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> A joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving this Just pin it to GMT and call it good.
by gffrd 4y ago
> A joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving this
Just pin it to GMT and call it good.
- petesergeant 4y agoIf the EU won’t bite the bullet and just adopt English as the official language, there’s no way they’re pinning this to Greenwich time
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lostlogin 4y agoHaving English as the official language of the EU when England isn’t in the EU would be quite funny.
- ithkuil 4y agoIreland and Malta are two EU members where English is one of the official languages.
- riffraff 4y agoBut they picked Irish and Maltese ad their "EU must support it" language, since English was already there. When Brexit was looming there was a bit of a scare that when the UK was gone English would no longer be supported. But luckily the EU institutions were not insane.
- bryanrasmussen 4y agothis kind of thing doesn't happen immediately, English support gone in one generation would be more the thing.
- ithkuil 4y agoIreland would change their request if it comes to it, because practically nobody speaks Irish
- petesergeant 4y agoAccording to Wikipedia, 93% of students in the EU currently learn it at school…
- lostlogin 4y agoIt’s rather humbling how many languages are spoken by individuals there - and my experience is that people there often have other languages in common too.
- spleen 4y agoIreland and Malta are in the EU, both with English as the official language. This is along with the fact that English is lingua franca in EU and wider.
- lostlogin 4y ago> Ireland and Malta are in the EU, both with English as the official language It’s a nitpick to be sure, but shouldn’t it be “ Ireland and Malta are in the EU, both with English as AN official language”
- petesergeant 4y agoSure, although English is absolutely the dominant language in almost all of the Republic of Ireland, where in Malta the situation is similar to the Netherlands, where most people it's just a very proficient second language.
- midoridensha 4y agoWhat other language could the EU possibly use as a common language for communications between member states? English is the only language that you can use everywhere within the union and have a decent chance of being able to communicate with people (and this is true everywhere else in the world too).
- tossaway0 4y agoIt'll finally be the year of the Esperanto lingua franca.
- brnt 4y agoHow so? The US also uses English and not Lakota or some (or multiple) native American languages.
- bobthepanda 4y agoAlso known as “Paris mean time minus 9 minutes 21 seconds.”
- andyferris 4y agoI'm confused. English is an official EU language is one of the (few) working languages of the European Commission (French is also used a lot). And the United Kingdom remains a member of the European Space Agency. GMT overlaps with European time zones, with countries like France being big proponents things like UTC (and TAI, and the metric system in general).
- bb123 4y agoHe's referring to the current animosity between the UK and Europe. Both groups frequently go out of their way to make life harder for the other. The EU proposing the English GMT would be unlikely in this climate. Also FWIW I think only Portugal overlaps with GMT.
- bloak 4y agoAlso Ireland, which is important because of Northern Ireland. It would be politically inconvenient if the time in Dublin were ever to be different from the time in London.
- brnt 4y agoWe should rename English to "European" while we're at it, or "Standard".
- petesergeant 4y agoIf you really want to annoy an English person, use an American flag to represent English-language localization
- pjc50 4y ago"English (Traditional) vs English (Simplified)" (joke explanation: this is a reference to the two Chinese writing systems, used in PRC and Taiwan)
- brnt 4y agoen_US would actually be closer to English (Traditional) than en_UK, if linguists are to believe.
- brnt 4y agoEUs English guidelines emphasized en_UK because that used to be the main audience to whom texts should be unambiguous. That requirement is no longer there, so en_EU (which defacto exists, although it has many variations) might now officially move closer to en_US, since that is what most cultural exposure is to for those to whom English is not a first language (i.e. almost everyone in the EU). I therefore propose a half EU/half US flag pictogram to refer to English from now on.
- downvotetruth 4y agoYeah just forget about the Australians, Irish, South Africans, ...
- cperciva 4y agoI would go with TAI personally.
- wolverine876 4y agoThey mean local lunar time, for coordination between actors on the moon. Lunar day length and even, due to gravity, second length differ from Earth (i.e., time moves at a different speed).
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> They mean local lunar time, for coordination between actors on the moon. Lunar day length and even, due to gravity, second length differ from Earth (i.e., time moves at a different speed). These two sentences aren't related to each other. Time moves at a different speed on the moon than it does on Earth. But that only affects interactions between the Earth and the moon. Two actors that are both on the moon are both on the moon; their Earth-based clocks will work without adjustment if their goal is to coordinate with each other.
- trompetenaccoun 4y agoThat's basic physics, it surprises me some users seem to not understand how time works even on a forum like HN.
- jamesrom 4y agoDoesn't sound like a compelling reason against UTC. Add a leap second every 50 years for relativity.
- midoridensha 4y agoAs the article noted, clocks lose 56us per day on the Moon, relative to the Earth.
- jamesrom 4y agoSo the moon gets a leap second every 50 years. Why does that prevent you from using UTC?
- IIAOPSW 4y agoThere is no Greenwich on the Moon!
- raisin_churn 4y agoName the first permanent moon settlement New Greenwich, problem solved.