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Comment by chpmrc | Hacker News Reader

I think the winning move would be to establish English as the second official language. Hell, the EU should adopt English as the main language. I believe one of the growth factors of many Eastern and Central European countries is the widespread proficiency in it. I was impressed to find many interviews of Estonian politicians speaking it fluently.

(I'm not a native speaker and I've never nor do I currently live in an English speaking country, I just think this is the best and most practical way to start decreasing fragmentation in the EU market).

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> the EU should adopt English as the main language

I don't see it happening officially, but this is more and more becoming the case de-facto isn't it? Especially anytime things are done cross-border, English is the default language for a lot of situations, whether business or government or education. I was at a scientific meeting at the European Commission last year, for example, and not a single piece of written information, or spoken talk, was given in a language besides English, and as far as I can tell nobody even considered that a question. Even seems increasingly true in France, which has been politically one of the strongest opponents of de-facto English. French politicians still give their talks at the EU in French on principle, but French companies use a lot of English when doing business with other countries.

So isn't it time to establish it officially? I have virtually 0 positive feelings towards the current regimes of GB and US, but the language sure seems like a useful thing to standardize on.

I feel sad for the likely future where you can't go anywhere without seeing English. It's one of the reasons tourist traps feel so grotesque.

Easy for me to say when I'm already fluent in it, but one of the most novel, equalizing experiences of travel is being in a new place and not having the crutch of your native language.

Of course, also easy for me to say when none of the downsides of EU fragmentation affect me.

I mean, as a romantic I identify with that dreamy fantastical novelty of immersion in a foreign culture, but pragmatically (and less solipsistically) it will bring immense utility to decide on one language to use as we approach globalization.

In Europe it certainly seems persistent as a growth standardization language everywhere except for Russia (~5% English adoption) and a select few other nations. I have a bunch of friends from Romania and Ukraine, English is a status symbol, a point of pride if you know the language, and in many cases it can be a considerable boost to job prospects if you can put it on your resume.

Sweden pretty well leads Europe when it comes to highest adoption of English as a second language. I've always thought that was a valuable asset for them as a nation when it comes to competing in global tech and business generally. Being able to build an Internet company in Sweden and have no language barrier (and less of a cultural understanding barrier as well) to then go and push into the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand markets ($27 trillion in economy via one primary language, twice the size of China's economy). In terms of adoption you also get the Netherlands at over 90%, the Phillipines at over 90%, Denmark at 86%, Israel at 85%. Another two trillion dollars in economy that has English in fluent-level standard use. In total you get half the global economy with English.

As a Romanian, I didn't learn English because I wanted a higher status, but because of necessity. All the things I wanted to learn about were written in English.

I've noticed that outside France and Germany it seems to be the defacto second language.

Smaller countries that speak languages like Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic etc just don't have the network effect so they also learn English.

Then people in the larger countries like France and Germany tend to want to converse with the most people. The UK is large, and all the smaller countries have ESL speakers, so they learn it to, and so on and so forth.

Weirdly despite a lot of global speakers I didn't meet many Spanish speakers in Europe (outside Spain).

(Though it is funny to have someone chastise you for only speaking English then blank out when you start speaking Spanish back at them.)

Nope. With the US being more and more hostile towards the EU, and the British leaving, English is only going to be spoken natively by most Irish people. This amounts to around 5M native speakers - hardly a case for using English as the official EU language.

I don't know, but I'd rather prefer French or German to become the lingua franca of the EU. Why?

Because those two languages are spoken by a large amount of population (actually German is close to 100M speakers, that's close to 1/4 of the whole population. French has fewer speakers, but is probably more studied in Europe than German.

Also, those two nations, in their own unique way, are at the very core and center of the EU. Both believe in it, both want it to keep going, thriving.

Call me crazy - but I'd even prefer Esperanto being used as the official European language as compared to English. At least the EU would not be giving an "easy" advantage to American and British citizens, just by the fact of being native speakers.

It just wouldn't be fair to have European kids and adults have to learn a minority language while Americans or Brits would just get it for free.

I'm going to (politely) call you crazy. 2 billion people in the world speak English, and it's the 3rd most spoken language in the world. We've settled on it as a standard in some cases (Pilots are required to speak English). Economically speaking, it's rational to make it an official EU language, in the same way the EU was formed to create a competitive economic bloc. Without it, you lose access to an enormous potential customer base.

No one gets extra credit for tying their hand behind their back (shunning the English language, in this case) in a globalized world.

> It just wouldn't be fair to have European kids and adults have to learn a minority language while Americans or Brits would just get it for free.

Life isn't fair.

That's, you know, my opinion.

Before English became lingua franca, French used to be it. Another language can become in the future. A globalized world is something I love - yet the world seems to be going in the opposite direction these days.

Globalization still has sharp edges cutting up those who aren't benefiting from it. You can preserve culture while still enabling commerce and shared prosperity, but it takes work.

My opinions as well. That's what we're here for!

Before the World Wars, mathematicians (and physicists) usually learned enough German to read technical literature in their field. It's strange how quickly those things can shift.

I agree with all your points. Don't be discouraged if you get called out by mostly unilingual Americans. As a trilingual Francophone from Canada, I understand from lived experience how language is more than just an economic consideration. In fact, I'd say that the idea of thinking of every aspect of culture purely from economic terms is a very Anglophone way of looking at life.

French & German as the core EU languages would be a great step forwards towards truly making EU independent of American & British influences.

You know its quite hard for us Americans to actually to learn to speak a 2nd or 3rd new language fluently, outside of maybe Spanish.

I lived in Turkey for two years, spoke at a conversation level fairly well, but once the other person realized I wasn't Turkish (it wasn't apparent) they wanted to practice their English. I went to Ukraine in December, spent 3 months learning Russian (I was visiting a Russian speaking area), and once they learned I was American (much sooner than Turkey), they wanted to practice their English. The only two counties that let me practice were France and Italy, with the Italians being the most patient in our conversations.

As an American, we want to learn new languages but no one let us practice.

I feel your frustration, but as Ukrainian, I've spent years learning English in Ukraine before I could actually start using it with native English speakers and English is much easier language than Russian for example.

Most people in Ukraine don't even have a way to practice English with native English speakers at all.

So perhaps a bit more practice upfront would be a good idea :)

That is fair. I was living in Turkey when I went to Ukraine so spending 3 months learning a third language at the time was all I could commit.

I understand others wanting to practice with a native English speaker, and them getting the chance was probably more beneficial than me speaking Russian. Though the stereotype of Americans not attempting to learn a 2nd language gives me a slight annoyance, though nothing I lose much sleep over :)

The only language I could not grasp when traveling was Nepalese. Though all Asian languages based on tones has given me trouble.

If eu becomes an union without any native English speakers, then we should adopt English as a neutral, all across Europe speaking language.

Why not Spanish? (OK, I'm biased being Spanish, but that's not the point).

While it's "only" spoken natively by 40M+ people in the EU, it is spoken globally by more than 1B people. It's, arguably, easier to learn than French and definitely German. Very easy to learn for Italians, Portuguese and Romanians. And it's widely studied in most places. It would also be more "neutral" than picking either French or German.

(edited: minor corrections)

Yeah, Spanish could be it, too. Not so many speakers in the EU, but I agree that it's relatively easy to learn for most people and quite well known. Problem is, Spain would need to play a bigger role in the EU, these days it seems busier with itself and hardly ever gets involved in EU affairs (other than with the Gibraltar issue around Brexit - obviously ;).

If Brexit happens English will no longer be an official language of the EU. Other countries where it is officially used have nominated another of their official languages as their "EU" language (IE: Irish Gaelic; MT: Maltese).

I agree that English would be a brilliant choice for EE but I suspect the Russian-speaking minority would be perturbed.

> Other countries where it is officially used have nominated another of their official languages as their "EU" language (IE: Irish Gaelic; MT: Maltese).

That might change. The presence of England, which can't choose anything but English, means Ireland can costlessly designate Irish for reasons of ethnic pride. But almost nobody in Ireland can speak it -- without a ringer to choose English, Ireland could be forced into designating that instead.

Are you sure? From the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio..., it looks to me as though Irish and Maltese supplement, not replace, English for the respective countries.

Turns out there's a topical section on a wikipedia Brexit page about this very issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_Brexit_on_the_Europe...

Might be a hard sell to convince the EU to switch to English as the English are leaving.

Even without the UK, English is probably the language most commonly spoken among EU member states.

Still, English is probably an easier pill to swallow than the French having to speak German.

As long as the Irish stay, there's a solid case.

In fact it's an easier sell, isn't it? You're not adopting a language of one of the 4 major members, you're adopting the first language of a small member on the periphery (Ireland) that happens to be a second language of so many Europeans that no other European language comes close.

I think the political status of England should be decoupled from english, the language. The US have adopted it (while being on hostile grounds with the UK), so why can't we?

I was impressed to find many interviews of Estonian politicians speaking it fluently.

That's a pretty niche area of interest, if you're not Estonian.

To be fair, it's much less niche than interviews with Estonian politicians in Estonian, if you're not Estonian.

> the EU should adopt English as the main language

No and no, you’ll get an exit from the EU before you can convince people there that the language spoke at home by only 5m EU citizens after Brexit should be an official language.

But that's exactly the point, if no surviving population gets to speak it's native language as the default, it means nobody gets an advantage simply because they grew up with that language

I was thinking the same thing, if English wasn't spoken natively by any EU country, it would be an even better choice. Subtract the rivalry, and keep the utility.

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