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Comment by kuboble | Hacker News Reader

My personal hope is that the EU would make a plan to adopt English as the only official language.

Now that UK is gone it can't be seen as unfairly promoting one country.

I think the example of Switzerland shows that there is no problem if spoken language is different from official language.

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English remains an official language in the Republic of Ireland and Malta.

I don’t care which language it is, but pick one as the official one. English makes sense economically. German cannot happen because the past. Spanish or German or French are all fine, but of course it cannot be agreed on. So English makes it easier as well for that reasons maybe.

Pick Italian. Beautiful language, lots of common words with most languages and I don’t think any non-EU countries use it. And if everything else fails, you start using your hands to communicate.

Mid 40s here and wouldn’t mind at all to start learning Italian if it was the common language of EU.

Why pick the language of one of the weakest EU members?

Not sure why we have this bad reputation in the Anglo world, but we are the third economy in Europe, and the second manufacturing power after Germany. Huge differences between north (closer to Germany) and south (closer to Spain). Huge private wealth despite indebted government. Wouldn’t call this weak.

It has the best operas.

And Poland has the best pierogis and I like pierogis more than operas. ;-)

One issue is that it relies on phrases a lot - so much so that Google Translate has a hard time figuring out the intended meaning.

Also, like everything in Italy, phrases used depend on the region.

> think the example of Switzerland shows that there is no problem if spoken language is different from official language.

Most Swiss speak at least two of their four official languages. It's actually an example of how having multiple official languages isn't expensive nor hard to achieve (and the country is on top of most human index charts).

But the EU should make Latin it's official language.

I can understands some of the merits of adopting Latin, but maybe forking English would be enough. The EU is already publishing guidelines about correct English usage[0]. Dropping these and formalizing something else, as the Americans have done thanks to Noah Webster's efforts[1], would be enough to complete the split.

Edit: since most English speakers in the EU speak it as a second language, it would be an opportunity to adopt a radical, pronunciation-based spelling system. It would massively simplify efforts to learn it, and if it works well enough, it could spread outside the EU as well. It would be ironic if the deliverance of English from its broken ortography would come from the EU.

[0] https://eca.europa.eu/other%20publications/en_terminology_pu...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster#Blue-backed_spell...

Most Swiss people don't speak two of their official language

Most swiss I met do.

It feels like a random non-educated person in the city speaks at least German and French. Any person working is services like a supermarket cashier normally speaks 3+ languages (which you know as they usually are indicated on their badges).

What I found was that they often did but wouldn't claim to speak it. As in couldn't discuss literature or hold a job in language X but fluent enough that they had no issues reading directions or interacting with locals.

I think you’re forgetting Ireland and Malta

I think more importantly they're forgetting about France who would probably "Frexit" before consenting to elevate English above French

I like this because the nice trait English has is it’s a mishmash of whatever words it can get from many languages. Other nations may want to avoid imported words.

How does Switzerland demonstrate that?

In German speaking parts of Switzerland people speak Swiss German. The official and written language is high German.

Although loosely related, they are two different languages.

Hm I’m not sure this is a good example, it’s really just a dialect. Any German speaker can usually understand most of it when concentrating a bit. And Wikipedia seems to agree. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German

The official written language is German, albeit a different standard than non-Swiss German. The difference is not that big, it's like between written American and British English. But I can assure you that most non-Swiss German speakers can't casually understand Swiss German dialects.

Edit: these dialect are commonly used in court, public offices, and often on TV. They have a vastly stronger role in public life than in other German-speaking countries.

That's dialects though. The same could be said for most regions in the UK from people living in the UK or abroad, e.g., a Scouse understanding a Glaswegian. This is similar in Italia across regions.

They are dialects. Swiss German isn't a language but a group of dialects, but they aren't closer to high German than Czech is to Polish.

I think my point stands that it's a distinct language from the official one. It definitely feels like that in practice where a lot swiss people feel like they have to wear their official hat when speaking regular German and they prefer to have casual beer conversation in English rather than high German.

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