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What is the official language of the European Union? | Antimoon Forum
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Damian   Sunday, August 01, 2004, 19:19 GMT
Thanks, Selenium....she does appeciate you...you ive her a boost every morning as I say.
Yes, August...they call it the Silly Season here.....mainly in the newspapers I believe....so many people are away on their holidays and therefore not creating newsworthy items for publication so the press look for silly, irrelevant stories to fill their columns...like what the Queen of England carries in her handbag! Would you believe that was one of today's items. Apparently the answer is..nothing at all! I don't think she would recognise a pound coin if one dropped onto her lap. ;-) If you do...sorry Ma'am!
Ceaser   Sunday, August 01, 2004, 21:17 GMT
As for learning Chinese, it is a truely expressive language, yet getting into the spoken form first is not advisable. The written language is stressed because there are over 10,000 characters one must master to be considered literate in Chinese. When I was in Japan, I only required 5000 chinese charcters, which I mastered through use and a lot of reading, besides being immersed and forced to use them in school. I still read and write in Japanese everyday! Yet as I said before, it takes learn the written language first! It is the most difficult, but the more you read, the more proficient and fluent you get in Chinese (or any language)! Besides, there are many, many diaelcts in Chinese, too many to learn!
Easterner   Tuesday, August 03, 2004, 07:57 GMT
Ceaser, thanks for your suggestions, I think they will be useful.
To all: it seems we have pretty much exhausted this topic. Just sort of a closing word on my part summing up my personal opinion: I think the official use of languages in Europe should reflect the linguistic diversity characteristic to this continent, but I expect that on the long run some languages will gain prominence, and Europe will go the way of the UN (especially with the expected accession of Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia or Turkey). English is a logical first candidate, closely followed by French and German (or the reverse order) as second choices in some regions, or maybe one or two more. However, I still maintain that we will have to be pretty much bi- or trilingual (at any rate there are some situations I wouldn't use English but rather the local language - you can make a guess :-)).
nic   Tuesday, August 03, 2004, 10:16 GMT
I am french but i don't understand why french follow closely english, french is not the most spoken language in Europe after english, germans are more.
At least i don't think it's a good idea
Easterner   Tuesday, August 03, 2004, 12:00 GMT
I was just trying to make a guess. I think German has some potential to become the most widely used language in Europe after English (as I have stated this earlier), but I think French has some influence outside France too: in Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland (ok this is not EU), and also in Romania, where it has the same role as German used to have in other Central European countries: before English became more popular, it used to be the second language of choice.
Actually I think the status of French is very interesting because it is an official language in many countries, so it may appear that it has as many speakers. However, outside Europe the only large French-speaking community is in Québec (maybe not more than 80-100 million people are speaking French worldwide as their first language). And it seems (at least to me) that French people are starting to use English more and more in communicating with foreigners, so maybe you will prove to be right.
By the way, those of you who are from or have been to Central Europe (the area between Germany and the Ukraine): would you recommend English or German as the basic survival tool for a non-European coming to one of these countries for the first time?
lutek   Tuesday, August 03, 2004, 19:05 GMT
Chiuj parolu esperanton, tio estas la plej bona solucio.
Let's speak esperanto, it's the best solution.
you can speak about everything in esperanto, even sex:
Saluton, gebeluloj! Jen mi denove ĉi tie post iom da tempo for de interreto pro fakultataj ekzamenoj - publikaj universitatoj ĉiam strikas en Brazilo, do ni devas fari ekzamenojn en julio, anstataŭ ferii...
Mi legis la komentariojn pri mia unua blogo, kaj estis tre amuze vidi, ke iuj knaboj eĉ kredis min viro...nu, eĉ povas esti, sed tion malbela kiu la redaktisto de Ĝangalo??? hehehe
Ne, miaj karaj. Mi estas virino tute virina, kaj mi konstatis iom triste pro tiuj komentarioj, ke kiam ino volas montri sian emon amori, sian emon ĝui la vivon sekse, ĝi devas esti aŭ putino aŭ viro ŝajnigante virinon. Kiel dura estas la kapo de tiuj, kiuj diris tion...ĉu ili neniam legis blogojn de virinoj, kiuj priskribas sian seksan vivon? Nur en la portugala, mia lingvo, mi konas dekojn de tiaj blogoj, por ne mencii tiujn, kiujn mi jam legis en la angla. Mi fakte pensis ne plu skribi en Esperanto pri tio, sed la reago de kelkaj fanoj (ĉiu knabino meritas havi siajn fanojn, ĉu ne? ) decidigis min daŭrigi rakonti miajn aventurojn ĉi tie.
Sed dum la lastaj semajnoj, pro la ekzamenoj, mi apenaŭ promenis kun ĉarmuloj en mia urbo. Mi tamen havas penson por dividi kun vi, miaj karaj legantoj: ĉu vi kredas ke bone funkcias 'liberala geedziĝo', en kiu interŝanĝo de seksaj kunuloj kaj ambaŭsekseco estas praktikata kaj akceptata de ambaŭ geedzoj? Ĉu eblas al paro havi rilatojn ekster la geedziĝo, kiam ambaŭ scias kaj aprobas kion faras la alia? Mi ne kredis tion ebla, ĝis mi konis paron, kiu faras tion sukcese. Mi ŝanĝu iliajn nomojn, por esti diskreta, ĉu bone? Temas pri Karlo kaj Silvja, kiuj geedziĝis antaŭ ses jaroj kaj dum tiu tempo amoras kiujn ajn ili volas, sen ke tiu ĵaluzu la alian kunulon, kiu tute scias pri tiuj 'aventuroj'.
Karlo kaj Silvja praktikas interŝanĝon de kunulo (portugale oni nomas tion 'swing'..ĉu ankaŭ en la angla oni nomas ĝin tiel?), kaj lastatempe Karlo komencis, kun la akcepto de Silvja, kelkfoje amori virojn - kompreneble kun kondomo, kaj kun ĉiuj protektiloj por eviti aidoson, kiam temas pri seksaj rilatoj kun aliaj viroj kaj virinoj...ambaŭ volas ĝui sekson tute sekuran. Dekomence Silvja ne bone akceptis la ideon de Karlo amori ne nur aliajn virinojn, sed ankaŭ virojn. Sed li konvinkis ŝin iom post iom, kaj nun eĉ ŝi konfidencis al mi, ke eble ŝi kuŝos kun alia knabino, por vidi kia estas la afero. Mi mem devas rekoni, ke mi ŝatus iam havi sekson kun alia knabino, sed mi ne scias, ĉu mi havus kuraĝon en la ĝusta momento. Mi ŝatas virojn, sed multaj fojoj mi demandas kia estas ricevi la delikatan tuŝon de alia virino, kisi buŝon, kiu ne havas ĉirkaŭ si harojn durajn kaj pikajn, kaj senti la rondforman korpon de alia ino frotantan la mian.
Kaj...eble aŭskulti de tiu ino vortojn amorajn apud mia orelo...en esperanto...hmmm! Frenezige! hehe
Ŝmacon al vi ĉiuj!
lutek   Tuesday, August 03, 2004, 19:06 GMT
Sorry some letters with diacritics cannot appear.
Ceaser   Tuesday, August 03, 2004, 19:29 GMT
Gee, Esperanto looks wierd, sorta like Icelandic! It is odd, when comparing languages, many don't know how close the scandinavian languages are to eachother excpet Icelandic and Finnish. My neighbour is Norwegian, and understands 100% of Danish and Swedish, yet, Icelandic... which is "old norse" is not even remotely close to Norwegian, even though it is the mother language of Norwegian. Finnish (interesting to you easterner), is Hungarian's sister language, except Finnish has a lot more Russian and Swedish Influence; just as Ukranian and Russian are sisters, excpet Ukranian has a lot more Polish and Romanian influence.
My neighbour said that Icelandic is to him as Sanskit is to a Dutch speaker. He said that Norwegian and Danish were at one point the smae language, and still are, yet, the pronounciation of Danish is much more German like than Norwegian. Which I can agree with, but then, how did Icelandic become so different from the rest? Icelandic technically is the original Viking Language... or is Danish?
Clark   Wednesday, August 04, 2004, 00:00 GMT
Um, I would not say Finnish is a sister language to Hungarian as their are languages spoken in Siberia and throughout Russia that are closer to Finnish, mere dialects of it, than Hungarian. The same goes with Hungarian.
Clark   Wednesday, August 04, 2004, 00:02 GMT
The original Viking language was Old Norse. And Icelandic is very similar to Old Norse. I have read that Icelandic children have no problem reading the old Viking sagas of centuries past.
Oh yeah, both of my posts are for Ceaser.
Steve K   Wednesday, August 04, 2004, 01:07 GMT
Esperanto has no chance. How can you learn a language that is no-one's first language, that has no literature, no culture and no history? To me it is purely elitist arrogance to promote esperanto.
I know 4,000 Chinese characters and am comfortably literate You do not need 10,000 as was suggested on this forum. Nor do you need 5,000 characters for Japanese, even 2,000 will do. But even at that it is too much effort for the average person.
So English has simply too strong a head start in terms the wide acceptance of its use. It is not really challenged in Asia and much of Africa and the Middle East. It is the only non-Iberian second language in Latin America. That leaves Europe. People who communicate across borders in Europe are also in touch with the rest of the world, hence English will continue to dominate.
Meanwhile I am sure bureaucrats In Europe will promote multi-lingualism the way Canada promoted bi-lingualism, at great expense and for the benefit of certain elites. ( Oh and nic, French is an official language in all of Canada, at least legally).
Ed   Wednesday, August 04, 2004, 01:30 GMT
I think we should embrace our linguistical differences and be proud of them! we don't need only one language!
Dulcinea del Toboso   Wednesday, August 04, 2004, 01:43 GMT
I've studied Icelandic and Norwegian a fair bit and travelled there some time ago. Although both Icelandic and Norwegian evolved from Old Norse, Icelandic has preserved most of the grammatical inflections whereas Norwegian has lost more than it has preserved. Still, in this simple example you can see the family resemblance:
Icelandic: hundur (dog), hundurinn (the dog)
Norwegian: hund (dog), hunden (the dog)
Likewise, hestur (horse) vs. hest and so on.
Icelandic still has four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive) and three genders. Gender and case is expressed both in the singular and the plural. When I first learned Norwegian, it was taught has having two cases and two genders ("common" and neuter), although when I was last there it was not hard for me to find regions where the feminine was used (rather than it being absorbed into the common gender).
As for Hungarian, it has an agglutinative structure similar to Finnish but shares no common word roots nor are the many "cases" that Finnish has comparable to Hungarian inflections. A simple example of Hungarian agglutination:
hazam - my house
hazban - in (a) house
hazamban - in my house
Hungarian also has vowel harmony, where the vowels of words are primarily back or front vowels and any inflection is modified to preserve that harmony. Thus "in Berlin" would be "Berlinben". Turkish has this, too, but I don't know about Finnish.
Dulcinea del Toboso   Wednesday, August 04, 2004, 01:58 GMT
(sorry, 2nd post because I can't edit the one above)
Icelandic didn't become different than the rest, rather Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish are the ones that diverged (i.e. diverged the most from Old Norse). This is because, with little outside influence (and historically a very high literacy rate), Icelandic was able to preserve much of its grammar.
In written form, Danish and Norwegian are very close. Spoken, Danish is flat sounding, whereas Norwegian has a distinct lilt, though not as much as Swedish.
nic   Wednesday, August 04, 2004, 07:38 GMT
I didn’t say French was not a legal language in all Canada, i said French is the 1st language only in Quebec. Maybe I expressed myself badly.
French was learnt in the past in all latin countries before English, in France many people used to learn Spanish or……..Esperanto, my father did.
The best examples are roumanians, most of them are able to be understandable in French, we (the French) all remember when the revolution happened in Roumania and Ceaucescu has lost the power; all the roumanians at TV spoke in French very well.
I don’t think French has a big place today, and the French don’t care. In Beligium, Luxembourg, Swiss and (Italy : Aoste, some Italians use to speak French as a 1st language, less today than in the past), French is spoken by minorities, in Swiss for example, only 20% of the population is francophone, Luxembours is very small and some people speak german, for Belgium, only wallons speak French.
If you compare in Europe, French is a little bet more spoken than Italian, the biggest populations in Europe are germans and british.
I don’t think german could be teach in European countries, especially in countries like France, it’s a difficult language.
English is the European language today, it does not mean the countries who speak another language will disappear. For one reason, if you are for example polish, how can English represent the polish mental, culture, view of the world, the same for French, germans, czeh…….. Look at the irish or the Scottish who speak English, they still being different of English, they have their own culture and traditions after 700 years of relations between scots and English for example.
Finnish (Finland) is not a scandinavian language, there is no common point between norwegian and finnish, or between swedish and finnish.
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