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EU & Languages: Policies and your view? | ||
Tags: Europe | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 41 of 66 05 July 2010 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love this "Esperanto for the EU" idea (in case you hadn't noticed).
What Volte wrote about people having their "own" accents when speaking Esperanto is sounds really funky -- that way they would make it their own and use it has a handy backup to their own language... Instead of this eternal "which-language-should-I-speak-with-this person" equation that you always have to work out when travelling in Europe with tons of nonsense being "parameters" to decide whether to struggle on in French or something, switch to English or something else. I wish this Esperanto party could take up some other, more populistic cause, so that more people would vote form them in EU elections. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6033 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 42 of 66 05 July 2010 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't like it because it is sloppy and easy, and not exciting at all ^_^. But that's a personal opinion.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5326 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 43 of 66 06 July 2010 at 4:57am | IP Logged | ||
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| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6041 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 44 of 66 07 July 2010 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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You do realize that if Esperanto ever became important it would start "behaving" like a "normal" language don't you? Just like English and Spanish Esperanto would become a threat to lesser used languages.
Just like English it would become a source of loan words. You might not like the idea of your native language borrowing English words but Esperanto is not going to save your language. In fact it could destroy it.
Edited by John Smith on 07 July 2010 at 5:15pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| crackpot Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6300 days ago 144 posts - 178 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 45 of 66 09 July 2010 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am not in favor of any artificial language becoming a lingua franca in Europe, nor
any language for that matter. One thing we love about Europe is the ability switch languages when travelling so frequently. I think that we forget that the America IS a European country. The same for Canada, Australia, New Zealand and large parts of Latin America. We speak European languages, we are mostly Christians, we have European ancestors, we live like Europeans, we eat European food, we have European political traditions. There are differences of course but these are minor things. In the future we will have roughly 10-12 dominant languages in the world and Europe will be well positioned linguistically, as it is now, to take advantage of this. A lingua franca would diminish this. As far as education is concerned, I think the idea of learning two additional languages at school in addition to your own (without stating which languages) is doable and sensible. Finally, I agree with an earlier post that the idea that Chinese will become dominant is a unlikely. We now have enormous amounts of people in most countries in the world who speak English plus several major and populace countries whose major language is English. They use this not just to communicate with native English speakers but also with others who speak languages they don't understand. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| MäcØSŸ Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5808 days ago 259 posts - 392 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German | Message 46 of 66 20 July 2010 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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The best policy in my opinion would be a limited multilingualism.
For instance we could make official languages of the EU the 6 languages with the most native speakers, but no more than 2 for every language (sub)family. That would mean German, English, Italian, French, Polish and Greek. This choice would diminish the chances of one language dominating on all the others (which could eventually bring to their extinction), reducing at the same time the expenses and difficulties of governing simultaneously in 25+ languages. Singapore is a tiny city-state and has 4 official languages, so I think that 6 is not a big number for a whole continent. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5447 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 47 of 66 20 July 2010 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've said this on the thread about the feasibility of a world language, and I think with some editing it may fit in this topic as well.
I like how Iceland promotes its own language's purism and protects it while still teaching English to a strong level. I feel such a policy will ensure a linguistic and cultural diversity while still promoting an international auxiliary language. I wish many countries would do that too; for example, I wish (your country) would start teaching better (whatever is decided as the lingua franca) while protecting the (your country's vernacular) language's grammar, vocabulary, its importance in the region, etc as well, instead of haphazardly borrowing words from (the lingua franca) and butchering their pronunciations in a feeble attempt to be seen as more "international" and open to other cultures. What do you think of that? Promoting the local vernacular's purism while also promoting the learning of a global language.
If you think that's crazy, you should see what's going on in Korea... Edited by chucknorrisman on 20 July 2010 at 7:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Frieza Triglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5352 days ago 102 posts - 137 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, French Studies: German | Message 48 of 66 20 July 2010 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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From a practical standpoint, being an official language doesn't mean much more than having the most important documents (regulations, directives, high-profile decisions) translated into that language.
For instance, the European Commission has three working languages: English, French and German. French is still the formal working language within the EU Court. EU's policies towards languages don't seem to go beyond funding language programmes and the inevitable reports on which Member States have a higher percentage of population speaking a second, third, ... language, which Member States have progressed the least, etc. And honestely, I'd say 'Keep it up!'. Frankly, the whole organisation is already looking so unstable as it is that it could only collapse were people just suggested to have another official language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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