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EU Leader Says English Is Losing Importance (politico.eu)
An anonymous reader writes: Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, opted to deliver a speech in French on Friday morning because he said "English is losing importance" in Europe. He gave the comments, which are unlikely to mend fences after a war of words between Brussels and London over Brexit negotiations, at the "State of the Union" conference in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio -- an annual event for European dignitaries. Juncker said he was opting for French because "slowly but surely English is losing importance in Europe and France has elections this Sunday and I want the French people to understand what I am saying about the importance of the EU." He spoke in English.
Some software is pretty good from France. VeraCrypt is a good example of something well made.
He is not really French, he is from Luxembourg where French is one of 3 official languages. This is like calling an Irishman a Brit, or an Englishman. Only 16% of the population are native French speakers, although 96% of the population is fluent in French. The primary native language is Luxembourgish, which is closer to German than French.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Luxembourg
But does it really? Let's remove the UK from the EU. The remaining population: Are they more likely to speak English or french?
Outside of France, Belgium and Luxembourg which shared common territories recently enough that the language is adopted in the country who else speaks French:
Netherlands 29%
Roumania 17%
Ireland 17%
Italy 16%
Portugal 15%
Germany 14%
Austria 11%
The rest 10%
So way to go, your speech was not understood by the vast majority of the population. Now let's do the same thing to English.
Ireland 95%
Netherlands 90%
Sweeden 86%
Denmark 86%
Austria 70%
Finland 70%
Slovenia 59%
Germany 56%
Belgium 52%
I'm not going to list all the rest, but not a single country in the EU has less than 20% proficiency in English.
English is not the #1 language in the EU, even before Brexit"
In accordance with the EU population, the most widely spoken mother tongue is German (16%), followed by Italian and English (13% each), French (12%), then Spanish and Polish (8% each).
Check your stat definitions before using them to make a point. Those are 'native tongue' percentages. 51% speak English.
is that once the UK leaves, English will no longer be an official language of any UE member country. Ireland declared Irish and Malta declared Maltese as their official language for EU purposes, even if their people speak mostly English.
The guy is from Luxembourg, not France.
Quebec's Language Act
Doing Business in Quebec
Website in English?
If your trademark isn't french, add french to it
Language Police
C'est l'état de la grenouille. Mort à la liberté~~