The EU has a 6-month rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
So this is the President of France postulating that when his country takes the Presidency next year, he will use that to push French to be the next working language. I don’t know what the President of the Council of Europe does besides Chair meetings, but apparently it includes setting the language for which the meetings will be held in.
So this isn’t something the EU as a whole has determined will be policy going forward, more like the first guy to drop his pants in a newly opened frontier for dick-waving. If this was something the President of the Council of the European Union could do unilaterally anyway, then my read is that Emmanuel Macron would have pulled this stunt, Brexit or no Brexit, and Brexit is just convenient political cover.
More likely this won’t last more than the 6 months that France has the Presidency, and it will be amusing to see if say, Hungary the next time they have the Presidency insists on high level communications in Hungarian.
If you give Dutch politicians the choice of speaking French or Dutch with translators in an international meeting they will use English.
But I don't think the French really care about how other cultures work. It's all nationalist nonsense and living in the glorious past for them. See Strasbourg.
For Sweden and Germany all (guess >99%) of the french speakers speak english way better then french. The amount of english we're exposed to is so massive and the french is basically non-existent.
This is such a useless egoistic move from the french, just accept that english is the lingua franca.
It looks even worse outside of Western Europe. Bulgaria, Hungary, and Lithuania are more like 1 or 2% francophone, but at least 1/5 anglophone.
I'm no expert on international politics, but it seems like that would severely disadvantage these countries, wouldn't it? With a smaller pool of politicians and technocrats who are proficient in the working language of the EU, they'll have to rely more on translation, and will consequently be less able to communicate efficiently when representing their respective countries.
Anecdotally I can confirm those stats for Sweden. Some of the things I was blown away by in Sweden are:
1) Everyone's beautiful
2) Everyone's super tall. I'm 184cm and saw multiple women every day that were taller than me, let alone men. In the US it's quite rare for me to see women taller than me.
3) Everyone's rather slim. It's nice to see a population at healthier weights than what I'm used to in the US
4) Not once did I find somebody who couldn't speak English, from workers at train stations to museums to airports. It was crazy. In contrast, Germans being about 50/50 matches up with my experience. Italy felt lower than 1/3 even in Venice, but I spent much less time there.
Sweden sure is amazing; can't wait to visit again.
In the real time strategy world (eg Starcraft, Warcraft), this strategy is called “turtling”. Perceived as low risk… it’s a defensive move aimed at creating moats in hopes that you buy enough time to out tech your competition; it rarely results in a win against any real player (which the US, Germans, Russians and Chinese are) and wastes everybody’s time by creating unnecessary friction. Reason often prevails over the long term thankfully.
I'm French and honestly I don't really care that much about that but for some reason if I had to choose, I'd rather have EU things done in German for example than English, that would make much more sense to me (even though I speak some English and really no German).
I think embracing english as the main language of the EU is the worst idea since Brexit. It’s anything but neutral. It’s a concession made to the brits and a trojan for the Americans. They left, they can f right off and take their piss poor excuse of a language with them. It works for programming, insults and not much else. If they hadn’t joined the EU to sabotage it, maybe english wouldn’t be as popular in the EU.
Let’s force the 3 letter agencies to improve their deep learning NLP models for other languages.
Nobody speaks it in the EU, but if we’re going with popular languages i also don’t think mandarin would be an appropriate language.
I’m french and I think there should be a common EU language, and for political purpose it should a truly neutral language, like Esperanto or another novlang.
(Or maybe french should become the lingua franca of the EU if French official communications to the EU could only be in German)
Latin is rooted in catholicism, which is anything but neutral in terms of history and human rights.
Let’s level the playing field a bit, there is enough english in the world.
[this post made in english, and I write most often in english because nobody reads french compared to english]
My dad told me some time ago that for certain "low risk" documents, the EU distributed them in Norwegian to the Danish and Swedish camps, despite Norway not being in EU. The point being that both can read Norwegian sufficiently, and it saved one translation.
Having it as a work language just means that they’ll pout if whatever document they’re sent isn’t in French for the 6 months they are in charge - nothing more.
I'm curious what do you mean by "bad" in that context? In my book, asking people to practice or learn a new language is not inerently bad.
Decision-making should not be reduced to the law of the majority. If Europe wants to push people to learn and practice more foreign languages, I'm all for it. (Disclosure: that starts with me, I speak 3 languages and I'm learning a fourth one).
You're sampling the wrong population - what you're doing is akin to finding the most popular "development environment" in a company by asking the entire staff complement (including those in marketing, facilities management and finance) their proficiencies. You're likely to settle on Excel as the preferred tech platform. Instead of asking everyone, ask your developers who'll be doing the actual work.
This is a non-story. There are three working languages of the EU: English, French and German. Everyone in Brussels will roll their eyes, use French for six months and then revert to English because it’s the one most people speak.
Would they have done this if Brexit hadn’t happened? Yes, they would. France has a chip on its shoulder about French being replaced as the world’s lingua franca, but stunts like this aren’t going to bring it back. Not even in Brussels.
Yes this is political trolling, and should France get it way Hungary will counter troll and insist we adopt their language for 6 months next time around.
I'm currently reading a book about the Congress of Vienna and it's amazing that the Russian Tsar argued with the English ambassador in French. Here were all the rich and powerful men of Europe dividing up the continent and there wasn't a single translator needed.
I’d have thought they would have kept English as it’s effectively a neutral language at that point - it would be convenient to avoid accusations of German or French dominance should either push for their’s in English’s place
Great, well then I suggest that we just repeat this process whenever a new presidency takes over. Wonder when it's Denmark's turn again - we really missed the opportunity in 2012 by being so darn agreeable all the time.
I can see the logic, since UK isn't part of the EU anymore, but considering over all amount of people who can speak and understand English vs France EU wide this is pretty silly show of power.
After all even if EU matters were done purely in french it wouldn't be "the killer feature" to make french be taught much more in schools since english is the universal business language. And even if EU states decided that they needed to start teaching another language besides english to their kids to prepare them for future employment I would actually go for chinese instead of french. Because that will be the next actual global language by the end of this century unless humanity nukes it self out of existence.
The only thing to see here is the humor of the highest French diplomats reforcing extreme ethnocentric stereotypes about the French people -- the man on the street will snobbishly ignore your request of directions if not attempted in French first -- on the global stage: The EU president will ignore your country's pleas if not communicated in French first.
Spanish is the way to go: the most spoken language in the world among the ones spoke in EU, very simple to learn for many countries in EU, quite regular, very spoken in the US. French is a terrible language from the POV of pronunciation rules: it is insane to abandon English to pick the language that gave English many of its problems.
Yet another example of the EU and its institutions being a reflection of the career academics and politicians that dominate it.
Arrogant, privileged, disconnected from reality, risk averse and comfortably protected by the bureaucracy which they use to masquerade the gross in efficiency of the whole apparatus.
The UK leaving the EU should have been the loud wake up call it needed to shape up.
As it so often happens in arrogant filled relationships, the departing party is appointed the entirety of the blame.
The irony here is that English is widely spoken mainly because it is the dominant language in America, a superpower where people resolutely refuse to learn any other languages.
Even if France's motivations are purely nationalistic, it's really no different or worse than how we arrived at the status quo.
Nonsense article. France is pushing for this but the other EU countries have no reason to go along with it.
Especially in the East no one speaks French, so their citizens and companies would be at a severe disadvantage - from getting people into EU jobs to the various funding calls for reaearch, digitalization, etc everything is currently in English and most Europeans would suffer from a switch to French. Even Germany has no reason to go along with it as it would downgrade German (currently there are three working languages: EN, FR, DE). The EU still retains two countries with English as official language (Ireland and Malta) and clearly it is the most widely spoken second language.
But French is even worse. To hell with these non-phonetical languages. I am serious. I'd take Latin over these unpredictable monstrosities any day of the week
Somehow this made wonder if Esperanto or at least the idea behind it that we can come up with one common language to use worldwide. If that was actually successful we might have less of this nonsense but then again good luck having everyone agreeing on something ... Hmm oh well
If the request is for longer than 6 months, then I don't get the argument.
How is this multiculturalism? I and many other people that rely on English as a language to communicate across nations feel left out. Looking at the comments, there seems to be a distorted impression that EU=France (or any major Western country) and on top of that, the rest of the countries should be grateful for being given a chance to be put in uncomfortable situations that require a costly readaptation, aka, be glad your language skill is now obsolete because we decided so.
It's ignorance towards the rest of EU member states. I don't even have a problem with French per say, I speak French and understand the urge to speak your own language. Just the approach of assuming that one of the member states knows best is mind-boggling to me and disrespectful. Looking forward to see the upcoming countries, each getting cocky about forcing their language. That's going to take us nowhere... So much for democracy.
I used to be against the French protectionism of its language, or the fact that research papers in China was written in Chinese. 'Why not just all speak English?', I thought back then. But then I learned French. More importantly I learned that when you speak another language, at a certain level (close to fluent), you realise that language is not only about communication.
Language is also about thinking. You realise that thinking in another language actually is totally different. It gives you different perspectives, different ways to understand things and, I would argue, different thoughts altogether.
From that point on, I am now of the opinion that we need to protect, and use, more languages, not fewer. Not because of their cultural and historical value but because of their possibility to open up for completely seperate ways of thinking.
[+] [-] heinrichhartman|4 years ago|reply
According to Wikipedia we have:
* Germany: 56% English speakers, 14.5% French speakers
* Italy: 34% English vs. 19.43% French
* Spain: 22% English vs. 11.73% French
* Sweden: 89% English vs. 8% French
I can't get over how bad this decision is. How can you ignore these kinds of discrepancies?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_distribution_of_F...
[+] [-] SllX|4 years ago|reply
So this is the President of France postulating that when his country takes the Presidency next year, he will use that to push French to be the next working language. I don’t know what the President of the Council of Europe does besides Chair meetings, but apparently it includes setting the language for which the meetings will be held in.
So this isn’t something the EU as a whole has determined will be policy going forward, more like the first guy to drop his pants in a newly opened frontier for dick-waving. If this was something the President of the Council of the European Union could do unilaterally anyway, then my read is that Emmanuel Macron would have pulled this stunt, Brexit or no Brexit, and Brexit is just convenient political cover.
More likely this won’t last more than the 6 months that France has the Presidency, and it will be amusing to see if say, Hungary the next time they have the Presidency insists on high level communications in Hungarian.
[+] [-] MomoXenosaga|4 years ago|reply
But I don't think the French really care about how other cultures work. It's all nationalist nonsense and living in the glorious past for them. See Strasbourg.
[+] [-] cipher_system|4 years ago|reply
This is such a useless egoistic move from the french, just accept that english is the lingua franca.
[+] [-] mumblemumble|4 years ago|reply
I'm no expert on international politics, but it seems like that would severely disadvantage these countries, wouldn't it? With a smaller pool of politicians and technocrats who are proficient in the working language of the EU, they'll have to rely more on translation, and will consequently be less able to communicate efficiently when representing their respective countries.
[+] [-] silicon2401|4 years ago|reply
1) Everyone's beautiful 2) Everyone's super tall. I'm 184cm and saw multiple women every day that were taller than me, let alone men. In the US it's quite rare for me to see women taller than me. 3) Everyone's rather slim. It's nice to see a population at healthier weights than what I'm used to in the US 4) Not once did I find somebody who couldn't speak English, from workers at train stations to museums to airports. It was crazy. In contrast, Germans being about 50/50 matches up with my experience. Italy felt lower than 1/3 even in Venice, but I spent much less time there.
Sweden sure is amazing; can't wait to visit again.
[+] [-] lefstathiou|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forty|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KaiserPro|4 years ago|reply
The french political class: "It eez time to stick eet to ze germans and ze eengleesh"
[+] [-] throwaway-571|4 years ago|reply
Let’s force the 3 letter agencies to improve their deep learning NLP models for other languages.
Nobody speaks it in the EU, but if we’re going with popular languages i also don’t think mandarin would be an appropriate language.
I’m french and I think there should be a common EU language, and for political purpose it should a truly neutral language, like Esperanto or another novlang.
(Or maybe french should become the lingua franca of the EU if French official communications to the EU could only be in German)
Latin is rooted in catholicism, which is anything but neutral in terms of history and human rights.
Let’s level the playing field a bit, there is enough english in the world.
[this post made in english, and I write most often in english because nobody reads french compared to english]
[+] [-] magicalhippo|4 years ago|reply
Not sure if it's still done this way.
[+] [-] akmarinov|4 years ago|reply
No big deal.
[+] [-] gip|4 years ago|reply
Decision-making should not be reduced to the law of the majority. If Europe wants to push people to learn and practice more foreign languages, I'm all for it. (Disclosure: that starts with me, I speak 3 languages and I'm learning a fourth one).
[+] [-] based2|4 years ago|reply
https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/Jo2_10739/en/
"The Court needs a common language in which to conduct deliberations. That language is, by custom, French."
[+] [-] nico_h|4 years ago|reply
They should just replace English as one of the three working language of the EU with esperanto / ido / interlingua or another conlang.
[+] [-] ggggtez|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeGlitch|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Camillo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pier25|4 years ago|reply
I haven't done the math, but I'd bet in the EU there are probably more English speakers than any other native language.
[+] [-] wdb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgwil2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pizzazzaro|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Hamuko|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dharmach|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] posterboy|4 years ago|reply
their English is terrîble
[+] [-] sangnoir|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moomin|4 years ago|reply
Would they have done this if Brexit hadn’t happened? Yes, they would. France has a chip on its shoulder about French being replaced as the world’s lingua franca, but stunts like this aren’t going to bring it back. Not even in Brussels.
[+] [-] Aissen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] musicale|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wrnr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yorwba|4 years ago|reply
Most people in Brussels already speak French... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francization_of_Brussels
[+] [-] MomoXenosaga|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tgv|4 years ago|reply
For everybody but the French, that is.
> that ersatz of the English language, which narrows the scope of one’s thoughts, and restricts one’s ability to express him or herself
And the ability to formulate a new policy with a subtle twist in your favor that no-one gets until it's too late.
Embarrassing.
[+] [-] Tsiklon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldcode|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextlevelwizard|4 years ago|reply
After all even if EU matters were done purely in french it wouldn't be "the killer feature" to make french be taught much more in schools since english is the universal business language. And even if EU states decided that they needed to start teaching another language besides english to their kids to prepare them for future employment I would actually go for chinese instead of french. Because that will be the next actual global language by the end of this century unless humanity nukes it self out of existence.
[+] [-] justnotworthit|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antirez|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] holografix|4 years ago|reply
Arrogant, privileged, disconnected from reality, risk averse and comfortably protected by the bureaucracy which they use to masquerade the gross in efficiency of the whole apparatus.
The UK leaving the EU should have been the loud wake up call it needed to shape up.
As it so often happens in arrogant filled relationships, the departing party is appointed the entirety of the blame.
[+] [-] bww|4 years ago|reply
Even if France's motivations are purely nationalistic, it's really no different or worse than how we arrived at the status quo.
[+] [-] estaseuropano|4 years ago|reply
In short: no chance.
[+] [-] beebeepka|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gdsdfe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Apocryphon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavlov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] popsicum|4 years ago|reply
How is this multiculturalism? I and many other people that rely on English as a language to communicate across nations feel left out. Looking at the comments, there seems to be a distorted impression that EU=France (or any major Western country) and on top of that, the rest of the countries should be grateful for being given a chance to be put in uncomfortable situations that require a costly readaptation, aka, be glad your language skill is now obsolete because we decided so.
It's ignorance towards the rest of EU member states. I don't even have a problem with French per say, I speak French and understand the urge to speak your own language. Just the approach of assuming that one of the member states knows best is mind-boggling to me and disrespectful. Looking forward to see the upcoming countries, each getting cocky about forcing their language. That's going to take us nowhere... So much for democracy.
[+] [-] surfsvammel|4 years ago|reply
From that point on, I am now of the opinion that we need to protect, and use, more languages, not fewer. Not because of their cultural and historical value but because of their possibility to open up for completely seperate ways of thinking.
[+] [-] laszlokorte|4 years ago|reply