 7y ago
    Is it? Color was already spelled "colour" in the typical Middle English [1]. AFAIK the US development happened later to make all color-related words consistent (since it was spelled "color" in Latin, and English has lots of Latin-derived words). [1] https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED8462 https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti...
  - foldr 7y ago
    No, getting rid of the ’u' was Webster's idea. But standardized spelling is such a recent phenomenon that there's probably no definitive fact of the matter as to which spelling is 'original'.
  - ctz 7y ago
    You misrepresent the timeline, though. Webster popularised the simplifications in US English in 1828. But this was about six hundred years after colour was borrowed into English from French, not the Latin "color" that Webster preferred.
- s_dev 7y ago
  I'd be in favor of Hiberno English being adopted. It's not much different to other forms of English and wouldn't allude to the EU being "Americanized" or further flatter a country leaving the EU on acrimoious terms.
peteretep 7y ago
> the rest of the EU will be freed of the British veto and able to get as integrated as it wishes Anyone who thinks that EU skepticism is exclusive to the Brits is in for a nasty nasty surprise.
- flexie 7y ago
  I think that by now everyone realizes that there are EU skeptics in all member countries. There will always be. Around 25 percent of Americans want their state to secede (1). A lot of Italians want Northern Italy to part with Southern Italy. Spain has Catalan and Basque separatists. The UK has Scotland, and perhaps even Northern Ireland. There are many people in many places that think they would be better off in a more (formally) independent state. For now, the EU skeptics are a small minority in most EU countries. I for one hope it stays like that. The EU has shown remarkable unity when met with Brexit. 1: http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in-four-americans-want-their-state-to-secede-from-the-u-s-but-why/ http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in-four...
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Once upon a time Amsterdam was at war with other cities. What those people do not realize is that the only alternative to further European integration is another war, the more and the smaller the slices are the more certain that future becomes. Just the UK seceding from the EU increases the chances of such a thing happening tremendously.
    - antientropic 7y ago
      > the only alternative to further European integration is another war False dichotomy. Surely the same level of integration, or even a slightly lower level of integration, will not necessarily lead to war. EU members were already quite peaceful before the adoption of the Lisbon treaty, for instance. And you should also at least entertain the possibility that integrating populations further than they're willing to go increases the odds of conflict.
peteretep 7y ago
> It will rid the French or the Germans of the temptation try to make their language the dominant one in the post-Brexit EU It really won't, especially the French.
- tluyben2 7y ago
  Spain will fight tooth and nail as well. And Germany too. So no it really won't.
  - otikik 7y ago
    Spain? What makes you say that?
  - anoncake 7y ago
    > tooth and nail as well. And Germany too. Maybe. Definitely not to the extent France will.
  - inawarminister 7y ago
    I'm curious about Spanish objection to English language. Sure, they do have the issue with Gibraltar and British "tourists" perenially, but is there any effect for the language itself? At least Spanish is spoken by an order of magnitude more people than German, though (Latin America, and nowadays a third of USA as well)
  - dep_b 7y ago
    > Spain will fight tooth and nail as well. And Germany too. Dubbing movies meant for an adult public doesn't automatically make you a nation of retards. And what the hell is Spain to you anyway? Are we speaking about people from Barcelona, Andorra, the center?
  - harperlee 7y ago
    I’m from Spain, and it is surprising to hear someone say we will do that. We have a huge inferiority complex, and our own cainistic version of the black legend, that makes us revere anything foreign as better than the local version. We have petty fights re. official languages about whether traffic signs should read “A coruña” or “La coruña”; or whether the national news anchor should say “Gerona” or “Girona” when speaking in spanish. We have regional governments that push spanish out of their regions. We as a nation obsess over english; we dream of speaking it better, we make it sound cool in the ads. We mock our leaders for not speaking it properly. No one seriously pushes in a coordinated manner for spanish being used in the EU as seriously as the french or german do. At most, we aspire to be the proxy for latin america relationships. As soon as anyone proposes to use english, we will see it as the opportunity to not have half of europe speak in french.
tluyben2 7y ago
Pick a language, any language, but adopt it as official. It won't happen though. Germany, France, Spain, Italy and even Belgium are all way too proud. I am, for instance, a big fan of the Flemish language and the German language, but it is just not practical to keep them if you want to promote a united EU. But being Dutch I am for cooperation/trade; many people do not think like that and think their language and ways are vastly superior and should be adopted instead.
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  咱们都应该说中文。
  - tluyben2 7y ago
    I do not disagree, but that will not happen :] Even English won't happen before I die, and that would not be a hard switch.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  Fellow Dutch speaker here. Why in the world are you a big fan of our language? Just because it's your own? And German, just because it's so close? Both languages are horrible to learn compared to English.
  - tluyben2 7y ago
    I am a fan because I like them in a literary sense. I enjoy reading Flemish writers (Hubert Lampo, Hugo Raes) and German writers; I like the way sentences are built up and how they sound. I like Dutch less than Flemish, especially A.B.N. I find quite horrible these days. We bastardized our language too much in my opinion and our Belgian neighbors have always tried to prevent that. But my point was (typing on mobile so maybe I skipped a beat there) that although I like these languages, I think they are indeed impractical and we should just adopt English or Mandarin. Edit: also, where does that statement 'horrible to learn' come from? Honest question; I'm not sure how it works; not trolling here. We (the Dutch) are quite lenient with languages and I know why I am anyway; my German is as good as my English and my French and it did not take much effort learning these. I was not a very smart or particularly hard working student but when I grew up there was UK television, German television (the best of the bunch), Dutch television, Belgian television (was very good and original compared to Dutch tv as well, and with shows like Undercover very much back in the game) and French television; I learned most of my practical languages from watching scifi and horror when I was a kid.
Zrdr 7y ago
If we want to use only one official working language, it should be Esperanto. This would be neutral for any country (including Ireland and Malta). This would not be a threat to other languages and cultures. Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. Its benefits are clear, it only needs a political support to thrive.
- lifthrasiir 7y ago
  Let's get your facts straight: > Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. ...only for many Indo-European speakers.
  - skohan 7y ago
    Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn and to lack many of the special cases and "gotchas" present in every natural language. There are probably many cases where it would be easier for a native of some language to learn a specific similar language (i.e. for a Dutch speaker to learn German, or a Portuguese speaker to learn Spanish), but I would not be surprised if Esperanto minimizes the cost function for the net effort required for all native speakers/all second languages.
    - lifthrasiir 7y ago
      (While Zamenhof tried hard, unfortunately,) False. - The vocabulary is a big part of the language learning and it is hard to even begin with when the target vocabulary resembles nothing in your original tongues. It can be probably argued that ESL learners can learn Esperanto more quickly, but it still represents only about 1/4 of the total human population. - Rhotic consonants are particularly hard to pronounce correctly even for many ESL learners, and yet Esperanto retains them. - Esperanto by itself does not have a word order, but it does have a preferred word order of Subject-Verb-Object which is equally probable as Subject-Object-Verb but much more familiar to Indo-Europeans. - I think Esperanto, in spite of its original premise, has picked idioms and phrases up as well, as common in every old enough language. It is now widely accepted that the difference between the native tongue and the target language greatly impacts the learning curve. If Esperanto does succeed, it would not be due to the easiness, because the easiness would be highly subjective.
pvaldes 7y ago
Chinese would be even better
- tluyben2 7y ago
  Mandarin? I would not mind that as well, but that is even more extreme than the other suggestions. It would get no votes.
- BjoernKW 7y ago
  Just because it's spoken by more native speakers than any other language that doesn't automatically make Mandarin more relevant in a global context. English is a global language due to its history (largely grounded in the British Empire's colonial history). Mandarin on the other hand in a global context as of today is still largely irrelevant because it's only spoken in one country, even as that country is as globally relevant as China. That might change in the future but unless you specifically deal with China and Chinese businesses Mandarin is no more relevant on a global level than - say - Russian or German.
  - Creationer 7y ago
    Chinese is tonal and cannot be typed into a computer without going through the Pinyin intermediary stage. It is fundamentally ill-suited to being a modern global language.
- wildpeaks 7y ago
  One might think so at first glance, but it's much harder to learn (friction reduces adoption) and quite uncommon outside Asia, so it's only useful in specific situations. Plus it's not the official language of any European country.
- 781 7y ago
  English is mandatory in Chinese education, from primary school to college. Chinese is not mandatory anywhere in Europe.
thefounder 7y ago
It should develop its own language, easier to spell and write perhaps taking advantage of machine learning etc during development. Something like Esperanto that is not owned by anyone but is easier to learn by everyone(within EU). English gives an unfair advantage to native english speakers not to mention that it has a lot of legacy stuff that makes it hard to learn. Non-native speakers will always be seen as outsiders/2nd class.
- tluyben2 7y ago
  But everyone already speaks it. When I moved to Spain (from NL), I was flabbergasted about the level of English here; even the English teachers were impossible to understand. But now it is rapidly changing. Same in France and Germany. When I start speaking English to someone now in either of these countries, they generally understand. > Non-native speakers will always be seen as outsiders/2nd class. Not in my experience. But how would you measure that; in my personal experience, the Spanish and Brits treat my wife and me like their own.
  - thefounder 7y ago
    >>> Not in my experience. But how would you measure that; in my personal experience, the Spanish and Brits treat my wife and me like their own. Of course you can measure that! Try to get a job where communication and/or "presentation" skills are important(i.e lawyer, PR, media, investment banker etc)and see how it goes. Even the accent may cost you the job. The language skills are a handicap for any non-native speaker in the job market and not only.
    - tluyben2 7y ago
      That is still what you say; I do not see much proof of that. I work in banking and deal with much of what you say and I meet too many Dutch guys in those positions to think there is an issue. I was looking more for an objective measurement instead of a gut feel we both have.
      - 7y ago
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> More specifically, Brexit’s silver lining for Europe might have to do with unleashing the deepening of European integration in a whole bunch of areas where the Brits have been reluctant to go. After Brexit, they won’t have to, and the rest of the EU will be freed of the British veto and able to get as integrated as it wishes. Nice- a little controversial barb hidden in a larger, already controversial (but less so) article. Who is this Ivan Dikov? He sounds like a man who likes to stir the pot just to watch it boil over. (Not that I don't fully agree with him, mind- but it's still a controversial and rather mean opinion).
- jcbrand 7y ago
  I don't see anything particularly mean about that quote and it's definitely not the first time I've heard this argument brought up (that EU can continue with further integration without UK obstructionism).
rofo1 7y ago
The language of our time is English. There's just no disputing that. You can argue that it's because US won the cold war, and then indoctrinated the world via music and movies, and so on, and so on, but it doesn't change that fact. We should adopt English and move on; majority of people know it and study it. Why regress? The point of using a language in the first place is to understand each other. Everyone learning a new language that will just substitute English would be an immense waste of time.
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  > We should adopt English and move on; majority of people know it and study it. Why regress? It's extremely offensive to suggest that English is progress and other languages are a 'regression'.
  - Majestic121 7y ago
    I think the progress part is about having a common language, not about this common language being English. If the common language was wolof, people moving back to their own (Spanish, French, German, whatever) would be regression, as now a discussion between French, Spanish and German people would be much much harder to have.
    - NotPaidToPost 7y ago
      Well, the wording is rather clear that it was about English. Note that the author stealthily added a precision to his comment (which originally ended at "why regress?") since then to make clear it was about having a common language. But he has not removed the offending part.
      - jobigoud 7y ago
        Adopting another language as our lingua franca when English is already filling that role would be a regression. It's not saying other languages are inferior per se, they might be superior. But using any other would be an inferior choice now. It doesn't mean we can't add local flavors to it. I am a French native speaker and I also think we should just use English and move on as a species. Interpersonnal communication is hard enough that we don't need artificial complications. Let's tackle more interesting problems. Same reason we should use a single measurement units system, mains current standard, a single currency, etc.
oytis 7y ago
I'm surprised this document wasn't mentioned so far: https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION.pdf https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOG... Also, I would rather propose using Irish English as an official EU English dialect after Brexit. Not as boring as the American one.
acd 7y ago
Adopting English as the main working language would save a lot of costs in EU from translations. Also one could have German, French and Spanish as side languages. The smaller EU countries will have to accept English as main working language. In many international business settings in Europe English is the norm. Why should politics be different?
- afiori 7y ago
  > The smaller EU countries will have to accept English as main working language. This is exactly the reason why English (nor any other language) can be the EU official language. That cannot happen and wont happen for at least a couple generations.
- levosmetalo 7y ago
  There are many reasons why using English makes sense, but saving costs on translation is just not that. Unless you are bilingual the lost productivity of having to use non native language in business context would easily dwarf any cost savings, due to misunderstandings, miscommunication, not "Punkt genau" documentation etc ... Heck, anyone can just try to do an IQ test in non-native language and see how the score drops.
- kome 7y ago
  > Why should politics be different? Because politics is not business. Business is done with the criteria of efficiency, politics use the criteria of fairness. You should be able to speak to the EU institutions with whatever language you want. Not everybody speaks English. Also, I don't know how many times you actually did business in an international context, and especially consumer facing stuff: you need to master the local language and good localization are often the key to success. For example, the Spotify team did a great job customizing their product in different contexts, creating playlist that are clearly made by natives with the help and the insight of their data. So it is absolutely not true that international business just happens in English: it might at a high level, but you need translations and cultural awareness to make it work.
rwmj 7y ago
What problem is this trying to solve? Is it the cost of language interpreters? That will probably soon be solved by technology. Is it the lack of a "demos"? That would only be solved if everyone in the European demos also learned English and all local politicians only spoke English, which is, ahem, unlikely to happen ever.
- Creationer 7y ago
  The point is that English is the de-facto single working language of the EU, and the de-facto business and scientific language of Europe, and so it might as well be made official. If countries offered Government services including education in English, it would hugely assist the movement of people and capital throughout the continent. Consider: you are from Spain, and have been offered a job at a great company in Germany. You will speak English at the office and probably get around the city speaking English. But: your children need to learn German, fluently and immediately, in order to continue their schooling? An official EU English would help pave the way for National Governments to offer services in both the local language and English.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    There's nothing stopping national governments from offering services in English right now. For example, https://www.nelson-mandela-schule.net/ https://www.nelson-mandela-schule.net/ is a bilingual (German and English) public school in Berlin, where you could send your kids, assuming they speak English well enough. If on the other hand you want all services to be available in English everywhere, then I don't think that's a realistic expectation, since it would require all public-facing government employees to speak decent English.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  > What problem is this trying to solve? Being able to classify europeans in first class (allowed to work), and second class EU citizens (PIGs, yellow jackets,... etc), probably.
- swongel 7y ago
  As an EU citizen, language is more than just translation. Free interpreters like Google Translate are very useful but will never be a substitute for learning a foreign language. Because you're not only learning the language you study, but also the culture, norms, and values of the people speaking the language. One might be able to translate "Gezellig" (Dutch, cozy) of "Fika" (Swedish, afternoon tea) into English, but context and understanding will be lost in the process unless the English listener knows these distinctive words and their meaning within the cultural context. Dutch and Swedish are still closely related to English by language as well as culture, imagine languages with no relation to English whatsoever; this "lost-in-translation" effect will be more pronounced. A future universal translator might be incredibly good at translating, but will never be a substitute for human cultural understanding without having to explain every caveat and cultural intricacies to the user. By all learning English, we can have a shared language, we're all able to understand each other in real-time, without technology, with less cultural ambiguity when interpreting. And why wouldn't we learn English? Learning a second language is very achievable when you're taught in school as a child, and Engish seems like a good compromise between Romance languages and Germanic languages since English has a shared vocabulary with both. Finally, I'm of course biased towards learning English, coming from a country where English is a mandatory subject in school. That being said; I assure you that no matter how good the translator; Seinfeld sucks in German.
viach 7y ago
Great idea actually. There is also "Eastern EU English" extremely popular in Ukraine, Poland etc, should probably be adopted officially as well.
- teekert 7y ago
  We also have Dunglish [0]! Actually we get around easily using it in Eastern Europe! [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunglish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunglish
sorisos 7y ago
I have long wished for a EU-en locale. Perhaps one day...
- igravious 7y ago
  that'd be en-EU, ¿no?
- anoncake 7y ago
  On Android, the language can be set to English (accented). Alas, that's just for testing Unicode support.
Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
I don't think English will stop being EU's lingua franca any time soon. Agreeing on a replacement would be politically impossible (the Germans wouldn't accept French, the French wouldn't accept German, the Spanish would have good arguments to make in any of both cases); and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical (you cannot realistically expect every EU citizen to know their native language, French and German, for example). A "neutral" language like Esperanto is a nice idea, and I would also like Latin as the EU language, as it can be argued to be the language that historically shaped Europe the most. But let's not fool ourselves, no one is going to stand for learning a new language from scratch (even if it's easy) when English pretty much Just Works(tm), and provides a lot of utility also outside the EU. Personally, I'm from Spain and I'm not annoyed or upset about English being the lingua franca. I think we should abandon the idea of English "belonging" to its native speakers. When I talk to people from Germany, from China, or from Vietnam, for example our common language is almost always English, even if neither of us are natives. English is useful for us and belongs to us, as much as to someone from Gloucestershire.
- barking 7y ago
  I would also like Latin as the EU language It would be like deja veni vidi vici all over again.
  - nabla9 7y ago
    Interlingua is artificial language where vocabulary is common to the widest possible range of western European languages. Many Europeans understand Interlingua without knowing it. Examples: Mi aeroglissator es plen de anguillas. Multo ben, gratias. E vos? Contente de facer vostre cognoscentia! Il es un placer facer vostre cognoscentia! Amarea vos dansar con me? Parla plus lentemente, per favor Patre nostre, qui es in le celos, que tu nomine sia sanctificate; que tu regno veni; que tu voluntate sia facite como in le celo, etiam super le terra.
    - barking 7y ago
      I'd suspect that a monoglot german speaker would understand nothing of that. Even an english speaker and despite our huge borrowing from french it's not too easy.
BjoernKW 7y ago
I've had a similar idea for some time now, albeit without the unnecessary focus on American English: With the UK probably - and very unfortunately - leaving the EU the latter could adopt English as its main language without any unfair advantage to one of the larger EU countries or hurting national sentiment. I'd even go as far as to propose adopting English as the main language for legal matters, public administration, business and education in each of the EU member countries. The language barrier is the predominant obstacle preventing a closer integration between EU countries and collaboration between businesses across borders. A single, unified language over time could remedy that problem.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  > With the UK probably and very unfortunately - leaving the EU the latter could adopt English as its main language without any unfair advantage to one of the larger EU countries or hurting national sentiment. This is exactly the point the article makes.
new_here 7y ago
I was raised to use British English spelling. Honestly, without any offence intended, whenever I see words like 'color', 'organize', 'oriented' and so on my mind sees it as a lazy (for lack of a better word) interpretation of the original word's spelling that has evolved in the US. I don't think the content has any less merit because of it, the authors are following the American convention. Just saying that because I'm curious as to what American's think when they read British spelling? Also, whenever I write CSS and type 'color', I think, this was developed in America so they have complete right to spell it however they damn well please.
- tspiteri 7y ago
  -ize is correct in British English as well; if anything it is more "original" as it comes from the Greek -izo (iota, zeta, omega), which is the origin of the suffix. In fact Oxford English Dictionary (OED) spelling, and the Hart's Rules guide, are for organize, not for organise. (On the other hand, analyze is American while analyse is British.)
  - new_here 7y ago
    TIL, thanks for the clarification!
- dmos62 7y ago
  I usually stick to the British spelling as well, but I also love variety and I wish there were more "written dialects" of English that are widely accepted. I hate it when people react to different ways of talking or writing as if the other person was a child who hasn't learned the _proper_ way of doing things yet. As to the counter-argument of normalizing language use for the sake of the maximum number of people being able to easily understand each other: I think this argument underestimates peoples' capacity to communicate even when they can't understand 100% of the references or language, and it underestimates the negative effect an inflexible language has on the culture. In some ways, it's a dilemma of where to draw the line between "this is a person who hasn't experienced enough language and therefore is deficient in its use" and between "this is a person who's language has adapted to his micro-cultural/social/etc. context". I could go on and on about this. I think it's a fascinating, relevant subject.
kayoone 7y ago
Living in working in the Berlin tech world, English is already the official working language in most companies. Even as I german i have no problem with this, my only gripe is that it makes it very hard for my non-german colleagues to learn german.
- Majestic121 7y ago
  I have the same issue in Paris, I know some coworkers who have been living in France for more than 8 years, and still can't speak a reasonable French : barely able to order at a restaurant for exemple, definitely not able to hold a conversation. I'm not sure it is actually an issue, it just feels weird as a French person to discover that French is not even required in your own country.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    > it just feels weird as a French person to discover that French is not even required in your own country. And why should it be? In big cities people tend to be more adaptive towards this than outside. If you go outside to the country side the situation will rapidly change. But in every major European capital it is most likely possible to get around on just English. I always make an effort when in France, Germany and Poland to speak the local language but more often than not the locals speak English much better than I speak their language and after a sentence or two the switch is made. Of course making an effort is appreciated anyway but there definitely is no expectation of being able to hold a full conversation in the language of the place you visit.
    - Majestic121 7y ago
      I agree for a place of visit, and I do the same when I can, but for a place to live in, that's a different beast. Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but this realisation was quite surprising to me
    - afiori 7y ago
      Because if you live in a country for 8 years you are bound to encounter limits in where English can support you. Police, hospitals, local doctors, local elections, bureaucracy, food label and shops, information notice and warnings, verbose street sign for road works and many more.
nnq 7y ago
This is brilliant! Finally there's the opportunity to adopt an equalizing language that will also help free us from national culture isolationism: - a language that is nobody's mother tongue: YEEEY! - language that is not attached to any one culture: 10x YEEY! Think about it! This could help global not just European unity: all the people of Asian and African origin who already speak fluent English could instantly embrace and join in and start building the new pan-European culture that will grow into a new and rich global culture. Freed from the tyranny of national-language-culture, this could be the first truly global culture Humanity has the chance to produce! One thing Globalism 1.0 did wrong was trying to destroy culture. We know now that this leaves a void that attracts trash like racism, xenophobia and isolationism to get filled by these - culture too abhors vacuum! Now Globalism 2.0 can start right in the EU by constructing a new culture around a language that is nobody's own, at least on the cultural front. If this would ever work it will coagulate around it a new literature, then media etc. And finally we'd have a non-trash global culture that will be able to keep us united enough to properly address global issues like pollution and climate change! </dream>
- pjc50 7y ago
  > One thing Globalism 1.0 did wrong was trying to destroy culture Could you expand on this, I'm not sure what you're referring to?
  - nnq 7y ago
    ...well, destroy is too harsh a world, but the "uniformization" process of global brands has not really created any authentic "strong culture". Also in trying too be maybe too politically correct and not to offend anyone, any "globally marketed" idea always ended up washed up. You need to CREATE ideas/stuff etc., and be occasionally violent/offensive with them (just be sure to offend everyone), otherwise unifomization and standardization will just destroy whatever is there to start with by diluting it out of existence. The "globalism destroys culture" is a fav meme of the "other side" now, but it's not without base! If you pour water into wine, or if you mix all wines in equal proportions, you basically "destroy" wine. What you want is an authentically new kind of wine! And you can only build this on some neutral / owned-by-nobody foundation, otherwise everyone will want "wine 2.0" to be their style of wine, and you'll end up with some "designed by democratic committee" crap, instead of something designed by individual creative geniuses competing among themselves and building on top of this new neutral foundation.
ktpsns 7y ago
So what's the definition of EU-en, compared to US-en or UK-en? I know the differences between US-en and UK-en, but I'm lacking facts about EU-en.
- aarroyoc 7y ago
  Metric system, date formats, currency... are the first things they pop in my mind
  - ktpsns 7y ago
    Oh. I thought about written language, not about localization (as it comes up when being used in graphical user interfaces). As a non-native speaker in science, we always write out units (3 km or 3 miles), we write out dates clearly (July 2nd or 2018-07-02), the same with units (USD 3 or 3 EUR). As a non-application-writer, I don't see the point. As a programmer, I do, of course.
Lucadg 7y ago
Language is open source. English does not belong to the UK anymore as much as Tiramisu doesn't belong to Italy or http to Tim Berners-Lee. People created these standards, let people use them, improve them and have a better life. [Edit: spelling]
BlueTemplar 7y ago
And make official the EU being just an USA colony (see IT companies), just as the American Empire itself is waning. Such a wise move ! Meanwhile, Macron's proposal is impressively hypocritical(/real-political?), considering how much he has done to pump up English and diminish French...
- sgift 7y ago
  Using a common language in the EU makes the EU a US colony ..? Because we share the same language as the US then?
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    No, it's not just about that, I mention it too (and the FA too, in a roundabout way). Why exaggerating what I said ?
lucb1e 7y ago
Finished the article but I haven't seen a single proposal of what this actually would mean. EU English would be different how? And that's besides the fact that I also have yet to hear a single real advantage for forking the language and creating 15 competing standards. Reasons like "then it's fair for everyone" doesn't make any sense when the UK is gone anyway, it would make sense right now since one country has an advantage, but not after brexit. > It will be taking advantage of [the current] situation [since it] is already spoken by pretty much everybody. Is the author saying it's more difficult to read or write british english than it is to read an as-of-yet-undefined EU english? > It will rid the French or the Germans of the temptation try to make their language the dominant one Right, once we adopt a currently fictional en_EU, they'll know they lost the battle. But the same would be true if we adopt de_EU or fr_EU or keep en_UK. Whatever decision is made, it won't lessen any discussion until said decision has been made. > It will rid the Europeans of some of the oddities of British English which make it a tiny bit more complex You mean adding silent letters to words like 'color' (colour) or 'no' (know)? To make the letters match the pronunciation, it needs an overhaul quite a bit larger than switching away from british english. > It will give the Europeans some “closure” with the Brits frowns > It will give the EU a chance [words words words] to finally make widely understood some of the terms and notions that are specifically EU / European but are nowhere to be found in British or American English. Like what? I have no idea what the author is talking about. > It will give the EU a chance [words words words] to gain a stronger popular culture position on the world stage. I think our various languages add a lot of culture rather than forking English. (Though I'd personally rather be rid of all the languages: fewer language is more convenient than yet another language.) > It will further enable the EU’s communication with the entire rest of the world Surely you're joking. Speaking a different language just for the sake of it helps international communication how? > because guess what (working) language they already speak[: English] ... precisely, so why change it? > expressions, idioms, etc. can be too specific, or “too British” [words words words], quite often those might be misunderstood or even completely missed out. Occasionally, that might be true of American English as well, but to a substantially lesser extent. This is approaching sense. So let's have some examples? Because I still have no idea what the author is talking about, even if 80% down the article I did find the first and only sensible reason, assuming the mentioned understood-by-the-British-only expressions, idioms, etc. exist. I'm wondering if this post is satirical or serious. Could be that I'm playing amazingly deep on someone's joke, but the other comments seem to treat it as a serious idea... not sure.
pergadad 7y ago
Better to stick with Irish English, which is ready the transition point. We could rename it European English jf that helps, but creating a new one would not be in anyone's interest and practically impossible: e.g. who would be the "European English" trainers? And would the EU just adopt the English dictionary and grammar the same way the UK adopted all EU legislation as own legislation for post-brexit? Just doesnt make sense.
k_bx 7y ago
Great idea, and I'd be more interested in EU English Locale. I'm Ukrainian, and whenever I choose to have an English UI, I have a problem because U.S. and GB are using a non-metric system. Canadian locale works, but it would be nice to just have a common EU English one. UPDATE: just checked, Ubuntu's United Kingdom uses Metric system actually, no idea why was I thinking it'd be Imperial before.
- rlkf 7y ago
  Try the Irish one; it is mostly sane, apart from not having dates in ISO format.
  - k_bx 7y ago
    Thanks! Also, just checked, Ubuntu's United Kingdom locale uses Metric system actually, no idea why was I thinking it'd be Imperial before.
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  I use en_DA for that.
Rerarom 7y ago
Why not just adopt Esperanto? You can learn with minimal effort to read it in less than half a year. And I suppose listening skill would come naturally if one would have daily news programs in it.
AFascistWorld 7y ago
Not mastering English in the 21 century is being illiterate, especially in this increasingly fascist world.
mekoka 7y ago
Looking into the history of American English hints at why it's so powerful. It was designed for pragmatism over elitism, to favor a broad adoption of a writing system for a population of then recent immigrants, many of whom were not native English speakers or had had little access to education. Its original purpose is practicality. It only gradually became considered a viable intellectual alternative to British English with the output of American literature, from writers who were educated with it. Most of that revolution is attributed to Noah Webster. To give some example of how it just made sense, he favored "or" over the British "our" in words such as "color" and "odor", "ter" over "tre" in "theater" and "center", "z" over "s" in "civilization" and "analyze", "e" vs "ae" in "archeology" (Brits write it "archaeology") and "paleontology" ("Palaeontology"). And many more.
- antientropic 7y ago
  I don't get it. How is a word like "civilization" less elitist / more pragmatic than "civilisation"? How is that a revolution? Is there any evidence that these minor spelling difference had an effect on the success of American English?
  - mekoka 7y ago
    Because 'z' is unambiguous. If it sounds like a 'z' it must be a 'z'. Especially from the perspective of a non-native speaker, or someone who needs to learn to read and write as an adult. As for your other questions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo.... Also feel free to look up specifically Noah Webster.
danieltillett 7y ago
I have wondered for awhile if it is possible to have a world language - not that the world couldn't all agree (or be forced) to choose a common language, but that any single language spoken by 7.5 billion people would immediately start to fragment or the pace of change would be so fast you couldn't talk to your grandparents.
- inawarminister 7y ago
  It should be possible if all 7.5 billion are connected to a world-spanning Network and produce and consume similar media. Hollywood movies and pop music already proved this after all. And for the youngsters, video games and memes.
antirez 7y ago
In case we move away from English, the only thing that makes sense IMHO is Spanish, because it is very easy to pick up for most other latin-derived language speakers, and has an amazing amount of speakers worldwide. Moreover is not very hard. If EU goes for English, I totally agree US english is the best. It's phonetically simpler and more understandable, and is much more in the artworks we consume: TV series, music, movies, ...
LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
Jou känn pry mei näytiff djörmänn from mai cold däd häntz! Yawollja! Echt jetzt? Oh, really? Why no fucking Esperanto, or Marain, Klingon, Elfish?
Svip 7y ago
I'm sorry, but this opinion piece sounds pretty dumb. It almost reads like a troll post. The fact that so many in this comment thread seems to be concurring with its suggestion is troubling enough. If you really want to alienate the EU from the average EU citizen, make English its official language. And adopt a version only a tiny minority really speaks too, just to salt the wound! I'm not sure whether to be scared or laugh. The fact that the EU has 24 official languages isn't meant to make its proceedings cumbersome or to necessarily facilitate national pride (although, it's certainly also that!), but to make it available to the general public. The official nature of all the member states' languages means you can submit documents in all those languages. Everyone on Hacker News speak English, but it's not a majority in the EU who speaks or understands English comfortably. But it's easy to forget our privilege. Even as younger generations get more and more accustomed to learning, reading and speaking English around Europe, most are still more comfortable reading technical, political and legal texts in their own language. They may understand the dialogue in Game of Thrones well enough, but can an Estonian farmer understand an EU agriculture subsidy determination, if it was written in English?
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  Absolutely, and the EU was founded on principles of federation and preserving cultural heritage and differences. Most definitely the EU hasn't given power to sacrifice even a single language for the convenience of EU institutions and nobody in the EUP/EUC wants to change that in the slightest.
- bryal 7y ago
  > Everyone on Hacker News speak English, but it's not a majority in the EU who speaks or understands English comfortably. But a majority is comfortable with German or French? Also, I can promise you that at least for Sweden, a vast majority of population would prefer English being the official language of the EU to something like French. We may not always be completely comfortable speaking English, but it's a language just about anyone will understand with a little effort.
  - Svip 7y ago
akvadrako 7y ago
If you think Esperanto is the better choice for EU's official working language, sign the petition here: http://e-d-e.org/?lang=en http://e-d-e.org/?lang=en
singularity2001 7y ago
Be encouraged by other countries such as Pakistan and India in which English is already 'co-official': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_entities_where_English_is_an_official_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_entities_w... Please also combine anglic with a conservative spelling reform: color, beautyfull, burocracys, enouf, allready... Basically look at the most common spelling mistakes and chose those variants which are more logical than the current spelling. The language should be called Anglic/Anglish, after the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles It's already more of an ethnonym than a loconym. And ethnonym more in the sense of shared language and culture than common genes.
- Thimothy 7y ago
  Man, I would vote for life whoever proposed to fix english spelling. The fact I can't use in conversation many words I have learned reading because I have no idea how are spelled is my biggest grudge with the language.
koonsolo 7y ago
I don't understand why they didn't try to unify the English language across the borders. Why are there different official variants of the same language? I'm from Belgium and speak Flemish, our neighboring country is the Netherlands. We officially speak the same language. We have the same spelling, same rules, etc. Of course there are dialect variations, but the official language is exactly the same. I always wondered why other countries don't try to do the same. For example Slovakia and Czech Republic. It almost is exactly the same language, and I know Slovaks were able to understand Czech. But it seems newer generations are unable to do that. So it's weird that these languages evolve away from each other, instead of towards each other. The world is becoming smaller every day, so why not try to standardize at least the English language, which is mostly used in international settings? But I guess it's also an ego thing, where neither UK or US (No idea which official variant they use in Australia/New Zealand) want to adopt the other countries rules.

153 points by Creationer 7y ago

It should, but as recently as April last year a French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him: https://www.politico.eu/article/english-only-try-au-revoir-french-ambassador-tells-council-philippe-leglise-costa/ https://www.politico.eu/article/english-only-try-au-revoir-f... Petty squabbles such as these diminish the EU.

grenoire 7y ago
Pettiness aside, I guess this is the same kind of response you'd give to someone who complains about OSS lacking a certain feature: Write a patch and make a PR—to the European English language repository.
oauea 7y ago
Of course it'd be the French.
- pulse7 7y ago
  Lingua franca: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
  - xavieralexandre 7y ago
    The 'franca' of Lingua Franca do indeed refer to the same 'Francs' who gave their name to France and the French language. But as stated in the Wikipedia Article the Lingua Franca language used in the Ottoman Empire didn't had much relation to French itself. It was a creole language heavily influenced by Italian who dominated trade at that time. 'Francs' designated western people in general, not specifically French people. Lingua Franca then become 'more french' in some regions of Ottoman Empire were France was more dominant like Lebanon.
Xylakant 7y ago
> French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him You left out one important word: "only". Traditionally, all important meetings and records in the EU are translated into the major languages, some of them are available in most, if not all official languages. That makes it easier for all european citizens to read the actual records. English might be widely spoken, but fluency varies massively among the population. There's an argument to be made that this makes sense. I certainly wouldn't trust quite a few german politicians to negotiate in english, given the lack of grasp on the language that some have repeatedly demonstrated.
- erk__ 7y ago
  It is pretty known that the parliment have an army of translators. Both live translating and translating law documents into most languages.
  - Xylakant 7y ago
    Absolutely. But the decision that the Ambassador objected to was to use english-only for the records. And citizens don't have access to that army of translators and might be interested in the records too.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      The same held for all the other countries. Except for the UK of course.
      - Xylakant 7y ago
        Well, I have no objection on english being the de-facto lingua franca. But my position on english being the only official language is certainly not as simple. And the same is true for german, french or any of the other official languages of the EU - neither of them are or should be the only official language in such a multilingual construct as the EU. So I share the ambassadors rejection of the notion to only use english and I do not regard that as pettiness harmful to the EU. Sure, translation costs money, but it also makes records more accessible to the citizens, and I regard that as a good thing.

Jonnax 7y ago

This doesn't really make sense. American English which they propose adopting is removes more of the European roots of words. For example removing the 'U' from words like Colour. Ireland is also an English speaking country in the EU. And I don't know how much of the sentiment of "Let's Americanise!" Would be popular.

bitL 7y ago
You probably don't know that 'u' in colour is a more recent British development than the standard US English is based on. US English is more original than the current British one.
- lifthrasiir 7y ago
  Is it? Color was already spelled "colour" in the typical Middle English [1]. AFAIK the US development happened later to make all color-related words consistent (since it was spelled "color" in Latin, and English has lots of Latin-derived words). [1] https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED8462 https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti...
- foldr 7y ago
  No, getting rid of the ’u' was Webster's idea. But standardized spelling is such a recent phenomenon that there's probably no definitive fact of the matter as to which spelling is 'original'.
- ctz 7y ago
  You misrepresent the timeline, though. Webster popularised the simplifications in US English in 1828. But this was about six hundred years after colour was borrowed into English from French, not the Latin "color" that Webster preferred.
s_dev 7y ago
I'd be in favor of Hiberno English being adopted. It's not much different to other forms of English and wouldn't allude to the EU being "Americanized" or further flatter a country leaving the EU on acrimoious terms.

peteretep 7y ago

> the rest of the EU will be freed of the British veto and able to get as integrated as it wishes Anyone who thinks that EU skepticism is exclusive to the Brits is in for a nasty nasty surprise.

flexie 7y ago
I think that by now everyone realizes that there are EU skeptics in all member countries. There will always be. Around 25 percent of Americans want their state to secede (1). A lot of Italians want Northern Italy to part with Southern Italy. Spain has Catalan and Basque separatists. The UK has Scotland, and perhaps even Northern Ireland. There are many people in many places that think they would be better off in a more (formally) independent state. For now, the EU skeptics are a small minority in most EU countries. I for one hope it stays like that. The EU has shown remarkable unity when met with Brexit. 1: http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in-four-americans-want-their-state-to-secede-from-the-u-s-but-why/ http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in-four...
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Once upon a time Amsterdam was at war with other cities. What those people do not realize is that the only alternative to further European integration is another war, the more and the smaller the slices are the more certain that future becomes. Just the UK seceding from the EU increases the chances of such a thing happening tremendously.
  - antientropic 7y ago
    > the only alternative to further European integration is another war False dichotomy. Surely the same level of integration, or even a slightly lower level of integration, will not necessarily lead to war. EU members were already quite peaceful before the adoption of the Lisbon treaty, for instance. And you should also at least entertain the possibility that integrating populations further than they're willing to go increases the odds of conflict.

peteretep 7y ago

> It will rid the French or the Germans of the temptation try to make their language the dominant one in the post-Brexit EU It really won't, especially the French.

tluyben2 7y ago
Spain will fight tooth and nail as well. And Germany too. So no it really won't.
- otikik 7y ago
  Spain? What makes you say that?
- anoncake 7y ago
  > tooth and nail as well. And Germany too. Maybe. Definitely not to the extent France will.
- inawarminister 7y ago
  I'm curious about Spanish objection to English language. Sure, they do have the issue with Gibraltar and British "tourists" perenially, but is there any effect for the language itself? At least Spanish is spoken by an order of magnitude more people than German, though (Latin America, and nowadays a third of USA as well)
- dep_b 7y ago
  > Spain will fight tooth and nail as well. And Germany too. Dubbing movies meant for an adult public doesn't automatically make you a nation of retards. And what the hell is Spain to you anyway? Are we speaking about people from Barcelona, Andorra, the center?
- harperlee 7y ago
  I’m from Spain, and it is surprising to hear someone say we will do that. We have a huge inferiority complex, and our own cainistic version of the black legend, that makes us revere anything foreign as better than the local version. We have petty fights re. official languages about whether traffic signs should read “A coruña” or “La coruña”; or whether the national news anchor should say “Gerona” or “Girona” when speaking in spanish. We have regional governments that push spanish out of their regions. We as a nation obsess over english; we dream of speaking it better, we make it sound cool in the ads. We mock our leaders for not speaking it properly. No one seriously pushes in a coordinated manner for spanish being used in the EU as seriously as the french or german do. At most, we aspire to be the proxy for latin america relationships. As soon as anyone proposes to use english, we will see it as the opportunity to not have half of europe speak in french.

tluyben2 7y ago

Pick a language, any language, but adopt it as official. It won't happen though. Germany, France, Spain, Italy and even Belgium are all way too proud. I am, for instance, a big fan of the Flemish language and the German language, but it is just not practical to keep them if you want to promote a united EU. But being Dutch I am for cooperation/trade; many people do not think like that and think their language and ways are vastly superior and should be adopted instead.

NotPaidToPost 7y ago
咱们都应该说中文。
- tluyben2 7y ago
  I do not disagree, but that will not happen :] Even English won't happen before I die, and that would not be a hard switch.
lucb1e 7y ago
Fellow Dutch speaker here. Why in the world are you a big fan of our language? Just because it's your own? And German, just because it's so close? Both languages are horrible to learn compared to English.
- tluyben2 7y ago
  I am a fan because I like them in a literary sense. I enjoy reading Flemish writers (Hubert Lampo, Hugo Raes) and German writers; I like the way sentences are built up and how they sound. I like Dutch less than Flemish, especially A.B.N. I find quite horrible these days. We bastardized our language too much in my opinion and our Belgian neighbors have always tried to prevent that. But my point was (typing on mobile so maybe I skipped a beat there) that although I like these languages, I think they are indeed impractical and we should just adopt English or Mandarin. Edit: also, where does that statement 'horrible to learn' come from? Honest question; I'm not sure how it works; not trolling here. We (the Dutch) are quite lenient with languages and I know why I am anyway; my German is as good as my English and my French and it did not take much effort learning these. I was not a very smart or particularly hard working student but when I grew up there was UK television, German television (the best of the bunch), Dutch television, Belgian television (was very good and original compared to Dutch tv as well, and with shows like Undercover very much back in the game) and French television; I learned most of my practical languages from watching scifi and horror when I was a kid.

Zrdr 7y ago

If we want to use only one official working language, it should be Esperanto. This would be neutral for any country (including Ireland and Malta). This would not be a threat to other languages and cultures. Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. Its benefits are clear, it only needs a political support to thrive.

lifthrasiir 7y ago
Let's get your facts straight: > Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. ...only for many Indo-European speakers.
- skohan 7y ago
  Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn and to lack many of the special cases and "gotchas" present in every natural language. There are probably many cases where it would be easier for a native of some language to learn a specific similar language (i.e. for a Dutch speaker to learn German, or a Portuguese speaker to learn Spanish), but I would not be surprised if Esperanto minimizes the cost function for the net effort required for all native speakers/all second languages.
  - lifthrasiir 7y ago
    (While Zamenhof tried hard, unfortunately,) False. - The vocabulary is a big part of the language learning and it is hard to even begin with when the target vocabulary resembles nothing in your original tongues. It can be probably argued that ESL learners can learn Esperanto more quickly, but it still represents only about 1/4 of the total human population. - Rhotic consonants are particularly hard to pronounce correctly even for many ESL learners, and yet Esperanto retains them. - Esperanto by itself does not have a word order, but it does have a preferred word order of Subject-Verb-Object which is equally probable as Subject-Object-Verb but much more familiar to Indo-Europeans. - I think Esperanto, in spite of its original premise, has picked idioms and phrases up as well, as common in every old enough language. It is now widely accepted that the difference between the native tongue and the target language greatly impacts the learning curve. If Esperanto does succeed, it would not be due to the easiness, because the easiness would be highly subjective.

pvaldes 7y ago

Chinese would be even better

tluyben2 7y ago
Mandarin? I would not mind that as well, but that is even more extreme than the other suggestions. It would get no votes.
BjoernKW 7y ago
Just because it's spoken by more native speakers than any other language that doesn't automatically make Mandarin more relevant in a global context. English is a global language due to its history (largely grounded in the British Empire's colonial history). Mandarin on the other hand in a global context as of today is still largely irrelevant because it's only spoken in one country, even as that country is as globally relevant as China. That might change in the future but unless you specifically deal with China and Chinese businesses Mandarin is no more relevant on a global level than - say - Russian or German.
- Creationer 7y ago
  Chinese is tonal and cannot be typed into a computer without going through the Pinyin intermediary stage. It is fundamentally ill-suited to being a modern global language.
wildpeaks 7y ago
One might think so at first glance, but it's much harder to learn (friction reduces adoption) and quite uncommon outside Asia, so it's only useful in specific situations. Plus it's not the official language of any European country.
781 7y ago
English is mandatory in Chinese education, from primary school to college. Chinese is not mandatory anywhere in Europe.

thefounder 7y ago

It should develop its own language, easier to spell and write perhaps taking advantage of machine learning etc during development. Something like Esperanto that is not owned by anyone but is easier to learn by everyone(within EU). English gives an unfair advantage to native english speakers not to mention that it has a lot of legacy stuff that makes it hard to learn. Non-native speakers will always be seen as outsiders/2nd class.

tluyben2 7y ago
But everyone already speaks it. When I moved to Spain (from NL), I was flabbergasted about the level of English here; even the English teachers were impossible to understand. But now it is rapidly changing. Same in France and Germany. When I start speaking English to someone now in either of these countries, they generally understand. > Non-native speakers will always be seen as outsiders/2nd class. Not in my experience. But how would you measure that; in my personal experience, the Spanish and Brits treat my wife and me like their own.
- thefounder 7y ago
  >>> Not in my experience. But how would you measure that; in my personal experience, the Spanish and Brits treat my wife and me like their own. Of course you can measure that! Try to get a job where communication and/or "presentation" skills are important(i.e lawyer, PR, media, investment banker etc)and see how it goes. Even the accent may cost you the job. The language skills are a handicap for any non-native speaker in the job market and not only.
  - tluyben2 7y ago
    That is still what you say; I do not see much proof of that. I work in banking and deal with much of what you say and I meet too many Dutch guys in those positions to think there is an issue. I was looking more for an objective measurement instead of a gut feel we both have.
    - 7y ago

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

>> More specifically, Brexit’s silver lining for Europe might have to do with unleashing the deepening of European integration in a whole bunch of areas where the Brits have been reluctant to go. After Brexit, they won’t have to, and the rest of the EU will be freed of the British veto and able to get as integrated as it wishes. Nice- a little controversial barb hidden in a larger, already controversial (but less so) article. Who is this Ivan Dikov? He sounds like a man who likes to stir the pot just to watch it boil over. (Not that I don't fully agree with him, mind- but it's still a controversial and rather mean opinion).

jcbrand 7y ago
I don't see anything particularly mean about that quote and it's definitely not the first time I've heard this argument brought up (that EU can continue with further integration without UK obstructionism).

rofo1 7y ago

The language of our time is English. There's just no disputing that. You can argue that it's because US won the cold war, and then indoctrinated the world via music and movies, and so on, and so on, but it doesn't change that fact. We should adopt English and move on; majority of people know it and study it. Why regress? The point of using a language in the first place is to understand each other. Everyone learning a new language that will just substitute English would be an immense waste of time.

NotPaidToPost 7y ago
> We should adopt English and move on; majority of people know it and study it. Why regress? It's extremely offensive to suggest that English is progress and other languages are a 'regression'.
- Majestic121 7y ago
  I think the progress part is about having a common language, not about this common language being English. If the common language was wolof, people moving back to their own (Spanish, French, German, whatever) would be regression, as now a discussion between French, Spanish and German people would be much much harder to have.
  - NotPaidToPost 7y ago
    Well, the wording is rather clear that it was about English. Note that the author stealthily added a precision to his comment (which originally ended at "why regress?") since then to make clear it was about having a common language. But he has not removed the offending part.
    - jobigoud 7y ago
      Adopting another language as our lingua franca when English is already filling that role would be a regression. It's not saying other languages are inferior per se, they might be superior. But using any other would be an inferior choice now. It doesn't mean we can't add local flavors to it. I am a French native speaker and I also think we should just use English and move on as a species. Interpersonnal communication is hard enough that we don't need artificial complications. Let's tackle more interesting problems. Same reason we should use a single measurement units system, mains current standard, a single currency, etc.

oytis 7y ago

I'm surprised this document wasn't mentioned so far: https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION.pdf https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOG... Also, I would rather propose using Irish English as an official EU English dialect after Brexit. Not as boring as the American one.

acd 7y ago

Adopting English as the main working language would save a lot of costs in EU from translations. Also one could have German, French and Spanish as side languages. The smaller EU countries will have to accept English as main working language. In many international business settings in Europe English is the norm. Why should politics be different?

afiori 7y ago
> The smaller EU countries will have to accept English as main working language. This is exactly the reason why English (nor any other language) can be the EU official language. That cannot happen and wont happen for at least a couple generations.
levosmetalo 7y ago
There are many reasons why using English makes sense, but saving costs on translation is just not that. Unless you are bilingual the lost productivity of having to use non native language in business context would easily dwarf any cost savings, due to misunderstandings, miscommunication, not "Punkt genau" documentation etc ... Heck, anyone can just try to do an IQ test in non-native language and see how the score drops.
kome 7y ago
> Why should politics be different? Because politics is not business. Business is done with the criteria of efficiency, politics use the criteria of fairness. You should be able to speak to the EU institutions with whatever language you want. Not everybody speaks English. Also, I don't know how many times you actually did business in an international context, and especially consumer facing stuff: you need to master the local language and good localization are often the key to success. For example, the Spotify team did a great job customizing their product in different contexts, creating playlist that are clearly made by natives with the help and the insight of their data. So it is absolutely not true that international business just happens in English: it might at a high level, but you need translations and cultural awareness to make it work.

rwmj 7y ago

What problem is this trying to solve? Is it the cost of language interpreters? That will probably soon be solved by technology. Is it the lack of a "demos"? That would only be solved if everyone in the European demos also learned English and all local politicians only spoke English, which is, ahem, unlikely to happen ever.

Creationer 7y ago
The point is that English is the de-facto single working language of the EU, and the de-facto business and scientific language of Europe, and so it might as well be made official. If countries offered Government services including education in English, it would hugely assist the movement of people and capital throughout the continent. Consider: you are from Spain, and have been offered a job at a great company in Germany. You will speak English at the office and probably get around the city speaking English. But: your children need to learn German, fluently and immediately, in order to continue their schooling? An official EU English would help pave the way for National Governments to offer services in both the local language and English.
- yorwba 7y ago
  There's nothing stopping national governments from offering services in English right now. For example, https://www.nelson-mandela-schule.net/ https://www.nelson-mandela-schule.net/ is a bilingual (German and English) public school in Berlin, where you could send your kids, assuming they speak English well enough. If on the other hand you want all services to be available in English everywhere, then I don't think that's a realistic expectation, since it would require all public-facing government employees to speak decent English.
pvaldes 7y ago
> What problem is this trying to solve? Being able to classify europeans in first class (allowed to work), and second class EU citizens (PIGs, yellow jackets,... etc), probably.
swongel 7y ago
As an EU citizen, language is more than just translation. Free interpreters like Google Translate are very useful but will never be a substitute for learning a foreign language. Because you're not only learning the language you study, but also the culture, norms, and values of the people speaking the language. One might be able to translate "Gezellig" (Dutch, cozy) of "Fika" (Swedish, afternoon tea) into English, but context and understanding will be lost in the process unless the English listener knows these distinctive words and their meaning within the cultural context. Dutch and Swedish are still closely related to English by language as well as culture, imagine languages with no relation to English whatsoever; this "lost-in-translation" effect will be more pronounced. A future universal translator might be incredibly good at translating, but will never be a substitute for human cultural understanding without having to explain every caveat and cultural intricacies to the user. By all learning English, we can have a shared language, we're all able to understand each other in real-time, without technology, with less cultural ambiguity when interpreting. And why wouldn't we learn English? Learning a second language is very achievable when you're taught in school as a child, and Engish seems like a good compromise between Romance languages and Germanic languages since English has a shared vocabulary with both. Finally, I'm of course biased towards learning English, coming from a country where English is a mandatory subject in school. That being said; I assure you that no matter how good the translator; Seinfeld sucks in German.

viach 7y ago

Great idea actually. There is also "Eastern EU English" extremely popular in Ukraine, Poland etc, should probably be adopted officially as well.

teekert 7y ago
We also have Dunglish [0]! Actually we get around easily using it in Eastern Europe! [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunglish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunglish

sorisos 7y ago

I have long wished for a EU-en locale. Perhaps one day...

igravious 7y ago
that'd be en-EU, ¿no?
anoncake 7y ago
On Android, the language can be set to English (accented). Alas, that's just for testing Unicode support.

Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago

I don't think English will stop being EU's lingua franca any time soon. Agreeing on a replacement would be politically impossible (the Germans wouldn't accept French, the French wouldn't accept German, the Spanish would have good arguments to make in any of both cases); and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical (you cannot realistically expect every EU citizen to know their native language, French and German, for example). A "neutral" language like Esperanto is a nice idea, and I would also like Latin as the EU language, as it can be argued to be the language that historically shaped Europe the most. But let's not fool ourselves, no one is going to stand for learning a new language from scratch (even if it's easy) when English pretty much Just Works(tm), and provides a lot of utility also outside the EU. Personally, I'm from Spain and I'm not annoyed or upset about English being the lingua franca. I think we should abandon the idea of English "belonging" to its native speakers. When I talk to people from Germany, from China, or from Vietnam, for example our common language is almost always English, even if neither of us are natives. English is useful for us and belongs to us, as much as to someone from Gloucestershire.

barking 7y ago
I would also like Latin as the EU language It would be like deja veni vidi vici all over again.
- nabla9 7y ago
  Interlingua is artificial language where vocabulary is common to the widest possible range of western European languages. Many Europeans understand Interlingua without knowing it. Examples: Mi aeroglissator es plen de anguillas. Multo ben, gratias. E vos? Contente de facer vostre cognoscentia! Il es un placer facer vostre cognoscentia! Amarea vos dansar con me? Parla plus lentemente, per favor Patre nostre, qui es in le celos, que tu nomine sia sanctificate; que tu regno veni; que tu voluntate sia facite como in le celo, etiam super le terra.
  - barking 7y ago
    I'd suspect that a monoglot german speaker would understand nothing of that. Even an english speaker and despite our huge borrowing from french it's not too easy.

BjoernKW 7y ago

I've had a similar idea for some time now, albeit without the unnecessary focus on American English: With the UK probably - and very unfortunately - leaving the EU the latter could adopt English as its main language without any unfair advantage to one of the larger EU countries or hurting national sentiment. I'd even go as far as to propose adopting English as the main language for legal matters, public administration, business and education in each of the EU member countries. The language barrier is the predominant obstacle preventing a closer integration between EU countries and collaboration between businesses across borders. A single, unified language over time could remedy that problem.

perfunctory 7y ago
> With the UK probably and very unfortunately - leaving the EU the latter could adopt English as its main language without any unfair advantage to one of the larger EU countries or hurting national sentiment. This is exactly the point the article makes.

new_here 7y ago

I was raised to use British English spelling. Honestly, without any offence intended, whenever I see words like 'color', 'organize', 'oriented' and so on my mind sees it as a lazy (for lack of a better word) interpretation of the original word's spelling that has evolved in the US. I don't think the content has any less merit because of it, the authors are following the American convention. Just saying that because I'm curious as to what American's think when they read British spelling? Also, whenever I write CSS and type 'color', I think, this was developed in America so they have complete right to spell it however they damn well please.

tspiteri 7y ago
-ize is correct in British English as well; if anything it is more "original" as it comes from the Greek -izo (iota, zeta, omega), which is the origin of the suffix. In fact Oxford English Dictionary (OED) spelling, and the Hart's Rules guide, are for organize, not for organise. (On the other hand, analyze is American while analyse is British.)
- new_here 7y ago
  TIL, thanks for the clarification!
dmos62 7y ago
I usually stick to the British spelling as well, but I also love variety and I wish there were more "written dialects" of English that are widely accepted. I hate it when people react to different ways of talking or writing as if the other person was a child who hasn't learned the _proper_ way of doing things yet. As to the counter-argument of normalizing language use for the sake of the maximum number of people being able to easily understand each other: I think this argument underestimates peoples' capacity to communicate even when they can't understand 100% of the references or language, and it underestimates the negative effect an inflexible language has on the culture. In some ways, it's a dilemma of where to draw the line between "this is a person who hasn't experienced enough language and therefore is deficient in its use" and between "this is a person who's language has adapted to his micro-cultural/social/etc. context". I could go on and on about this. I think it's a fascinating, relevant subject.

kayoone 7y ago

Living in working in the Berlin tech world, English is already the official working language in most companies. Even as I german i have no problem with this, my only gripe is that it makes it very hard for my non-german colleagues to learn german.

Majestic121 7y ago
I have the same issue in Paris, I know some coworkers who have been living in France for more than 8 years, and still can't speak a reasonable French : barely able to order at a restaurant for exemple, definitely not able to hold a conversation. I'm not sure it is actually an issue, it just feels weird as a French person to discover that French is not even required in your own country.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > it just feels weird as a French person to discover that French is not even required in your own country. And why should it be? In big cities people tend to be more adaptive towards this than outside. If you go outside to the country side the situation will rapidly change. But in every major European capital it is most likely possible to get around on just English. I always make an effort when in France, Germany and Poland to speak the local language but more often than not the locals speak English much better than I speak their language and after a sentence or two the switch is made. Of course making an effort is appreciated anyway but there definitely is no expectation of being able to hold a full conversation in the language of the place you visit.
  - Majestic121 7y ago
    I agree for a place of visit, and I do the same when I can, but for a place to live in, that's a different beast. Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but this realisation was quite surprising to me
  - afiori 7y ago
    Because if you live in a country for 8 years you are bound to encounter limits in where English can support you. Police, hospitals, local doctors, local elections, bureaucracy, food label and shops, information notice and warnings, verbose street sign for road works and many more.

nnq 7y ago

This is brilliant! Finally there's the opportunity to adopt an equalizing language that will also help free us from national culture isolationism: - a language that is nobody's mother tongue: YEEEY! - language that is not attached to any one culture: 10x YEEY! Think about it! This could help global not just European unity: all the people of Asian and African origin who already speak fluent English could instantly embrace and join in and start building the new pan-European culture that will grow into a new and rich global culture. Freed from the tyranny of national-language-culture, this could be the first truly global culture Humanity has the chance to produce! One thing Globalism 1.0 did wrong was trying to destroy culture. We know now that this leaves a void that attracts trash like racism, xenophobia and isolationism to get filled by these - culture too abhors vacuum! Now Globalism 2.0 can start right in the EU by constructing a new culture around a language that is nobody's own, at least on the cultural front. If this would ever work it will coagulate around it a new literature, then media etc. And finally we'd have a non-trash global culture that will be able to keep us united enough to properly address global issues like pollution and climate change! </dream>

pjc50 7y ago
> One thing Globalism 1.0 did wrong was trying to destroy culture Could you expand on this, I'm not sure what you're referring to?
- nnq 7y ago
  ...well, destroy is too harsh a world, but the "uniformization" process of global brands has not really created any authentic "strong culture". Also in trying too be maybe too politically correct and not to offend anyone, any "globally marketed" idea always ended up washed up. You need to CREATE ideas/stuff etc., and be occasionally violent/offensive with them (just be sure to offend everyone), otherwise unifomization and standardization will just destroy whatever is there to start with by diluting it out of existence. The "globalism destroys culture" is a fav meme of the "other side" now, but it's not without base! If you pour water into wine, or if you mix all wines in equal proportions, you basically "destroy" wine. What you want is an authentically new kind of wine! And you can only build this on some neutral / owned-by-nobody foundation, otherwise everyone will want "wine 2.0" to be their style of wine, and you'll end up with some "designed by democratic committee" crap, instead of something designed by individual creative geniuses competing among themselves and building on top of this new neutral foundation.

ktpsns 7y ago

So what's the definition of EU-en, compared to US-en or UK-en? I know the differences between US-en and UK-en, but I'm lacking facts about EU-en.

aarroyoc 7y ago
Metric system, date formats, currency... are the first things they pop in my mind
- ktpsns 7y ago
  Oh. I thought about written language, not about localization (as it comes up when being used in graphical user interfaces). As a non-native speaker in science, we always write out units (3 km or 3 miles), we write out dates clearly (July 2nd or 2018-07-02), the same with units (USD 3 or 3 EUR). As a non-application-writer, I don't see the point. As a programmer, I do, of course.

Lucadg 7y ago

Language is open source. English does not belong to the UK anymore as much as Tiramisu doesn't belong to Italy or http to Tim Berners-Lee. People created these standards, let people use them, improve them and have a better life. [Edit: spelling]

BlueTemplar 7y ago

And make official the EU being just an USA colony (see IT companies), just as the American Empire itself is waning. Such a wise move ! Meanwhile, Macron's proposal is impressively hypocritical(/real-political?), considering how much he has done to pump up English and diminish French...

sgift 7y ago
Using a common language in the EU makes the EU a US colony ..? Because we share the same language as the US then?
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  No, it's not just about that, I mention it too (and the FA too, in a roundabout way). Why exaggerating what I said ?

lucb1e 7y ago

Finished the article but I haven't seen a single proposal of what this actually would mean. EU English would be different how? And that's besides the fact that I also have yet to hear a single real advantage for forking the language and creating 15 competing standards. Reasons like "then it's fair for everyone" doesn't make any sense when the UK is gone anyway, it would make sense right now since one country has an advantage, but not after brexit. > It will be taking advantage of [the current] situation [since it] is already spoken by pretty much everybody. Is the author saying it's more difficult to read or write british english than it is to read an as-of-yet-undefined EU english? > It will rid the French or the Germans of the temptation try to make their language the dominant one Right, once we adopt a currently fictional en_EU, they'll know they lost the battle. But the same would be true if we adopt de_EU or fr_EU or keep en_UK. Whatever decision is made, it won't lessen any discussion until said decision has been made. > It will rid the Europeans of some of the oddities of British English which make it a tiny bit more complex You mean adding silent letters to words like 'color' (colour) or 'no' (know)? To make the letters match the pronunciation, it needs an overhaul quite a bit larger than switching away from british english. > It will give the Europeans some “closure” with the Brits frowns > It will give the EU a chance [words words words] to finally make widely understood some of the terms and notions that are specifically EU / European but are nowhere to be found in British or American English. Like what? I have no idea what the author is talking about. > It will give the EU a chance [words words words] to gain a stronger popular culture position on the world stage. I think our various languages add a lot of culture rather than forking English. (Though I'd personally rather be rid of all the languages: fewer language is more convenient than yet another language.) > It will further enable the EU’s communication with the entire rest of the world Surely you're joking. Speaking a different language just for the sake of it helps international communication how? > because guess what (working) language they already speak[: English] ... precisely, so why change it? > expressions, idioms, etc. can be too specific, or “too British” [words words words], quite often those might be misunderstood or even completely missed out. Occasionally, that might be true of American English as well, but to a substantially lesser extent. This is approaching sense. So let's have some examples? Because I still have no idea what the author is talking about, even if 80% down the article I did find the first and only sensible reason, assuming the mentioned understood-by-the-British-only expressions, idioms, etc. exist. I'm wondering if this post is satirical or serious. Could be that I'm playing amazingly deep on someone's joke, but the other comments seem to treat it as a serious idea... not sure.

pergadad 7y ago

Better to stick with Irish English, which is ready the transition point. We could rename it European English jf that helps, but creating a new one would not be in anyone's interest and practically impossible: e.g. who would be the "European English" trainers? And would the EU just adopt the English dictionary and grammar the same way the UK adopted all EU legislation as own legislation for post-brexit? Just doesnt make sense.

k_bx 7y ago

Great idea, and I'd be more interested in EU English Locale. I'm Ukrainian, and whenever I choose to have an English UI, I have a problem because U.S. and GB are using a non-metric system. Canadian locale works, but it would be nice to just have a common EU English one. UPDATE: just checked, Ubuntu's United Kingdom uses Metric system actually, no idea why was I thinking it'd be Imperial before.

rlkf 7y ago
Try the Irish one; it is mostly sane, apart from not having dates in ISO format.
- k_bx 7y ago
  Thanks! Also, just checked, Ubuntu's United Kingdom locale uses Metric system actually, no idea why was I thinking it'd be Imperial before.
Nullabillity 7y ago
I use en_DA for that.

Rerarom 7y ago

Why not just adopt Esperanto? You can learn with minimal effort to read it in less than half a year. And I suppose listening skill would come naturally if one would have daily news programs in it.

AFascistWorld 7y ago

Not mastering English in the 21 century is being illiterate, especially in this increasingly fascist world.

mekoka 7y ago

Looking into the history of American English hints at why it's so powerful. It was designed for pragmatism over elitism, to favor a broad adoption of a writing system for a population of then recent immigrants, many of whom were not native English speakers or had had little access to education. Its original purpose is practicality. It only gradually became considered a viable intellectual alternative to British English with the output of American literature, from writers who were educated with it. Most of that revolution is attributed to Noah Webster. To give some example of how it just made sense, he favored "or" over the British "our" in words such as "color" and "odor", "ter" over "tre" in "theater" and "center", "z" over "s" in "civilization" and "analyze", "e" vs "ae" in "archeology" (Brits write it "archaeology") and "paleontology" ("Palaeontology"). And many more.

antientropic 7y ago
I don't get it. How is a word like "civilization" less elitist / more pragmatic than "civilisation"? How is that a revolution? Is there any evidence that these minor spelling difference had an effect on the success of American English?
- mekoka 7y ago
  Because 'z' is unambiguous. If it sounds like a 'z' it must be a 'z'. Especially from the perspective of a non-native speaker, or someone who needs to learn to read and write as an adult. As for your other questions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo.... Also feel free to look up specifically Noah Webster.

danieltillett 7y ago

I have wondered for awhile if it is possible to have a world language - not that the world couldn't all agree (or be forced) to choose a common language, but that any single language spoken by 7.5 billion people would immediately start to fragment or the pace of change would be so fast you couldn't talk to your grandparents.

inawarminister 7y ago
It should be possible if all 7.5 billion are connected to a world-spanning Network and produce and consume similar media. Hollywood movies and pop music already proved this after all. And for the youngsters, video games and memes.

antirez 7y ago

In case we move away from English, the only thing that makes sense IMHO is Spanish, because it is very easy to pick up for most other latin-derived language speakers, and has an amazing amount of speakers worldwide. Moreover is not very hard. If EU goes for English, I totally agree US english is the best. It's phonetically simpler and more understandable, and is much more in the artworks we consume: TV series, music, movies, ...

LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago

Jou känn pry mei näytiff djörmänn from mai cold däd häntz! Yawollja! Echt jetzt? Oh, really? Why no fucking Esperanto, or Marain, Klingon, Elfish?

Svip 7y ago

I'm sorry, but this opinion piece sounds pretty dumb. It almost reads like a troll post. The fact that so many in this comment thread seems to be concurring with its suggestion is troubling enough. If you really want to alienate the EU from the average EU citizen, make English its official language. And adopt a version only a tiny minority really speaks too, just to salt the wound! I'm not sure whether to be scared or laugh. The fact that the EU has 24 official languages isn't meant to make its proceedings cumbersome or to necessarily facilitate national pride (although, it's certainly also that!), but to make it available to the general public. The official nature of all the member states' languages means you can submit documents in all those languages. Everyone on Hacker News speak English, but it's not a majority in the EU who speaks or understands English comfortably. But it's easy to forget our privilege. Even as younger generations get more and more accustomed to learning, reading and speaking English around Europe, most are still more comfortable reading technical, political and legal texts in their own language. They may understand the dialogue in Game of Thrones well enough, but can an Estonian farmer understand an EU agriculture subsidy determination, if it was written in English?

tannhaeuser 7y ago
Absolutely, and the EU was founded on principles of federation and preserving cultural heritage and differences. Most definitely the EU hasn't given power to sacrifice even a single language for the convenience of EU institutions and nobody in the EUP/EUC wants to change that in the slightest.
bryal 7y ago
> Everyone on Hacker News speak English, but it's not a majority in the EU who speaks or understands English comfortably. But a majority is comfortable with German or French? Also, I can promise you that at least for Sweden, a vast majority of population would prefer English being the official language of the EU to something like French. We may not always be completely comfortable speaking English, but it's a language just about anyone will understand with a little effort.
- Svip 7y ago

akvadrako 7y ago

If you think Esperanto is the better choice for EU's official working language, sign the petition here: http://e-d-e.org/?lang=en http://e-d-e.org/?lang=en

singularity2001 7y ago

Be encouraged by other countries such as Pakistan and India in which English is already 'co-official': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_entities_where_English_is_an_official_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_entities_w... Please also combine anglic with a conservative spelling reform: color, beautyfull, burocracys, enouf, allready... Basically look at the most common spelling mistakes and chose those variants which are more logical than the current spelling. The language should be called Anglic/Anglish, after the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles It's already more of an ethnonym than a loconym. And ethnonym more in the sense of shared language and culture than common genes.

Thimothy 7y ago
Man, I would vote for life whoever proposed to fix english spelling. The fact I can't use in conversation many words I have learned reading because I have no idea how are spelled is my biggest grudge with the language.

koonsolo 7y ago

I don't understand why they didn't try to unify the English language across the borders. Why are there different official variants of the same language? I'm from Belgium and speak Flemish, our neighboring country is the Netherlands. We officially speak the same language. We have the same spelling, same rules, etc. Of course there are dialect variations, but the official language is exactly the same. I always wondered why other countries don't try to do the same. For example Slovakia and Czech Republic. It almost is exactly the same language, and I know Slovaks were able to understand Czech. But it seems newer generations are unable to do that. So it's weird that these languages evolve away from each other, instead of towards each other. The world is becoming smaller every day, so why not try to standardize at least the English language, which is mostly used in international settings? But I guess it's also an ego thing, where neither UK or US (No idea which official variant they use in Australia/New Zealand) want to adopt the other countries rules.