[Discussion] Should the EU adopt an official, simplified auxillary language?
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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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