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Comment by caiob | Hacker News Reader

Trying to make sense of these drafts still being written in English, given that with Brexit, none of the countries in EU zone have English as their first language (with exception of Ireland). Convention?

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What language do you believe has the highest comprehension rate for EU citizens? How big do you think the gap is between that and the second one?

The actual documents are available here, most of the documents are translated into all the official languages:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/procedure/EN/2017_3

However, this particular document (which you can find by clicking on the “European Parliament - Legislative observatory” at the bottom) is a draft document, and I don't believe they translate those. Once it becomes official they should be translated.

It is still the current lingua franca for most of Earth. Most of their populations learn English as a 2nd (or 3rd) language.

It's no different then past legislation and politics being done in Latin.

Hmm... if we're picking a lingua franca for the Earth, that would have to be Mandarin (~14% of the world's population speak it)

For such a "lingua franca" the pure number of speakers is not quite as relevant as the distribution of those speakers. According to the numbers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...), approximately 14% of the world speaks English as a first or second language as well. More importantly, English has 400 million more speakers who speak it as a second language when compared to Mandarin, which suggests that its speakers are more widely distributed on Earth.

While I agree with your viewpoint and it stands up on it's own, I also think it's important to remember the number of people that know at least 20 or 100 words of English. Simple statements can help at a lot of places, whereas I only know a single Chinese word. The number of people that can say basic numbers in English or very simple statements is much higher.

In how many countries can you travel and reasonably expect to get by with just Mandarin?

No. The proportion of the world's population that speaks English is greater than the proportion that speaks Mandarin. Mandarin is the language most spoken as the first language (and that's actually very debatable). This is irrelevant for choosing a language for people to speak with each other.

Beyond ideological posturing, it's a fact of life that English is the language that most educated people across Europe know today (in addition to their national one). Blame Hollywood and Abbey Road. Dropping it just because the UK is currently in stupid-mode wouldn't achieve anything.

We still need English to talk amongst ourselves. Thanks UK for leaving this parting gift.

I wonder, why the negative stance? Except for any beef you might have against the UK as a country, is the language itself really so bad that using is a problem? I consider it good enough for the job it is doing.

Or are you, and some others in this subthread, just bikeshedding because it's fun?

Why don't you take the comment at face value?

I did. The use of the word "need" instead of something like "get to" clearly shows the GP views it as a negative thing.

Actually, this is a huge opportunity. The EU really needs an official language. So far, politics have prevented selecting the language of one large member state to the point where there were proposals to select latin. This document shows that English is the de-facto most common language in the EU. After Brexit, there would be less political opposition to make English official, after all only Ireland uses it as its official language so far.

As a German, I would be equally happy if it were French, as long as we finally get an "official" language throughout the EU, but English is much more a likely candidate now, so we should seize the opportunity.

> after all only Ireland uses it as its official language so far

don't forget Malta!

Cyprus, de facto, also is English-spoken.

English also is a recognized regional language in two of the three Caribbean parts of the Netherlands (Saba and Sint Eustatius), which means it can be used in communication with the government (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_entities_w...)

(As another indication of the weird status of these regions, they also have the US dollar as the official currency.)

I have the same opinion. It's a good chance indeed. Establishment of a common second language would greatly enhance the online market in the future, too.

The US, Hollywood, Nazi Germany and The Soviet Union has made English the lingua franca of the world. It makes sense to use it. That said, French is the working language of much of the EU bureaucracy so there's probably a French version out there somewhere.

Shouldn't the first version be in French then?

Well, depends on the politicians who drafted it. Brussels is necessarily a very diverse place. The three official working languages of the commission are English, French and German. I hear German is not that popular, though, so it's mostly French and English. I would guess the politicians lean towards English and the bureaucracy towards French, if nothing else then simply because Brussels is mostly a French-speaking city.

Malta too. Not just Ireland.

I thought Maltese was Malta's official first language.

Under that argument then Ireland doesn't apply either, the Irish constitution says that Irish is the first official language of Ireland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Ireland#Langua...

Not an argument, just a product of pure ignorance.

UK is still in the EU, and hopefully won't leave

They will. And when they're out maybe they'll realize what they left behind for a few more votes in their parliament by riling up the populus against the EU.

A minority of the population voted to leave (about 1 in 4). 1 in 4 wanted to stay, 1 in 4 couldn't be arsed voting, and 1 in 4 were denied a voice in the opinion poll.

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