[Discussion] Should the EU adopt an official, simplified auxillary language?
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I would assume so for places like the EU, UN or other big international conferences, yes.
That is what sounds so inefficient to me. It probably works fine at the bigger assemblies, but within smaller agencies located around Europe? I don't know, but my guess is that they adopt a small subset of official languages as the working language which I think becomes a barrier to participation for citizens of member states who do not speak those languages natively.
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Since the UK left (and Ireland and Malta being the only ones left speaking English natively I think) this problem got less problematic. If it is a foreign language almost for all, the differences are not that big.
Good point, but I am not so sure the UK (or even England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland separately at some point) won't rejoin in the future.
Artificial languages have the problem that they will end up being spoken only by an elite, which would be highly problematic for the EU, which is already seen as an elite project by all too many people in the EU.
Yes, that is definitely a danger, but of course - the easier it is to learn, the more likely anyone could pick it up. However, I do think it would have to be learned in schools across the entire Union for it to work. Learning Esperanto first allegedly increases a student's ability to learn other foreign languages, so it would not necessarily come at the expense of other foreign languages. I suspect that has to do with getting used to learning a language, and if that is true, than any sufficiently easy language could serve the same purpose. And something that could strengthen multilingualism in Europe in general (more language-savvy people = more people picking up additional European languages and to a higher proficiency).
I personally think it is more worthwhile to spend learning another EU language. The general benefit of better understanding how languages work will be the same, but you end up with a practical language skill. I am a bit tired of the argument anyways, having had to learn Latin with the exact same argument and it was a complete waste of time.
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I personally think it is more worthwhile to spend learning another EU language. The general benefit of better understanding how languages work will be the same, but you end up with a practical language skill. I am a bit tired of the argument anyways, having had to learn Latin with the exact same argument and it was a complete waste of time.
Hehe, I get that. However, if adopted properly, it would be a practical language skill, as it would be a language officially in use. Besides, if those studies described above are to be trusted (not sure if they are), it would facilitate additional language learning. But that argument is what you are getting at with your comment on Latin?
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Hehe, I get that. However, if adopted properly, it would be a practical language skill, as it would be a language officially in use. Besides, if those studies described above are to be trusted (not sure if they are), it would facilitate additional language learning. But that argument is what you are getting at with your comment on Latin?
There are generalized benefits from learning a language that will make it easier to learn other languages. But which language doesn't really matter, and learning a dead or artificial language might have some theoretical benefits in that regard, but in practical terms you will learn less of it as there is less material to practice on and in general the motivation to learn a language you can barely use will be low for most people.
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That is what sounds so inefficient to me. It probably works fine at the bigger assemblies, but within smaller agencies located around Europe? I don't know, but my guess is that they adopt a small subset of official languages as the working language which I think becomes a barrier to participation for citizens of member states who do not speak those languages natively.
But adding a new language will just make it even more inefficent.
Why not just use English which is already well established and even widley known amongst most European citizens.
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But adding a new language will just make it even more inefficent.
Why not just use English which is already well established and even widley known amongst most European citizens.
But adding a new language will just make it even more inefficent.
The idea being that eventually (though that would need to be far in the future) you would not need to translate as it is a common language among all member states.
Why not just use English which is already well established and even widley known amongst most European citizens.
Because it is a difficult language to master and it puts many non-native speakers at a disadvantage. As pointed out above, there are only two countries who do speak English natively now, but depending on your native language, some citizens still have an substantial easier time learning English.
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But adding a new language will just make it even more inefficent.
The idea being that eventually (though that would need to be far in the future) you would not need to translate as it is a common language among all member states.
Why not just use English which is already well established and even widley known amongst most European citizens.
Because it is a difficult language to master and it puts many non-native speakers at a disadvantage. As pointed out above, there are only two countries who do speak English natively now, but depending on your native language, some citizens still have an substantial easier time learning English.
It just seems like your solution is so much worse then the actual problem.
Every country would have to teach this new language in school for a couple of generations until it would be usable for society and we'd still have to teach english alongside it to keep the current system running. So now native english speaker have to learn a 2nd language, while everyone else has to learn two 2nd languages, the new on and english.
And then it would still be everyone's 2nd language. Most people suck at their 2nd language so it's not like it would be used anywhere where English isn't currently used. You'd still have professional translators between native languages for officals and politicans and such.
And what "disadvantage" are you fixing? Sure, it's a bit harder to learn English if your Polish instead of Dutch. But it's something high-school kids can easily overcome. It shouldn't matter at all once you reach higher education.
Infact, In case of native English speakers not having to learn any 2nd language at all, I'd suggest that is actually a disadvantage. Learning a 2nd language when young helps your brain think and learn in new ways.
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What is the main reason this is a poor idea to you?
It's too difficult to implement.
Don't fix it if it's not broken.
We're literally speaking English right now.
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While English is still the de facto lingua franca, with the US burning bridges to Europe like there's no tomorrow, and the UK having left the EU, should they adopt an easy-to-learn auxillary language?
I'm thinking of an language like Esperanto, but not necessarily that. I was intrigued by Esperanto and went through the course on lernu.net and found it easy to pick up (though I am by no means fluent yet). While it is constructed, it was developed without any modern linguistic knowledge, so another option could be to construct a new language for this purpose, or adopt another already developed language that would serve the purpose better (I don't have an overview of what is out there).
I know there are several official languages already, but I imagine that leads to a lot of overhead. An auxillary language could make communication easier, and make it easier for citizens of any member state to participate in the Union, and would to some extent remove any power asymmetry resulting from native mastery of a language.
Good idea? Poor idea? Why? Why not?
Nah - let's just use English and distort it to annoy UKers and USers(*) instead!
(*) those who notice
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https://xkcd.com/927/
Just replace "Standards" with "Languages"English is a piss simple language to learn that the vast majority is already speaking. No need to overthink here.
Also if you look at the regulatory side: Eu Government Documents are already always available in all languages spoken in the EU. So any legal barrier is non existentEnglish is a bad option for an IAL imo, and I dislike how it has become so dominant in this aspect, Esperanto has its own flaws however, if the EU were to adopt an IAL there would have to be a lot of considering
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While English is still the de facto lingua franca, with the US burning bridges to Europe like there's no tomorrow, and the UK having left the EU, should they adopt an easy-to-learn auxillary language?
I'm thinking of an language like Esperanto, but not necessarily that. I was intrigued by Esperanto and went through the course on lernu.net and found it easy to pick up (though I am by no means fluent yet). While it is constructed, it was developed without any modern linguistic knowledge, so another option could be to construct a new language for this purpose, or adopt another already developed language that would serve the purpose better (I don't have an overview of what is out there).
I know there are several official languages already, but I imagine that leads to a lot of overhead. An auxillary language could make communication easier, and make it easier for citizens of any member state to participate in the Union, and would to some extent remove any power asymmetry resulting from native mastery of a language.
Good idea? Poor idea? Why? Why not?
Apparently Esperanto was considered at one point by the League of Nations, I wonder how popular it would be now if it was adopted
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While English is still the de facto lingua franca, with the US burning bridges to Europe like there's no tomorrow, and the UK having left the EU, should they adopt an easy-to-learn auxillary language?
I'm thinking of an language like Esperanto, but not necessarily that. I was intrigued by Esperanto and went through the course on lernu.net and found it easy to pick up (though I am by no means fluent yet). While it is constructed, it was developed without any modern linguistic knowledge, so another option could be to construct a new language for this purpose, or adopt another already developed language that would serve the purpose better (I don't have an overview of what is out there).
I know there are several official languages already, but I imagine that leads to a lot of overhead. An auxillary language could make communication easier, and make it easier for citizens of any member state to participate in the Union, and would to some extent remove any power asymmetry resulting from native mastery of a language.
Good idea? Poor idea? Why? Why not?
Everyone speaks English all around the world. I’m cool with that, would rather our kids learning it from kindergarten on than learning some random new language that’d be useless anywhere else. People can still keep their native tongue & stuff, idc, just make the whole EU English speaking
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While English is still the de facto lingua franca, with the US burning bridges to Europe like there's no tomorrow, and the UK having left the EU, should they adopt an easy-to-learn auxillary language?
I'm thinking of an language like Esperanto, but not necessarily that. I was intrigued by Esperanto and went through the course on lernu.net and found it easy to pick up (though I am by no means fluent yet). While it is constructed, it was developed without any modern linguistic knowledge, so another option could be to construct a new language for this purpose, or adopt another already developed language that would serve the purpose better (I don't have an overview of what is out there).
I know there are several official languages already, but I imagine that leads to a lot of overhead. An auxillary language could make communication easier, and make it easier for citizens of any member state to participate in the Union, and would to some extent remove any power asymmetry resulting from native mastery of a language.
Good idea? Poor idea? Why? Why not?
Because creating a new language, "European", is going to be perceived as an attack on their identity by a lot of people. It fundamentally changes what "European" means.
Using English or French can be tolerated as a practicality that predates the EU.
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While English is still the de facto lingua franca, with the US burning bridges to Europe like there's no tomorrow, and the UK having left the EU, should they adopt an easy-to-learn auxillary language?
I'm thinking of an language like Esperanto, but not necessarily that. I was intrigued by Esperanto and went through the course on lernu.net and found it easy to pick up (though I am by no means fluent yet). While it is constructed, it was developed without any modern linguistic knowledge, so another option could be to construct a new language for this purpose, or adopt another already developed language that would serve the purpose better (I don't have an overview of what is out there).
I know there are several official languages already, but I imagine that leads to a lot of overhead. An auxillary language could make communication easier, and make it easier for citizens of any member state to participate in the Union, and would to some extent remove any power asymmetry resulting from native mastery of a language.
Good idea? Poor idea? Why? Why not?
I fully support returning to Latin. Dulce est desipere in loco!
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Nah - let's just use English and distort it to annoy UKers and USers(*) instead!
(*) those who notice
So make it german? Yeah i agree
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