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Should English be the official language?

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
96 messages over 12 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 11 12 Next >>
Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5057 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 81 of 96
03 May 2013 at 6:37pm | IP Logged 
leosmith wrote:
Should English be the official global language? Absolutely. Require all
leaders to speak at least 3 languages fluently, one of them being English. Legalize all
drugs, regulate them, and tax the hell out of them.

That's what happenned unofficially.
In fact, what languages have an official status in the EU is important only for
interpreters, new official languages will create jobs for them.
I actually support Cavesa that Russia should be more distant from Europe, it would be
useful for Russia. But that's an offtopic, of course.


Edited by Марк on 03 May 2013 at 7:05pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7157 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 82 of 96
03 May 2013 at 7:18pm | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
I'm actually in favor of Esperanto. It's neutral, it's based on European languages and
it's simple.


As I said earlier, make it Mongolian! Get with the program, Марк! ;-)
3 persons have voted this message useful



Juаn
Senior Member
Colombia
Joined 5346 days ago

727 posts - 1830 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*

 
 Message 83 of 96
03 May 2013 at 7:55pm | IP Logged 
Imposing an official language over so many nations with such rich and divergent cultural, social and intellectual traditions is sheer nonsense. These last two words also fit perfectly well the EU and the euro.
2 persons have voted this message useful



patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4534 days ago

1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 84 of 96
03 May 2013 at 8:00pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
Марк wrote:
I'm actually in favor of Esperanto. It's neutral, it's based on European languages and
it's simple.


As I said earlier, make it Mongolian! Get with the program, Марк! ;-)


Well as I said earlier, why go with a living language?

Ancient Greek, has lots of advantages: it's culture is seen as the birth place of much of what we value in Europe; it was a non-Christian culture, so it would say something about the inclusiveness (and not Christian centric nature) of secular European society; it would offer a nice psychological pick-me-up for the Greeks at a particularly hard time in their history; and no one speaks it now so no country is going to feel disadvantaged.

If they can translate Harry Potter into Ancient Greek, surely they can run the EU with it.

Just because a language is dead doesn't mean it has to stay that way!

Edited by patrickwilken on 03 May 2013 at 8:07pm

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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5057 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 85 of 96
03 May 2013 at 9:21pm | IP Logged 
And it's not for lazy people.
1 person has voted this message useful



patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4534 days ago

1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 86 of 96
04 May 2013 at 11:55am | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
And it's not for lazy people.


Which would have an interesting effect on Members of the European Parliament.
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Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5010 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 87 of 96
05 May 2013 at 9:54am | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
Cavesa wrote:

3. You cant mean Russian seriously. The last thing we need is dragging current Russia
closer to europe,

We are talking about the Russian language (and other languages), not Russia.
Cavesa wrote:
you would alienate millions of people by chosing russian over their
language

What do you mean by choosing? Choosing to do what?
Cavesa wrote:
and you cannot consider a language
natives of which in eu are only immigrants

That's not true.
Cavesa wrote:
and it is important secondary language only in the three
ex-soviet countries

Irish is an official language of the EU, while it is not an important secondary
language even in Ireland. And here there are three states.
Of course, I don't suggest Russian as the only official language of the EU, but why not
to recognize Russian (the largest native language of Europe, which is very close to
many other languages) as the 24th official language of the EU? The only reason I can
see is rusophobia.


My apologies, I may have expressed myself less than clearly. Yes, we speak about the
language and not Russia but one kind of comes with the other as languages have always
worked as symbols and were an important part of expansion. Having Russian as one of the
few selected EU languages would be just as harmful as having English as the only
official EU language in my opinion.

By the word choosing, I was reacting on some posts, I think all of them by americans,
which seemed to find Russian a logical choice OVER Polish or Italian. I just believe
that if there was to be a change from current plenty of languages to several official
ones, than official languages of larger member states and native languages of tens of
millions of EU citizens should take precedence.

And as I were mentioning those millions of people who would be against it, their
russophobia, as you call it, is only understandable. It will take at least two more
generations, in my opinion, until Russia is considered just another foreign country and
business partner. And until Russian is just another huge, important and beautiful
foreign language worth learning.

Esperanto is a nice dream and in an ideal world, it would be an ideal choice. Easy
enough for most people to learn, common ground as second language of everyone. But we
do not live in an ideal world.

The note about no money being saved from the change as the millions would just move
from central EU organs to the member states, that is very true. At least this way, it
is all paid from money collected from every member country. After the theoretical
change, only some states would pay and it would be the smaller ones with accordingly
smaller budgets.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5057 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 88 of 96
05 May 2013 at 10:37am | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:


And as I were mentioning those millions of people who would be against it, their
russophobia, as you call it, is only understandable. It will take at least two more
generations, in my opinion, until Russia is considered just another foreign country and
business partner.

In fact, it's not that understandable. For example, Vietnam has collaborated actively
with the USA since the beginning of 1990s, only 20 years after the long war against
America. There are plenty of examples in the world history when yesterday enemies
became today allies. Not to mention languages, which are widely studied if needed and
not
studied if not needed.
maybe that's wrong that I write it here, please forgive me.


Edited by Марк on 05 May 2013 at 10:52am



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