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231 points rntn | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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cm2187 ◴[] No.35413324[source]
Whether the UK is part of the EU or not is irrelevant to using english as a mean of communication between europeans. I remember a study from the French ministry of education which estimated for each language, what was the percentage of the EU population, to which it is not a native language, that studied it as a foreign language either in high school or university.

German and italian are in the 15-20% range, french and spanish in the 30% area, english north of 90%.

When you have 27 different EU nationals in a room, there is just one language they can practically speak among themselves. The EU will not go anywhere if its countries resist adopting english.

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kuboble ◴[] No.35413357[source]
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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908B64B197 ◴[] No.35414632[source]
> 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.

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1. samus ◴[] No.35415102[source]
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...