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Should English be the official language? | ||
Tags: Language Politics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 9 of 96 24 April 2013 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
That'll never happen. Official language status is set at the state level, not federal. Some states, for example, have declared English to be their official language, while other states have no official language. Unless we're talking de facto standard. But that's not "official". R. == 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4534 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 10 of 96 24 April 2013 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's interesting. But how does it work at a federal level? Obama can't suddenly switch official White House communications into Spanish, say, to annoy the hell out of the Republicans can he? The thought does make me smile though... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 11 of 96 24 April 2013 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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No thank you, I would rather not be bereaved of my choice.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 12 of 96 24 April 2013 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Strange how this proposal came from a German.
He should be sticking up for his own language! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4522 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 13 of 96 24 April 2013 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Then he would be called a Nazi. Sad but true. 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 14 of 96 24 April 2013 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
Is it possible not to have the Nazi's brought up in threads? It's gets really boring. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 15 of 96 24 April 2013 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
It just confirms Godwin's law 4 persons have 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 16 of 96 24 April 2013 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't think that it's a good idea considering that most of Europe effectively adheres to the idea of a given ethnic group or tribe corresponding to a unique language (approximated by having 27 members/nation states and 23 official/working languages), notwithstanding that French and German are pluricentric (albeit not in a large sense since their distribution officially is limited to a small set of member states) or high-minded talk about European solidarity. I do think though that it's paradoxical that the EU encourages multilingualism to this degree but its working policies and employees are basically multilingual by virtue of speaking their native language and no more than a few languages from a subset of the "bigger" Romance or Germanic languages (often from FIGS - French, Italian, German, Spanish). It doesn't seem to be the norm for say a French employee at the European Parliament to be multilingual because he/she is knowledgeable (let alone fluent) in Slavonic languages or Finno-Ugric ones in addition to his/her native French. An unscientific recall of 5 friends who work or have done internships for the European Parliament with their own descriptions of their linguistic abilities reveals similarly. 1) Finnish (native), English (near-native), French (high-intermediate), German, Swedish (both intermediate), 2) Polish (native), English (near-native), German (advanced) 3) Polish (native), English (near-native), German (advanced), Russian (intermediate) 4) Polish (native), English (near-native), French (high-beginner/low-intermediate) 5) Polish (native), English (near-native), French (intermediate), Swedish (low-beginner/a few phrases? - there was an Erasmus period in Sweden long ago) It's not that diverse in my view. There's understandably, if not regretfully, little love for the "lower-profile" Romance or Germanic languages (let alone the Celtic, Slavonic or Finno-Ugric ones) as someone's non-native languages. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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