Slashdot Mirror
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.
Of course someone who speaks French thinks English is "losing importance." They've been asserting that for decades now, because they are delusional. Anybody who ever has needed to deal with software written in France by French companies knows just how arrogant they are about speaking and writing French and only French, even if it means inconveniencing literally everyone else around them.
How many Chinese speak English compared with Français?
How many Indians speak English compared with Français?
How many Japanese speak English compared with Français?
C’est un homme stupide
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Each new day yields another affirmation of the wisdom of UK deplorables.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Well to be fair, England leaving the EU does indeed make English less important in the EU.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
english is waning...you go right ahead and believe that
This may be true one day. But my money would be on Chinese, not French, as the successor.
Chinese is tonal language with a pictogram writing system. It's never going to catch on a global language.
Arabic, sadly.
See that "Preview" button?
For one, English is still the language of the United States who is still and exceedingly important trade and military partner with most of the world. That alone makes English pretty important. Likewise while the UK may be leaving the EU, they'll still be trading with the EU, nothing really changes there.
However the real importance of English comes not from the nations where it is the primary language, but all the nations where it isn't. The reason is that while English is only the 3rd or 4th most spoken first language it is, by a mile, the most spoken second language in the world. When people from different nations get together to do business, English is generally the language they use. Chinese is not widely spoken in Japan and Japanese is sure as hell not popular in China, but English is a common second language in both and so usually used when companies from the two nations do business.
In the EU it is even more important as there are a ton of primary languages. If you wanted to do business in the native language of all EU nations you'd need to speak Dutch, French, German (a couple variants thereof), Danish, Irish, Greek, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Croatian. While you can find people with that kind of language skill, they are very rare and very sought after. Getting one for your firm is unlikely... However English is a popular second language in all those places, so you can do business in that. You can have people from Germany, Croatia, Greece, and Spain all at a table and English is a language they can probably all use whereas the likelihood that they all speak each other's native tongue is pretty low.
English has become the language of common exchange, and nothing seems to be changing that. Should another language take over for that, French is not likely to be it, much though the French may wish it was.
But my money would be on Chinese, not French, as the successor.
My money would be on anything but French as the successor. French has been withering for over a century.
#DeleteChrome
If you have a speech on the importance of the EU and you want to direct it at a French population who are about to go to the polls, and the outcome of those polls could determine the future of the EU, what's more important? That you speak in English or in French?
Context, it fucking matters.
He is anything but a moron.
If you read the article, he spoke in English because he wanted the English to understand him, and it's not like the majority of the UK speak ANY second language.
How do you expect to have an effective negotiating team when the people on the opposite side of the table can understand everything you say, but also have private conversations right in front of your face because you don't know any second language? Make fun of you with a straight face? Say that the only difference between you and a bucket of shit is the bucket? Debate strategy in private without leaving the room or whispering amongst themselves? Call you a dumb f*ck to your face?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
It's literally everywhere, including The New York Times. Please tell us how you have better sense of news than those guys.