EU countries resist Spain on making Catalan official language
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In exchange for key support needed to form a new minority government in 2023, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez entered into an elaborate deal with Catalan separatist lawmakers in which he committed to getting Catalan, Basque and Galician recognized as official languages of the EU.
The move requires unanimous backing of the bloc’s 27 member countries, and Spanish officials spent the past two years lobbying European capitals for support.
My understanding is that each EU member got to choose a single official language, and that the EU was obliged to support that language. Regardless of whether Spain is willing to pay in perpetuity, I have a hard time believing that Spain is going to get unanimous support, since it'd presumably create a can of worms for other governments who would then get political pressure from regional groups to fund their particular favored languages as official EU languages, and who may not want to fund that. I mean, kind of a slap in the face to various regional groups in other countries if Galician gets official EU language status, but a regional language in another EU member that has official status at a national level doesn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_official_languages_by_country_and_territory
There are a lot of official languages at the national level there.
EDIT: Maybe Spain could just commit to internally providing and funding Catalan, Basque, and Galician translations of EU official documents, as that wouldn't require sign-off from other EU members.
EDIT2: Huh. Apparently none of Catalan, Basque, and Galician actually have official language status today at the national level in Spain. If they were to become EU official languages, I think that they might be the only languages that don't have national official status, but do have EU official status.
Well, Belgium has three official languages, it just happens to share them with its neighbors. Ireland also has two, Luxembourg three, Malta two...
Also Catalan is spoken as a first language by about 4 million people. That is more than the population of the smallest 8 EU countries.
If costs are a concern one could argue that all these countries shouldn't have things translated into their national languages either. Especially when another official language could do the job. While we are at it, might as well tell the Scandinavian EU members to just learn German. The Baltic countries could just agree on one language. What is up with Slovakia, Slovenia and Czech Republic anyways. Just merge and agree on one language duuh...
Political factors are also a major consideration. France, for instance, has a national policy against the recognition of domestic minority languages like Basque, Breton and Corsican.
I think this is more of the real concern here.
While Belgium, Cyprus, Portugal, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia supported granting EU recognition to the Spain’s additional official languages, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany and Sweden backed Italy’s demands for “further clarity on the costs and legal implications of the move.”
Belgium needs to balance Flanders and Wallonia. Cyprus has its Greek-Turkish situation with Armenians and Maronites in the mix. I think there is some Slovakia vs. Czech Republic beef from the separation of Czechoslovakia involved...
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The rejection is bad for European integration and the idea of a Europe of the Regions.
Languages could have a Opt-in translation fund that enables them as official language on EU level.
Also, WTF France.
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The biggest issue here is that (nearly) all EU documents have to be translated into all official EU languages. It will be really expensive if spain introduces new official languages due to all the translators needed
The EU pays for translators for Irish, which has less than 2 millions L2 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language), Latvian with 1.5 millions speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_language), Maltese with less than 600,000 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language).
Why wouldn't the EU pay for Catalan, which has 4 millions of L1 speakers, and 5 millions of L2 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language)?
If the argument is "yes, but they are their own country", then that's just going to give ammunition to the Catalan independentists.
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The rejection is bad for European integration and the idea of a Europe of the Regions.
Languages could have a Opt-in translation fund that enables them as official language on EU level.
Also, WTF France.
Language and ethnicity go hand in hand in hand. If you hear people bitching about languages they don’t speak, or being very proud of the language they do speak, it’s because they’re racist.
So yeah, France.
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Well, Belgium has three official languages, it just happens to share them with its neighbors. Ireland also has two, Luxembourg three, Malta two...
Also Catalan is spoken as a first language by about 4 million people. That is more than the population of the smallest 8 EU countries.
If costs are a concern one could argue that all these countries shouldn't have things translated into their national languages either. Especially when another official language could do the job. While we are at it, might as well tell the Scandinavian EU members to just learn German. The Baltic countries could just agree on one language. What is up with Slovakia, Slovenia and Czech Republic anyways. Just merge and agree on one language duuh...
Political factors are also a major consideration. France, for instance, has a national policy against the recognition of domestic minority languages like Basque, Breton and Corsican.
I think this is more of the real concern here.
While Belgium, Cyprus, Portugal, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia supported granting EU recognition to the Spain’s additional official languages, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany and Sweden backed Italy’s demands for “further clarity on the costs and legal implications of the move.”
Belgium needs to balance Flanders and Wallonia. Cyprus has its Greek-Turkish situation with Armenians and Maronites in the mix. I think there is some Slovakia vs. Czech Republic beef from the separation of Czechoslovakia involved...
Also Catalan is spoken as a first language by about 4 million people.
That alone does not make a good reason. There are 12 million speakers of Bavarian. Should that also become an official EU language?
Ned dass i do wos dagegn häd.
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I’m proud to have learned German as a second language, because it’s complex and precise, not because of any preexisting affinity for German speaking people.
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I’m proud to have learned German as a second language, because it’s complex and precise, not because of any preexisting affinity for German speaking people.
As someone learning German right now, I can agree on complex but I'm not sure precise is very accurate. There seems to be a lot of assumptions based on context to know what one means. Maybe a more educated person could chime in, but I have not felt like the German language has made things more precise in communicating concepts (but full disclosure I'm at the A1 level going into A2).
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I’m proud to have learned German as a second language, because it’s complex and precise, not because of any preexisting affinity for German speaking people.
I suppose it’s more specifically pride in a first language.
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As someone learning German right now, I can agree on complex but I'm not sure precise is very accurate. There seems to be a lot of assumptions based on context to know what one means. Maybe a more educated person could chime in, but I have not felt like the German language has made things more precise in communicating concepts (but full disclosure I'm at the A1 level going into A2).
Written German is incredibly precise, IMO (I have C2 German, teach it as a second language at a university in Germany, and am currently getting a masters degree in German instruction). I came from a background in legal writing in English, and the amount of references that each sentence after the first in a text needs to the sentence before it was still staggering. The grade on my first thesis paper was an unwelcome surprise, but it can be learned.
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Written German is incredibly precise, IMO (I have C2 German, teach it as a second language at a university in Germany, and am currently getting a masters degree in German instruction). I came from a background in legal writing in English, and the amount of references that each sentence after the first in a text needs to the sentence before it was still staggering. The grade on my first thesis paper was an unwelcome surprise, but it can be learned.
Just attempting to understand what you wrote here, are you saying that German writing requires a massive number of references to past statements to be understood and that somehow makes it more precise?
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Just attempting to understand what you wrote here, are you saying that German writing requires a massive number of references to past statements to be understood and that somehow makes it more precise?
Well, yes. I can write a series of sentences in English without building in references to explain exactly how they relate to each other, but German writing explicates their relationship to each other.
Thus there’s technically more vagueness in written English, though the reader makes the leap (if the writer is an effective communicator).
As a small example, I went back and forth about including “thus” in the above sentence. I don’t think it’s necessary even in formal, written English, but it would be in German.
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France, for instance, has a national policy against the recognition of domestic minority languages like Basque, Breton and Corsican.
Trying to give France the benefit of the doubt, but this just sounds like oppression. Is there a good reason France doesn't recognize minority languages in its territory?
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The EU pays for translators for Irish, which has less than 2 millions L2 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language), Latvian with 1.5 millions speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_language), Maltese with less than 600,000 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language).
Why wouldn't the EU pay for Catalan, which has 4 millions of L1 speakers, and 5 millions of L2 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language)?
If the argument is "yes, but they are their own country", then that's just going to give ammunition to the Catalan independentists.
The argument seems to be "please, Spain, deal with your local seperatist movement without pushing those efforts and costs onto us"
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What about countries where no language has a majority only a plurality? Does the French govt just assume those countries don't speak any language?
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Also Catalan is spoken as a first language by about 4 million people.
That alone does not make a good reason. There are 12 million speakers of Bavarian. Should that also become an official EU language?
Ned dass i do wos dagegn häd.
Is Bavarian an official language of Bavaria? Are children taught in Bavarian most of their classes, are laws published in Bavarian, are movies released in Bavarian?
All of these are true for Catalan.
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Is Bavarian an official language of Bavaria? Are children taught in Bavarian most of their classes, are laws published in Bavarian, are movies released in Bavarian?
All of these are true for Catalan.
So, you're saying the number of speakers alone is not a good reason?
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So, you're saying the number of speakers alone is not a good reason?
Is there a movement in Bavaria to get the language recognized as an EU language?
From what I've read, Bavarian seems to be mostly used for spoken communication, not written.
The Bavarian wikipedia project has 27k articles: https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hoamseitn
The Catalan one has 774k: https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portada
There is a TV channel in Catalan (https://www.3cat.cat/tv3/), and several newspapers written in that language (https://www.elnacional.cat/)
I couldn't find anything similar for Bavarian. https://www.br.de/index.html seems to be in German.
It also seems like children aren't taught in school in Bavarian, which makes quite a difference about passing the language to the newer generations and people who don't speak it at home.
I'm not saying that the number of speakers isn't a good reason, more that different languages are used in different context. Someone in Catalunya could live their own lives only in Catalan. Not sure if that's possible with Bavarian in Bavaria.
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The argument seems to be "please, Spain, deal with your local seperatist movement without pushing those efforts and costs onto us"
The EU pays for translations for a lot of languages with less speakers than Catalan.
If they logic is to "save money, let's use another language", then let's just drop all of them and just speak English.
Education in Catalunya is given in Catalan. Some people only speak that language, the same way some Croats probably only speak Croatian.
Recognizing a language isn't separatism.
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Is there a movement in Bavaria to get the language recognized as an EU language?
From what I've read, Bavarian seems to be mostly used for spoken communication, not written.
The Bavarian wikipedia project has 27k articles: https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hoamseitn
The Catalan one has 774k: https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portada
There is a TV channel in Catalan (https://www.3cat.cat/tv3/), and several newspapers written in that language (https://www.elnacional.cat/)
I couldn't find anything similar for Bavarian. https://www.br.de/index.html seems to be in German.
It also seems like children aren't taught in school in Bavarian, which makes quite a difference about passing the language to the newer generations and people who don't speak it at home.
I'm not saying that the number of speakers isn't a good reason, more that different languages are used in different context. Someone in Catalunya could live their own lives only in Catalan. Not sure if that's possible with Bavarian in Bavaria.
I’m not saying that the number of speakers isn’t a good reason
No I'm saying the number of speakers ALONE isn't a good reason and you listing a myriad of reasons beyond just the number of speakers that you think Bavarian doesn't fulfill just further proves my point.
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France, for instance, has a national policy against the recognition of domestic minority languages like Basque, Breton and Corsican.
Trying to give France the benefit of the doubt, but this just sounds like oppression. Is there a good reason France doesn't recognize minority languages in its territory?
The official reason is that they want to unite the country in one language, such that people are together, not divided.
The actual reason is "lmao get rekt learn french u peasant" but in French.
