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I'm quite skeptical of a European political unification having a net benefit, considering precedents. To mention European cases, East Germany is still far from
by abell 11y ago
I'm quite skeptical of a European political unification having a net benefit, considering precedents. To mention European cases, East Germany is still far from catching up with the western part (you might be aware of this as a Pole) and the South of Italy, which in the mid 1800s was quite advanced, has never really recovered after being "united" with the North. And we are speaking of regions with a common language.
To make things worse, the linguistic and cultural composition of Europe is much more diversified.
This means a much higher friction for internal migrations, which would help balance economic mismatches. Moving say from Italy to Poland or from Greece to Germany to work requires a huge investment in language acquisition.
Another effect of language barriers is the difficulty of a paneuropean political discourse. In this respect, I am quite grateful to Varoufakis for communicating extensively in English and allowing me to access his and Syriza's message (whether I agree with it or not) out of the simplifications and potential distortions of my country's media.
- dschiptsov 11y agoChina and India had language barriers and cultural differences. By introducing the state language(s) they have solved the problem in one generation. India benefited enormously by giving English the status of the state language. Europe should do it too. (I could hear an outcry of French and Germans..)
- filmor 11y agoAnd rightly so, there are far more native German speakers in the EU than native English speakers. Even French is mother tongue to more people than English.
- dschiptsov 11y agoEnglish is "defacto international (or global) language" you like it or not. No one said that English must be the only state language of Europe.
- kilburn 11y agoMore than half the EU population already speaks english whereas less than one third speaks German [1]. Plus it is a much better choice thinking in global (worldwise) terms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Union#Knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...
- adventured 11y agoAnd yet half of all members of the EU don't share a common language they're functional in. That's a drastic inefficiency. The logical means of correcting it, is to standardize on English, which would provide a much greater international benefit than any other language already heavily spoken in the EU. 18% of the EU speaks German natively, versus 13% for English. However roughly 50% speak English as a whole, versus 38% for German. There are 360 million native English speakers in the world, and only 89 million German; with a billion English speakers globally, and only 166 million German speakers.