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231 points rntn | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.222s | 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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1. bnjms ◴[] No.35416460[source]
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.