Should English be the official language? (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Should English be the official language?
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Cavesa
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Message 65 of 96

03 May 2013 at 2:15am | IP Logged

Well, I think the only way to find out would be to try. I think the Italians could
easily find a lot of pride left in their hearts to defend the national language if it
comes to it. :-)

It is hard to tell how cohesive should the EU be. I think the federalization won't
progress much during our lifetime. And without federation, there is no point in
supressing smaller languages.

When reading through a few economical articles today, it came to me (not for the first
time), that the EU might end up as a large Germany. Many members have huge financial
troubles and/or stupid polititians and Germany usually gains from it. It gains money,
better part of people from the countries (those good at their jobs and able to learn
German therefore not stupid) and therefore is bound to get better and better while
others are worse and worse. So, while I dislike saying it: in the end the one language
could be German. The rest of the continent (those parts not worth taking) will, in such
case, probably become poor, divided in small pieces and struggling to survive.
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Chung
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Message 66 of 96

03 May 2013 at 2:57am | IP Logged

hrhenry wrote:

[...]If the EU ever wants to become as cohesive as they state they want to be, they're going to have to deal with minority languages within their ranks, IMO. I think there's more pride in regional languages than there is in national ones, or at least common people are more vocal about it.

Not to mention get its financial matters straightened out.

As to linguistic pride and status of languages in member states, sentiments on the topics vary from one person to the next in my experience, and as always politics runs a lot of interference.

In addition to deciding what's a "language" and what's a "dialect" or "variant" (as understood by laymen who assign more prestige to the first term), there's that problem of those not on board with the European Charter for Minority Languages as I noted above, and even for EU members who have ratified and signed the charter, nationalists, demagogues in these member-states still find ways to get fired up (e.g. controversy over Slovakia's language law in 2009)

There's also a fairly accessible article on the subject here. The conclusion is interesting.

Michael Hornsby & Timofey Agarin. “The End of Minority Languages? Europe's Regional Languages in Perspective.”. 2012, pp. 109-111 wrote:

All of the EU’s 23 official languages are Europe’s regional languages in one way or another, although most enjoy a special status in the narrow geographic realm of their respective regions. Relations within the nexus are particularly problematic as one focuses on the community of language-speakers rather than on the language itself.Because political borders do not always follow the main cultural divides, in some cases Europe’s regional language, our preferred term over “minority” language, is in fact an official language of the EU. The speakers of minority languages across the EU have continuously faced difficulties in reconciling the cost of linguistic transactions motivated by the EU’s territorial take on language and a given linguistic community’s identity-driven claims for language support. The increasing number of EU member states will inevitably result in a growing number of official EU languages and will place additional strain on languages with a comparably small number of speakers. Speakers of the languages, who lack recognition as a tool of governance, have been continuously campaigning for language support at different levels of the EU, mainly by seeking to “territorialize” their language in order to protect the linguistic identitiesof its users.

Especially in the light of the presence of high numbers of multilingual speakers across the EU today, one would expect a revision of the current language policies driven by the language-in-territory ideologyof most European states. On the one hand, we expect language planning to embrace active promotion of bilingualism in state and regional vehicular languages, such as Estonian and Latvian, and Russian; or French/Breton and English/Welsh respectively, precisely because languages are not living entities but require social context to be used and, as some would have it, to survive. On the other hand, what we expect to see from a review of the situation with only 4 of the EU’s 65 regional languages is that greater support for acquisition of languages, spoken and understood beyond the narrow realm of state borders will be likely to increase in popularity.

In our view, the logic of linguistic territorialization espoused by the EU and the majority of nation-states worldwide dismisses the future reality of an increasingly borderless world and the importance of linguistic identity in each individual’s life. Moreover, disposing of language as an identity ideology and regulating linguistic regimes according to the territoriality principle inhibits the chances of using languages with limited intelligibility beyond the region of their traditional use, thereby marginalizing them outside a given territory. We believe that providing better opportunities for each individual to receive education in his/her native language would support the claims to language as identity. At the same time, ensuring the ability of all citizens to communicate in one of Europe’s regional languages and in an additional, possibly EU, language would pay sufficient respect to the territoriality principle. By emphasizing the importance of language as a central pillar of identity in policy making at the European level, rather than using domestic narratives of “language death” to justify the failure of accommodating multilingual practices in national curricula, will inevitably lead to a gradual decline in minority language use. Ironically, an increasingly multilingual Europe will not stop at the territorial borders of nation-states tasked with protection of Europe’s state languages, as in due course these are likely to experience the same fate that current befalls minority languages.

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Марк
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Message 67 of 96

03 May 2013 at 12:31pm | IP Logged

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.

Edited by Марк on 03 May 2013 at 12:40pm
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beano
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Message 68 of 96

03 May 2013 at 12:51pm | IP Logged

Countries like Lithuania and Estonia have huge numbers of native Russian speakers.
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vogue
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Message 69 of 96

03 May 2013 at 12:53pm | 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 languages (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

Not to get too political - but Russia (though European), is not an EU member state. Those EU member
states that have Russian as a significant minority language almost always do so because of the Soviet
Union. It's understandable why some people might not be happy with that language.

All of this being said, I think Russia is considered an "immigrant language" in the EU, even though there
were many native speakers, not from Russia, during the days of the soviets. However, these numbers are
declining. No state (to my knowledge) within the EU has adopted Russian as an official language, nor is it
like any of the 'semi-official' languages, in my opinion. I can't quite articulate why, but I think Welsh,
Catalan, and Basque have a very different role in Europe than Russian - and a different connotation.

There are native Russian speakers in these countries of course, but if Russian was accepted then you'd
open the door to a whole host of other languages like Mandarin, Arabic, Urdu etc. It's also understandable
why you wouldn't want to open that can of worms. There are native Arabic speakers born in Europe too,
after all.

I won't say rusophobia doesn't play a part - I live in Europe and work in politics, and it does - but there are
other reasons why adopting Russian might not fly.

Edited by vogue on 03 May 2013 at 12:54pm
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Марк
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Message 70 of 96

03 May 2013 at 1:11pm | IP Logged

vogue wrote:

Those EU member
states that have Russian as a significant minority language almost always do so because
of the Soviet
Union. It's understandable why some people might not be happy with that language.

All of this being said, I think Russia is considered an "immigrant language" in the EU,
even though there
were many native speakers, not from Russia, during the days of the soviets. However,
these numbers are
declining. No state (to my knowledge) within the EU has adopted Russian as an official
language, nor is it
like any of the 'semi-official' languages, in my opinion. I can't quite articulate why,
but I think Welsh,
Catalan, and Basque have a very different role in Europe than Russian - and a different
connotation.
I won't say rusophobia doesn't play a part - I live in Europe and work in politics, and
it does - but there are
other reasons why adopting Russian might not fly.

The reasons you give are called rusophobia. Russian had been spoken in Latvia and
Estonia centuries before the Soviet rule. The city of Tartu was founded by the Kievan
prince Yaroslav in the eleventh century. It was called Yuriev at that time, it was
conquered by crusaders in 1226. There have been Russian speaking villages in Latvia at
least since the seventeenth century.
"No state (to my knowledge) within the EU has adopted Russian as an official language,
nor is it like any of the 'semi-official' languages, in my opinion".
You are right. That's the reason it's not an official language of the EU. But Russian
is not official in Latvia and Estonia because of "historical connotations" which is
pure rusophobia.
And we were talking about at least theoretical possibility of recognizing Russian as an
official language of the EU which caused such a vivid reaction from Cavesa.
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tarvos
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Message 71 of 96

03 May 2013 at 1:26pm | IP Logged

That's correct, you would need to adopt Turkish too.
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Iversen
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Message 72 of 96

03 May 2013 at 1:27pm | IP Logged

Vogue pinpoints an important angle to this, namely the difference between immigrant languages and 'old' minority languages. Russian may be a special case if the Russian language has been spoken for generations in certain member states, but I simply don't know enough about that. However Wikipedia states for Latvia that "The number of Russians in Latvia increased significantly during the Soviet occupation of Latvia when the size of the community grew from 10.5% of the total population in 1935 (206,499) to 34.0% in 1989 (905,515). It started to decrease in size again after Latvia re-gained independence in 1991 falling to 26.9% (557,119) in 2011". So apparently Russian was there before the Sovjet Union was established, which means that Russian effectively is both an old hereditary minority language there AND an important immigrant language. Neither status will however be enough to grant Russian the same status in the EU as the official languages of the current member states. And for historical and political reasons the nations with most Russian speaking citizens aren't keen on making Russian an official language.

PS: and now I take on my moderator hat. This discussion could become fairly vehement if we start debating why those nations aren't keen on making Russian an official language. Let's just note that this is how things are and avoid judgements on the reasons for keeping the situation like that.

Edited by Iversen on 03 May 2013 at 1:39pm

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