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Comment by polack | Hacker News Reader

I've heard that Sweden didn't want to make Swedish an official language of the EU when they joined, due to the fact that EU would then use a lot of resources to translate all documents to Swedish. But then Finland (with it's Swedish minority population) went ahead and made it an official language anyway.

I'm not sure if it's true, but it wouldn't surprise me.

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I understood that each EU country can only declare one language to be an official EU language (to put a limit on the number of language combinations between which translations are needed). Because of this, there was some talk that English might be dropped as an official language when the UK left the EU, since Ireland puts forth Irish (Gaelic) as its official EU language. If so, since Finland can only propose one language, I suppose that will have been Finnish, not Swedish.

What does Malta have?

Maltese, as the UK had already nominated English when Malta joined.

isn't there one canonical language of the EU which prevails in disputes between different translations of treaties? what will they change to, French I guess?

Not in Canada. Federal laws and trade agreements are in English and French and you don’t simply defer to one if there’s a disagreement.

(And if you want to get off on a technicality, see if one version is more favourable to you, as the “feeling” of words can’t always be a 1:1 match).

No, there isn't really. Different sub-organizations have different working languages, which officially can be either English, French or German; in practice it's either English or French, although there seems to be a slight uptick of use of German. English will remain in wide use officially.

That was a rumor. The European Council votes on official languages, and English remaining was not really in question, since it's an official language in member states and (one of) the major working language(s) of the EU.

AFAIK you can only nominate one language.

Ireland and Malta didn't need to nominate English (as the UK had done so) so they nominated Irish and Maltese. Now the UK is gone I'm not sure how well that works for them now. Perhaps the EU could adopt the Indian strategy of using a language that no national group claims, thus seemingly not favoring any one member group over another.

I think the French would fight English being the official Lingua Franca in the EU as hard as they can.

They already are.

Why would they? It's obvious that French is not going to be the main one and they master English much better than German.

I'm sure it's a point of pride. French people are very proud of their language, in general. And, despite being at-peace and having relatively friendly relations with the UK for at least a century, I'm sure there is a lingering sense of rivalry between them. The Britain and France have been adversaries for nearly a thousand years, after all.

Are they though? I'm pretty sure your vision of the French is more representative of the French from the seventies.

There will definitely be always some rivalry between the too countries. Not animosity though, most people are over that.

Source: French

'Rivalry without animosity', perfectly said.

Now, this is just for fun, but did you know that Queen Elizabeth's grandson is named "George Alexander Louis"? How fun would it be if he decided to call himself "King Louis I" when crowned?

> I'm sure there is a lingering sense of rivalry between them.

That's a common stereotype I hear coming from english-speaking people, but it doesn't really translate to any meaningful behaviour in France. I'm afraid if such a rivalry actually persists, it is one-sided.

> The Britain and France have been adversaries for nearly a thousand years, after all.

Germany and France have been pretty cross too in the past, and bad feelings have died off in a generation. I wouldn't give too much credit to this kind of claims based on folk history.

A similar thing seems to be UK-Germany - and no, not just around football (although there it is very pronounced), with UK seeing things way more as a rivalry. (and they love their war references, which is kinda awkward nowadays... I say as a German)

Those references are cringe inducing for a fair number of us English folk as well. You have my apologies for those types.

I'm just hoping this whole Brexit shitshow will teach my country men some humility.

My phrasing was unfairly generalizing, yes. I know these things are not about everyone, but more about trends in tone in media etc, which often can be influenced by quite small groups.

I too often like to point out the language of the Franks is currently English 8)

France has an institution: "The Immortals" (1) which looks after the French language. Seat 31 is currently this bloke: Michael Edwards (2). He is British.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_Fran%C3%A7aise 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Edwards_(literary_scho...

> Perhaps the EU could adopt the Indian strategy of using a language that no national group claims, thus seemingly not favoring any one member group over another.

Esperanto.

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