I am still amazed by the English thing in EU. Only 2 EU nations, and even quite small ones, speaks English natively, and not even as their only one language. In the same time, who speaks English natively? One country that left our club, one country that wages economic war against us, couple of great partner countries outside of Europe, and couple of others.
When we wanted to unite more, we promised to abandon our national currencies and adopt euro. But we still play small when it comes to language…
It is actually a feature as far as bureocracy and diplomacy is concerned. If a language is the non-native language for more or less everyone, no country has an advantage in negotiations due to rethorical skills and so on.
And besides, the only other real options would be French or German, and really no one wants that.
While it is definitely true that in such case English would be quite fair inside of EU, it also puts EU in worse position in outside world where USA have those advantages…
Beside that there is a viable alternative. Remember that Izrael has revived its ancient language, and Indonesia created a new one based on language of one of their small islands. That language united nation of hundreds of millions!
We can use Esperanto. It is artificial in origin, so no one nation speaks it natively (native individuals do, but not nations). It is designed to be easy to learn and use (I personally confirm it - 2 years of autodidacticly learning Esperanto was equivalent of 15 years of school learning of English). So even people who never heard about it can very quickly get to very usable level.
And possibly the best part is that it can serve as a language that units humankind as a whole. We all can preserve our national language for national communication and use Esperanto for international communication. This will not happen tomorrow, but with political support it can happen quickly. Until then, many people, as me, use it daily and support it’s spread.
I’d love German becoming the lingua franca and official language. I much prefer it over English.
But, oh well. It’s not like a lingua franca can be decided upon. It just ends up becoming one (due to necessity and the power of its speakers). There’s really no reason any other language would take over from English at the moment.
The fact that power of speakers matter is very valid while those speakers are centered on the ethnocentric level of care, or lower (see eg Integral theory by Ken Wilber: Loevinger; Spiral Dynamics etc). But when society as a whole develops, they care more about other groups and humankind as a whole. Then it is much easier to do adopt a lingua franca than serves them all rather than just forcing smaller nations to use language of the hegemon of the time.
I am still amazed by the English thing in EU. Only 2 EU nations, and even quite small ones, speaks English natively, and not even as their only one language. In the same time, who speaks English natively? One country that left our club, one country that wages economic war against us, couple of great partner countries outside of Europe, and couple of others.
When we wanted to unite more, we promised to abandon our national currencies and adopt euro. But we still play small when it comes to language…
It is actually a feature as far as bureocracy and diplomacy is concerned. If a language is the non-native language for more or less everyone, no country has an advantage in negotiations due to rethorical skills and so on.
And besides, the only other real options would be French or German, and really no one wants that.
Then the other options would be Chinese, Arabic and Turkic.
If we choose internally, Spanish would be the best choice. Africa is ending their French dependency whereas Spanish would be great for Latin America.
Though, the US is preventing further alignments:
https://feddit.org/post/21358448
Exactly. Since UK left, it made English the perfect language. Otherwise Esperanto would be the second best candidate but no one wants to learn it.
While it is definitely true that in such case English would be quite fair inside of EU, it also puts EU in worse position in outside world where USA have those advantages…
Beside that there is a viable alternative. Remember that Izrael has revived its ancient language, and Indonesia created a new one based on language of one of their small islands. That language united nation of hundreds of millions!
We can use Esperanto. It is artificial in origin, so no one nation speaks it natively (native individuals do, but not nations). It is designed to be easy to learn and use (I personally confirm it - 2 years of autodidacticly learning Esperanto was equivalent of 15 years of school learning of English). So even people who never heard about it can very quickly get to very usable level.
And possibly the best part is that it can serve as a language that units humankind as a whole. We all can preserve our national language for national communication and use Esperanto for international communication. This will not happen tomorrow, but with political support it can happen quickly. Until then, many people, as me, use it daily and support it’s spread.
I’d love German becoming the lingua franca and official language. I much prefer it over English.
But, oh well. It’s not like a lingua franca can be decided upon. It just ends up becoming one (due to necessity and the power of its speakers). There’s really no reason any other language would take over from English at the moment.
The fact that power of speakers matter is very valid while those speakers are centered on the ethnocentric level of care, or lower (see eg Integral theory by Ken Wilber: Loevinger; Spiral Dynamics etc). But when society as a whole develops, they care more about other groups and humankind as a whole. Then it is much easier to do adopt a lingua franca than serves them all rather than just forcing smaller nations to use language of the hegemon of the time.
Malta and Ireland?
Yes.