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Posted on 01/08/2004 4:12:17 PM PST by saquin
THE EU’s linguistic diversity is one of its greatest glories and biggest burdens. Its 11 official languages will almost double to 20 after enlargement, promising chaos. How do you tell Lithuanian from Latvian, or translate Finnish into Greek? No government in the world has to work under such Babel-like conditions.
More than 1.3 million documents a year require translation. One head of department, who speaks German and English, cannot communicate with his deputy, who speaks Italian and French. There is an obvious solution, but one so politically sensitive that no one dares suggest it: accept the inevitable, and declare English the internal working language of EU institutions. It would make them far more efficient and save vast amounts of time and money.
Three of the EU’s founder members — France, Belgium and Luxembourg — were wholly or partly francophone, and so the Commission began as a francophone body. But of the 25 countries in an enlarged EU, three will be francophone; English will be by far the most common language.
Surveys show that 41 per cent of EU citizens speak English, more than the next four languages (French, German, Spanish and Italian) combined. When Latvians speak to Lithuanians or Finns speak to Swedes, they usually do so in English.
As the EU has grown, English has rapidly become dominant. Ten years ago most EU documents were written in French. Today twice as many originate in English. Most of the accession negotiations for Eastern Europe were conducted in English.
The French have fought a bitter rearguard action, instructing all their officials to refuse to speak English. Daily press conferences had to be in French until 1995, when English was finally allowed. To the intense irritation of French journalists, daily briefings are now largely in English.
The plan to insist that all officials speak three languages is the latest appeasement of French national vanity — like their insistence that the European Parliament meets in Strasbourg as well as Brussels — that simply adds to the EU’s cost, inefficiency and bureaucracy.
There are more native German speakers in the EU than there are French, but Germans are more pragmatic and less proud.
There is a precedent: the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, freed from French pride, works in English.
The French want the EU to rival the US, but, by fighting so hard for French, they are putting national interest above European.
A European Commission survey showed that seven out of ten EU citizens believe everyone in the EU should be able to speak English.
It is the only way that every citizen will be able to speak to every other citizen, and would do wonders for trade, labour mobility and cultural understanding. Nothing would do more to inspire European unity.
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The French will lose this argument, through demographics, if nothing else.
As part of the negotiations Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard 'c' will be dropped in favour of the 'k'. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replased with the 'f'. This will make words like 'fotograf' 20% shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double leters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling. Also al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer peopl will be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v'. During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to oza kombinations of letas.
After ziz fifz yer ve vil have a rali sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu anderstand ech oza.
Ze drem of an united urop vil finali kum tru!
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