Comment by iagooar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iagooar | Hacker News Reader

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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 ;).

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