EU Progress: Official Language Change to "Euro-English

[Proton Soup]

Anyone between Canada and Mexico is a Yank. And 'youse' is a New York term; you'll never hear it up here unless someone is uttering a quote from 'The Godfather'.

see, that's where you're wrong. if you weren't completely ignorant of the culture here, you'd realize calling a Southerner a Yank is an insult. and yes, i realize "youse" is Yank. youse guys say "aboot" and "eh".

 

[CaptainQuasar]

How do alphabetically sort something in Chinese/Japanese?

Y'know, come to think of it, I never actually learned that about Japanese during the little I took. In Chinese there's a system that counts the number of brush / pen strokes used to construct the character, then subdivides each of those groups based upon some other rules. Japanese has an additional two phonetic alphabets as well as using some Chinese characters, so I don't know whether they sort things based on the phonetics or whether they use the Chinese system.

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[CaptainQuasar]

that's assuming a lot. it's even got it's own http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto" . are certain types of people attracted to esperanto?

There's a long way to go between that and "you invaded us" or even "your soccer team beat our soccer team last year."

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[Proton Soup]

There's a long way to go between that and "you invaded us" or even "your soccer team beat our soccer team last year."

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the french will hate it just because it's ugly.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

There are two kinds of people I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch.

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[Danger]

if you weren't completely ignorant of the culture here, you'd realize calling a Southerner a Yank is an insult. and yes, i realize "youse" is Yank. youse guys say "aboot" and "eh".

And if you weren't so ignorant of international culture, you'd know that to everyone else on the planet, any citizen of the US is a Yank. And yes, when we go oot and aboot, we tend to say eh a lot. And as Turbo pointed out, Newfies have a language all of their own. The rest of us, fortunately, are born with the genetic ability to understand them.

 

[Proton Soup]

And if you weren't so ignorant of international culture, you'd know that to everyone else on the planet, any citizen of the US is a Yank. And yes, when we go oot and aboot, we tend to say eh a lot. And as Turbo pointed out, Newfies have a language all of their own. The rest of us, fortunately, are born with the genetic ability to understand them.

i know, that's why i must preach the gospel to you heathens. say it with me. Sou-thern-er.

 

[Phrak]

And if you weren't so ignorant of international culture, you'd know that to everyone else on the planet, any citizen of the US is a Yank. And yes, when we go oot and aboot, we tend to say eh a lot. And as Turbo pointed out, Newfies have a language all of their own. The rest of us, fortunately, are born with the genetic ability to understand them.

Danger! You'nes are in rare form for 'e'nes over here.

 

[Danger]

Phrak, you're perilously close to sounding Welsh.

 

[Werg22]

There are two kinds of people I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch.

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You know, I was thinking of that exact line a few minutes ago.

 

[khemix]

europe isn't going to accept one language, no matter what any comission says. europeans are simply too self-centered and stubborn to let their pride down. that's not a generelization of europe, that's a generalization of every culture on this planet. especially when it is pressed with foreign influence. so its official status will only be on paper.

making english the official language of a continent basically sends out the message that "we english are superior, and its time to purge all of your pagan languages". you'll get countless arguments as to what the official language should be and all that. there is simply too much history entrenched in the old world countries, and they would not let it go.

such uniformity does not sit well with a country unless you enforce it with a blade. this may have worked back in the day when england was shooting people with only had sticks, but it would not hold in a developed continent like europe.

 

[leopard]

Esperanto will never be a success. More and more Europeans speak English, also in Eastern Europe. But it's going to take many hundred years to unite Europe under a common language. This is of course not only about pride.

Even if it may seem boring at first glance, I hope the whole world will speak one language in the future. The language barrier is the most important barrier between people today. I want some cultural diversity to remain, but the world should be united under a common language, common human rights and common laws.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Esperanto will never be a success.

IMHO it seems unquestionably a success; 120 years after being invented in Poland there are probably more people worldwide who have varying degrees of fluency in it than constituted the population of Poland in the year it was invented, there's a relatively large body of literature and as I mentioned a hundred-thousand-article-plus Wikipedia, the size of the Czech or Romanian Wikipedias and larger than 95% of the WikiMedia encyclopedia projects out there. That does not seem too shabby to me.

Do you think anything you personally invent will have have that kind of staying power and broad appeal? I certainly don't think I've come up with anything close.

Predicting the demise of Esperanto seems to be a perennial hobby for some people. I remember hearing the same thing said ten and twenty years ago, and of course it's since then that the entire Esperanto Wikipedia has been built.

Yeah, Esperanto may never become the international language but as the first widely adopted one it has proven that it's entirely possible for an artificial language to be viable. And it did so starting off when global literacy was pretty low and before anything like the internet or machine-assisted translation existed. How's about that, imagine if there was as successful a campaign based around an artificial language that had been specifically designed as an intermediate for machine-assisted translation between a set of other ones...

It just seems to me like one of these centuries some pluralistic society, Indonesia or some region of Africa or Asia or something, is going to pioneer officially using an artificial language and Esperanto will have been an important stepping stone to that.

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[Jang Jin Hong]

I am Korean. I use broken English for international communication.
For Koreans to learn Japanese is easy,
but to learn English is very difficult because of grammatical structure.
I ignore who criticize my bad English.
I call that kind of English user as Yankeeglish user.

 

[khemix]

but by what standard to you select an official language?

if its by numbers, mandarin should be the global language hands down. about a sixth of the world speak it, which more than twice as many as know english.

or do we go by what nation is the most prosperous? then english would win, but keep in mind a lot of our prosperity is through theft, murder, and exploitment.

or do we go by the most logical language? english wouldn't qualify, latin languages are more structured than english will ever be. perhaps if we devise a new language entirely?

 

[Jang Jin Hong]

english wouldn't qualify, latin languages are more structured than english will ever be. perhaps if we devise a new language entirely?

That is only a viewpoint of european language.
for non-european language speaker,
to learn esperanto is same level of difficulty as english.

 

[Jang Jin Hong]

broken english is global standard.
we must use grammer destroyed English.
when I submitted journal I boldly use broken english
without proofreading of native speaker.
That will affected rejection of my paper.
but I will not change my attitude.
Let us bravely use broken english.

 

[leopard]

Do you think anything you personally invent will have have that kind of staying power and broad appeal?

That's OT as hell. Esperanto will probably never become the language of Europe, not even a major language anywhere. Although it should. English has come to stay.

 

[leopard]

I ignore who criticize my bad English.

Even constructive criticism?

 

[leopard]

but by what standard to you select an official language?

if its by numbers, mandarin should be the global language hands down. about a sixth of the world speak it, which more than twice as many as know english.

or do we go by what nation is the most prosperous? then english would win, but keep in mind a lot of our prosperity is through theft, murder, and exploitment.

or do we go by the most logical language? english wouldn't qualify, latin languages are more structured than english will ever be. perhaps if we devise a new language entirely?

Either English (since almost all literature in the world is written in, or has been translated to, English), or a logic language that is easy to learn and at the same time rich. English is a very rich language, but very hard to learn.

 

[leopard]

That is only a viewpoint of european language.
for non-european language speaker,
to learn esperanto is same level of difficulty as english.

No, it's more logical.

 

[Proton Soup]

Esperanto is as likely to become the national language of Europe as Nudism is likely to become the national uniform. They are probably even the same people.

 

[Jang Jin Hong]

No, it's more logical.

There is not more or less logical language in general.
The grammatical structure which is close to their mother language looks more logical.

 

[Jang Jin Hong]

Esperanto is as likely to become the national language of Europe as Nudism is likely to become the national uniform. They are probably even the same people.

That is a narrow perspective of indo-european language speaker.
for Koreans, to learn Japanese is greatly more easy than to learn esperanto.

 

[Proton Soup]

That is a narrow perspective of indo-european language speaker.
for Koreans, to learn Japanese is greatly more easy than to learn esperanto.

i see english is not your first language.

 

[Jang Jin Hong]

i see english is not your first language.

Yes, My first language is Korean.
Grammatical structure of Korean and Japanese is similar such as Germany and English.
but for Koreans and Japanese, to use correct English is much more difficult compareing with europeans.

 

[leopard]

There is not more or less logical language in general.

I dare say that's wrong. Spanish f. ex. is a more logical language than English because when you learn it, you can simply follow the rules. To become fluent in English, you must practice a lot more, because there are fewer rules and more "that's the way it is-es".

 

[Jang Jin Hong]

I think English is a language of international communication.
but that will not be the english of U.S.A. and England.
The expression of english for international communication must be
different from that of native speakers.
To use easy to understand expression for a person who use english as foreign
language is more important than to use grammatically accurate expression for native speakers.

 

[leopard]

I think English is a language of international communication.
but that will not be the english of U.S.A. and England.
The expression of english for international communication must be
different from that of native speakers.
To use easy to understand expression for a person who use english as foreign
language is more important than to use grammatically accurate expression for native speakers.

Are you saying that native speakers of English should use wrong grammar when communicating with people whose mother tongue is different?

 

[khemix]

I dare say that's wrong. Spanish f. ex. is a more logical language than English because when you learn it, you can simply follow the rules. To become fluent in English, you must practice a lot more, because there are fewer rules and more "that's the way it is-es".

that and adnouns don't exist.

 

[Jang Jin Hong]

Are you saying that native speakers of English should use wrong grammar when communicating with people whose mother tongue is different?

No. I do not want to say "should use wrong grammar"
but I predict that wrong grammar will be accepted in the future regardless of
native speakers' willing.
Langauge which is used in real communication reflect the real grammatical standard.
More and more, English is used by non-native speakers, and English which is used
by non-native will reflect real standard of English for international communication.

Look at me. my English contains grammatical errors. and my expression is very easy one.
but you can understand my thought.

 

[leopard]

I predict that in the future, people all over the world will start learning English at an early age so that they are more or less fluent as adults. Yes, I understand you very well.

 

[Proton Soup]

I predict that in the future, people all over the world will start learning English at an early age so that they are more or less fluent as adults. Yes, I understand you very well.

from what I've seen some non-native english speakers say online (scandinavian, iirc), they are viewing movies and television in english from a young age. not only will they be good at it, but much of their culture and idioms will come from Hollywood.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Jang is basically talking about pidgins of English and he's correct - when a language becomes widespread and a method of common communication for people who don't speak it natively it's not going to be the "proper" form of it that moves forward. Take for example Latin dissolving into all the different Romance languages.

That's OT as hell.

OT as in "off topic"? No, it's totally germane to what "success" is. You asserted "Esperanto will never be a success." But I agree with you that the Europeans aren't going to be adopting Esperanto as an official language any time soon, nor any other artificial language. I'm sure they'll just fight about it for a few centuries until a war or other political upheaval makes it moot.

not only will they be good at it, but much of their culture and idioms will come from Hollywood.

And perhaps Bollywood soon instead. Maybe it will be Indian English that forms the model for the future pidgins of English.

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[Borek]

europe isn't going to accept one language, no matter what any comission says. europeans are simply too self-centered and stubborn to let their pride down.

To some extent you are right, but exactly the same things were said before EU was created. At the moment it exists and it doesn't look like it will end anytime soon.