Submitted by One of the biggest problems facing the European Union today is the fact that within its borders, 23 languages are spoken. This means that all the important documents have to be translated by a whole army of translators, which costs the taxpayer more than 1 billion Euros a year – and companies trading within the EU spend millions more. The EU-funded TC-STAR project aims to tackle this issue with technology: a system that eats speech in one language, and outputs that same speech in another.Speech-to-speech translation is one of the most difficult language-related activities you can engage in. I study English in Amsterdam, and a part of that study is of course spent on translating Dutch material to English; even though we focus on text-to-text translations, we’ve been given glimpses of speech-to-speech translation as well, and this has made me aware of the incredible knowledge and mental agility required to do this. You need to know both the source as well as the target language inside-out, and especially when the translating is done ‘live’, you need to be able to keep up with the speakers. Despite all this, translating can be a very soothing activity; I find almost nothing as comfortable as sitting behind my computer, with several paper dictionaries scattered around my keyboard, stumbling from fixed expression to fixed expression, from saying to saying.
According to ICT Results, the TC-STAR project, “the first project in the world addressing unrestricted speech-to-speech translation”, needs to perfect three key technologies in order to operate properly: Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) transcribes the spoken words to text, while Spoken Language Translation (SLT) translates the source language to the target language. Text to Speech (TTS) finalises the process by turning written words into speech.
While none of these technologies are new, none of them are anywhere near perfect. In order to optimise the output of each of the three technologies, the TC-STAR project combined several ASR and SLT systems, which made the output considerably more accurate. The system translated speech between Spanish and English, as well as radio broadcasts from Chinese to English (which is probably all the more impressive).
Based on the BLEU (Bilingual Evaluation Understudy) method, a way of comparing machine and human translations, evaluations of the quality of translations improved by between 40% and 60% over the course of the project, while up to 70% of words were translated correctly, even if they were not placed in the right position in a sentence.
The system obviously still cannot match human translators, but the TC-STAR project states that within a few years, a commercially viable automatic speech-to-speech translator might become available. Until then, the components of the project have been released under an open-source license.
I’ve piddled with Esperanto. There is no way I’d ever want to use it. ugh…
Can’t the EU simply mandate a common language? If not, why not? What’s to stop them?
Speakers of 23 different languages, I suspect. Which one do you chose? Would you presume to say that a single language is universal?
esperanto. Duh.
Well, linguistic reformers get, well, reformed by others who think that their constructed language is better – hence not only is there Esperanto but Ido, and furthermore Interlingua and Atlango (the latter being one that I quite like the look of, although Esperanto admittedly might be, overall, the best bet for both Intra-European and International commmunication). There’s a host of ‘universal languages’ at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_auxiliary_language)
I would say that the TC-STAR project and ‘universal’ languages miss the point. It’s sort of like saying that we should all communicate better using mathematical symbols or other abstract signs (such as BlissSymbolics), since these are at a higher level of thought, happily unconstrained by the cultural baggage that apparently causes such misunderstanding.
The problem with this in my view is that the relationship with the abstracted or universal languages is purely instrumental and detached.To learn Italian or German or French or Chinese or even for me, a Brit, Canadian or American English, is to learn and understand the very culture of living breathing people. There will not be an effective universal language the learning of which will bring natural understanding of others until we have an enforced global mono-culture and a system of enforced global ethics. Does that sound good to anyone?
If we spent as much time and investment in secondary and tertiary education on several already existent languages as we do on intellectual ephemera such as Media Studies or Post-Modernism, we would achieve a lot more real understanding of others than any language reform might achieve, ‘neat’ though the prospect sounds.
(Edited for typos)
Edited 2008-05-03 10:15 UTC
Esperanto? Only if you would like to ruin the whole EU as fast as possible…
It would take decades, maybe a century of active teaching and other work throughout the EU before enough people would speak the language fluently, and it would have to be a mandatory language taught at least in higher education (which would, of course, narrow the time that could be used for learning other languages). Too many people would protest that kind of spending of resources. Too few people already speak Esperanto.
Esperanto was a fashionable idea in the first decades of the 20th century but has since then lost a lot of its popularity. There are still some active hobby users of the language but only about 10000 people in the whole world speak it fluently and maybe 100000 can use it actively ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto ) It is also the opinion of many language experts that Esperanto has been replaced by more advanced, and easier international languages like Interlingua, just like Esperanto replaced the more primitive Volapuk before it.
Esperanto has many oddities that should have no place in a supposedly easy to use international language – like the use of many diacritical marks (breve, circumflex) above basic letters, increasing the amount of letters. Heck, I don’t even know where to get a breve using my keyboard…It would be rather impossible to write esperanto using most current keyboards. The (odd) Esperanto alphabet: a b c "A‰ d e f g "A h "Ayen i j "Au k l m n o p r s A t u A- v z.
Interlingua would be a far better, more easy-to-use artificial language but it would, naturally, still have many of the same problems with Esperanto.
Choosing a few major languages as the official EU languages could be a good idea if only people could agree on those languages (easier said than done…). English would be a natural choice, but what about the others? German and French? But what about Spanish and Italian that have lots of users too? Or the Scandinavian languages that are most closely related to each other making understanding between them easy? Why no Slavic and Eastern European languages? We would quickly run into political arguing.
Anyway, I think that using English as a kind of de facto international language may already be the reality in many international organizations, including the EU.
You dropped your credibility right there. It takes a hundred years to learn a language? Gee, what are we sub-centenarians to do? Mime?
While English is haphazard and irregular enough that it could conceivably take a century to master, languages like Esperanto and Interlingua are easy to pick up. It’s all the many exceptions and irregularities in a language that are hard to learn.
A good natural language is like a good programming language. It makes easy things easy, and hard things possible. English makes easy things hard and hard things nearly impossible. And every time someone new takes on the task of learning it, yet more wasted effort is incurred memorizing huge collections of irregular verb conjugations, lists of irregular plurals, etc. Do you double the final consonant before adding this suffix to that word? How about this root and that suffix? ‘I’ before ‘E’? Oh, that’s unless it’s after a ‘C’… except here, here, and here, where it’s not.
And all that so that they can “communicate” in a language which is inherently more prone to facilitating miscommunication. A language in which the word ‘beg’ has become its own antonym.
I am a native English speaker. And even I cannot recommend expanded use of that language. And I can only assume that anyone who does has loosed their mind.
Edited 2008-05-03 15:27 UTC
An individual may not need many years to learn a new constructed language, of course. But I was not talking about individual learning but about the wide enough adoption of the new constructed language throughout, say the EU, in this case. One might need to use force too as many would oppose such a decision and see it only as a waste of resources better used elsewhere. I was just talking about political realities.
I do agree that an international auxiliary language – constructed to be to be easy to learn and use – could be ideal – but maybe only in theory. We still don’t have such a common easy-to-use language widely adopted anywhere in the world despite many decent proposals. Why? Because in real life it could just take too much effort to make such a constructed language used and understood widely and well enough for it to reach the necessary stage of adoption.
Personally – I would have nothing against wider usage of Interlingua, Ido or Esperanto (those being the three most used constructed auxiliary languages to this day). However, I doubt whether majority of people, even only in the European politics, would agree.
We need to see the realities. People just see it more useful to learn and use widely spoken natural languages than an artificial constructed language used by only a few thousand people so far.
Adopting Esperanto or Interlingua as the official EU language would not just mean that a few diplomats had to learn to language (and learn it really well), but also much other work would be necessary. We would still need lots of translators (very fluent in the new auxiliary language) as all the EU decisions and discussions would have to be translated into tens of other languages for non-speakers people to understand. (And it would sure take a century before most Europeans would understand Esperanto fluently even if force was used..). Journalists etc. would have to learn the new language too – and not just the basics but advanced language too. Many EU officials would eventually insist having also software in the new auxiliary language instead of English or other language that they may not speak natively. Etc. etc. etc.
A good international auxiliary language could make a lot sense in many cases – but in reality its wider adoptions could mean too much work – which is exactly the reason why that has still not happened and may never happen.
irbis, you seem to have a positive view of the benefits of a neutral international language for Europe. Although I don’t think anybody is denying the political difficulty implementing this, hopeful people like you can make the impossible possible. The fall of the Berlin wall seemed impossible, as did the creation of the European Union, the adoption of the Euro and the metric system, yet with time they have been widely adopted (although admittedly the metric system took a lot longer). So keep your hope alive!
I think it is absolutely critical that international communication in Europe respects the linguistic diversity within Europe. It is not fair that the language of 12% of Europe’s population becomes the lingua franca for all. Additionally, the number of people who speak English as a second language (and the highest estimates put this figure at less than half the population) would include only the intellectual elite in Europe, that is business people, academics, politicians, diplomats, high-ranking public servants etc. This figure is higher in urban areas than in rural areas.
With regards to your estimation of the number of Esperanto speakers, Linstedt’s estimate might be nice and round (1000 native speakers, 10,000 fluent speakers, etc.) but it’s certainly not based on much more than a guess. It’s certainly not true that 10% of fluent speakers of Esperanto are native speakers, and my experience is that native speakers comprise only a tiny proportion of Esperanto’s speaking population – we are talking about an interesting phenomenon, but certainly nothing more. While there is little doubt that there are around 1,000 native speakers of Esperanto (it wouldn’t be hard to form a rough list), there are far more than 10,000 fluent speakers of the language, and far more than 100,000 who can speak it actively. Esperanto speakers are concentrated in Europe (especially Eastern Europe), China, South America, the Middle East and parts of Africa, so the proportion of speakers would be higher in Europe.
I agree that it doesn’t matter whether Interlingua or Esperanto is widely used in Europe, if it is to be a neutral language. Unfortunately, Esperanto is the only non-ethnic language to have gained speakers in the hundreds of thousands. There would be only a few hundred fluent speakers of Interlingua, a thousand at the most. Volapuk never gained a wide following either, and it took only a few years for most of the Volapuk clubs in Europe to adopt Esperanto (Volapuk being an a priori language). Having attempted to learn both Interlingua and Esperanto, I am fluent in Esperanto but I found Interlingua harder for a range of reasons (admittedly, I only spent about ten hours trying to learn Interlingua). My basic comparison is that Interlingua has many irregular verb forms, declensions, a more complex alphabet and other irregularities that Esperanto does not have. It’s main advantage seems to be that clever native speakers of Latin-based languages can understand the language without having to learn it (and this is true, I am a native French speaker and could understand Interlingua fairly well). On the other hand, learning to speak and write the language is more difficult than Esperanto. Additionally, native speakers of Germanic, Slavic, Finno-Yugraic languages and so on do not have this advantage. I would recommend Interlingua and Esperanto to anyone, but they have different purposes – Interlingua is useful to communicate widely to speakers of Romance languages, whereas Esperanto is useful as a universal second language. Having said that, if Interlingua for some reason became more popular than Esperanto, I would probably support Interlingua instead of Esperanto.
Ideas don’t have to have a good chance of success to be worthy of support, but if they promote economic and social justice, language diversity, understanding between people, respect for cultural diversity and harmony then I will certainly support them.
I think you have summed things up neatly. The only case for not using English, at this point in time, as a second language is petty nationalism rather than common sense. I am sure the average European has enough self worth not to be culturally corrupted by choosing English as a second tongue.
Really I don’t understand why anyone would be bothered what the source of their second language is whether it’s German, French, or the “Great Satan” – English !
Esperanto has many problems?
The only problem for me is that ignorance of Esperanto is holding the language back.
I use the word “ignorance” not prejudice.
For anyone not prejudiced against Esperanto however can I ask you to visit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU
Indeed. I see some people in the thread coming at “the language challenge” from the standpoint of how many people already have learned English. And yet, the real questions is “How much effort would be required to get everyone up to a useful skill level?”. And the answer is: Far more effort for English than for Esperanto, despite English’s head start.
Almost 30 years ago, I completed 2 years of studying Spanish. And even back then, if I had needed to rely upon my fluency in Spanish to survive, I would have fallen on my face. I could not speak or understand it well enough to get by in everyday life in an immersion situation.
By contrast, today, and at age 45, I have spent a few days studying Esperanto. And the difference is amazing. The progress I am making is like nothing I experienced in my high school studies of Spanish. Mr. Piron’s claim that a few months of Esperanto study is equivalent to years of study of a national language is well founded, as far as I am concerned.
Once the disparity between the total amount of effort to become effective with a designed vs a national language is taken into account, English and other national languages lose any attractiveness they might have had for use in the capacity of an international auxilliary language… despite any head start any one of them might have.
Over the millenia, and in different parts of the world, a number of languages have held the de facto status of lingua franca for international communication. The simple fact that the terms “de facto” and “lingua franca” are still a concise way to make exactly that point says a bit about the history of international languages. Among other things, it is worth noting that Latin, which once served that purpose is now dead.
English is the international language of choice right now for business and science. There are two directions that the trend could go. Modern international communication could result in English achieving a permanent, or at least long-term dominance. Alternatively, English could wane, possibly in our lifetimes, to be replaced by another language. I don’t see any contenders with a strong enough claim to make that happen at the moment.
Esperanto could serve as an international language that doesn’t threaten anyone’s native language. The reason is simple enough. It doesn’t give someone else’s native language a place of special importance.
Someone once said: “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” As an Usona (American) esperantist, I would prefer esperanto as a conlang. But without an army and a navy, it’s hard to see how it can beat English.
My suspicion is that something like simplified English will be the eventual winner. Either that, or else the world will go to hell in a hand cart, and the next war will make whatever language cockroaches speak the winner.
Mal"Aoje, Claude Piron mortes en januaro 22, 2008. Li estes homo escepta.
http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Piron
Mi esperas tio mesa"Ao estas komprenebla. Mi estas komencanto de Esperanto.
Edited 2008-05-06 00:09 UTC
You are missing the point entirely. I am not a resident of any European country but even I can see the problem very clearly. Standardizing upon any one of the national languages currently used within the EU gives native speakers of that language a very real and very unfair advantage over the others. Official documents will be issued in that language, which the residents of one country can easily read and understand, while those of other countries have to struggle a bit to understand, and perhaps misunderstand certain things. Forms are issued in that language, and more residents of one country respond because, hey, it’s easy. Residents of other countries must exert more effort to understand and respond, and may choose to spend their time and effort on something else, their countries ending up under-represented. (A effect which will not be considered when statistics regarding those responses are presented to further arguments regarding rules or policy on other matters.)
It is not a matter of cultural corruption. It is very much a matter of one country having the upper hand on that most important of intangibles: communication.
Leaders of countries whose language was not chosen would be remiss in their duties *not* to oppose such a move.
The chosen language *must* provide a level playing field for all involved.
Edited 2008-05-05 14:30 UTC
I think you’ve misunderstood me. I am also a native English speaker, and I live in Australia (even though I am a dual European citizen). English is my primary language and I have nothing against the language itself, it isn’t a “Great Satan” for me.
But we also have to acknowledge the immensely unfair privilege that English gives people. Did you know that 20% of the GDP of New South Wales can be attributed to the status of English? An economist called Francois Grim found that the United Kingdom benefited to the tune of 18 billion euro a year because of the status of English. Neither of those facts include the edge that native English speakers have in diplomatic or trade negotiations, or the fact that English-speaking countries tend to support each other (and they happen to be some of the most powerful countries in the world!). None of this is fair and if we can imagine something better, there is no need to discriminate between people purely because of the language we happen to speak at birth.
I could say nothing and enjoy the privilege I receive as a native English speaker, in the same way that I enjoy privilege as a straight white male student. But how is that fair?
Hmm… As a side note. it seems that Ido, the third big auxiliary language could avoid some of the shortcomings of both Esperanto and Interlingua. For example, it doesn’t have the non-standard letters of Esperanto that use breves and circumflexes. If Esperanto could get rid of that major headache, I might be more supportive of it. Yet Ido still keeps the extremely systematic and easy grammar of Esperanto. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_and_Ido_compared
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ido_and_Interlingua_compared
Too bad that the first world war almost destroyed the promising start of the Ido project.
Anyway, I don’t believe that any of the current auxiliary languages could gain wide acceptance in international communication, like as an official language of some international organizations, before it would already have millions of active users and supporters otherwise, and so that it had already proven its wide acceptance elsewhere. However, English language already has that position in the world, like it or not, just like Latin had in the Middle Age western Europe.
Another good article explaining the shortcomings and oddities of Esperanto and how Ido has overcome them in its own improved version of a constructed easy-to-use auxiliary language.
Why Ido?
http://idolinguo.org.uk/whyido.htm
Just a few examples from the article:
Why are so many things in Esperanto called non-something? Why can’t there be a simple short word for “cheap”, for example, but it is instead an unnecessarily long and complicated word malmultekosta (= not-costing much) while in Ido it is simply chipa. I don’t think that Esperanto makes things any easier for new learners by that method. Like the article says: “The derivation of words from ‘root’ words is very confused in Esperanto, and only superficially simple.”
Also, Ido uses just the basic letters which are common to most countries using the Latin alphabet, instead of the artificial extra letters of Esperanto that use circumflexes and breves, making typing or printing Ido much easier than Esperanto.
My own favorites of the three most popular auxiliary languages (Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua) would be, either Interlingua or Ido. Although neither of the two is quite as popular as Esperanto so far, Interlingua and Ido just sound more natural to me, and in many cases also make learning and saying things easier than Esperanto does.
Edited 2008-05-04 07:36 UTC
read http://remush.be/rebuttal/index.html
That article, although long and comprehensive, doesn’t tell why using the extra letters of Esperanto with breves and circumflexes is supposed to make the language easy to use? That kind of extra baggage that makes typing Esperanto extremely difficult (I really don’t even know where to get a breve using my keyboard) is a major argument against Esperanto even if there were no other problematic issues.
Easy oral communication is only one part of an ideal easy-to-use auxiliary language, easy written communication using commonly available keyboards and other equipment (like mobile phones and sms) should be as important. Typing Esperanto is just all too problematic because of the use of breves and circumflexes in the language.
Edited 2008-05-06 16:30 UTC
Nonsense. You install a keymap (which takes about 30 seconds) and you can type the superscripted characters just as easily as the regular characters, simply by switching between the maps (Ctrl-Shift will switch maps on my system, but it’s configurable).
"A‰"A"Ayen"AuAA-
Very simple.
On my machine:
apt-get install language-support-eo
Add to panel->Keyboard indicator
Today, an alphabet which used only keys normally on a 105 key keyboard would be preferable.
It is customary to use the digraphs:
cx, gx, hx, jx, and ux
in place of the characters with diacritics when communicating through a 7 bit medium.
That’s for Linux systems that don’t already have the eo keymap preinstalled (many Linux systems – including Ubuntu and Kubuntu – already do).
I had to manually install the keymap on my Windows system, as Windows doesn’t support Esperanto out of the box, but, like I said, that is about a 30 second process.
Switching between the maps is an action that takes less than a second, and once switched I can type Esperanto, with supersigned characters, just as fast as I can type English. That is: pretty darn fast.
So, the objection that the Esperanto supersigned characters make using Esperanto “too hard” or “impossible” is a bunch of bunkum. At least on Linux or Windows. I don’t use Mac’s, so I don’t know for sure, but I’d be really surprised if it isn’t just as easy on those systems.
quote: “That article, although long and comprehensive, doesn’t tell why using the extra letters of Esperanto with breves and circumflexes is supposed to make the language easy to use?”
read http://remush.be/rebuttal/spelling.html ;
In 1897 the letters "A‰ "A "Ayen "Au A A- were quite easy to write by hand and with an azerty keyboard (French WAS then the preferred international language). It’s later than unsophisticated computers could not manage. Nowadays it does not require exceptional skills to type them.
However if you are working abroad on a foreign keyboard, use
ch gh hh jh sh u or any other method that pleases you.
Isn’t that nice? What’s the problem?
Sure.
And maybe Esperanto is indeed the best thing since sliced salami…? 
But – sorry – I still cannot see why it wouldn’t be even easier and simpler for most users today without its extra letters (or their alternative double consonant replacements)…
So, I just doubt a bit whether Esperanto could be the ultimate best auxiliary language that has ever been or could ever be developed… However, undoubtly its major strength is that it has by far more users than any other international auxiliary language (Ido and Interlingua being the two other major candidates) has ever had.
Really, I would have nothing against learning and using Esperanto – if it was used more in the world. But I suspect that some problems like the extra letters may prevent Esperanto from gaining the position and popularity that it might otherwise deserve. Small issues like that may be enough to turn many people off who might otherwise find such an easy-to-learn auxiliary language very nice.
Claude Piron’s article, “Psychological Reactions to Esperanto” is worth reading too:
http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/reactions.htm
Quote: “Why are so many things in Esperanto called non-something?”
Take any article in Esperanto and count the number of mal-words in it. Look in the translation in English. You will find there a certain amount of un- or in- words. I bet you will find the numbers quite low in both cases.
Quote: “Why can’t there be a simple short word for cheap”
There is! Esperanto a few synonyms.
kostly: multekosta, altapreza, kara.
cheap: malmultekosta, "A‰ipa.
and if you need it (in poems or songs) malaltapreza, malkara, mal"A‰ipa. Kara and "A‰ipa are considered “snobbish”, but you may use them to show off.
Quote: “The derivation of words from ‘root’ words is very confused in Esperanto, and only superficially simple.”
It is confused for those who don’t understand it. In Esperanto the role of the context is greater than ido.
Esperanto has a very important rule for affixes that is lacking in Ido: the rule of “necessity and sufficiency”. This makes the language much more flexible and pleasant to use. However Ido would probably be easier to translate automatically than Esperanto.
Quote: “Ido uses just the basic letters which are common to most countries using the Latin alphabet, instead of the artificial extra letters of Esperanto”.
The letter in question are "A‰, "A, "Ayen, "Au, A, A-, that can be alternatively written ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, or u without accent. So Esperanto can very well be written on any Latin keyboard. However, if you see my name written RemuA, you know I speak Esperanto. Anyway it does not require exceptional skills to write those letters.
Quoting: “Interlingua and Ido just sound more natural to me”
Ido sound much less natural than Esperanto to me.
Interlingua is a language meant to be easy to read (silently) for people who know a Romance language. It is much more difficult to use in normal conversation than Esperanto.
RemuA
Man, I wish I could still grant you a bunch of mod points for that comment!
Except that easy to learn is relative to the languages you already know.
English isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. English speakers, being aware of all of the quirks it has, are quick to deride it as terrible and awful, forgetting that all the other languages out there have quirks and irregularities.
English does not make easy things hard or hard things impossible. I, as an English speaker, really have no trouble saying pretty much anything I need to say. What’s impossible, exactly? What would be easy, but is hard in English, exactly? Irregular verb conjugations? Hahahaha. English is probably the best out of the European languages with respect to verb conjugations. Most verbs have four forms, e.g., live, lives, living, lived. For the vast majority of verbs, the pattern is exactly like the one above. A few verbs have five: sing, sings, singing, sang, sung. Most of these fall into a few common patterns based on rhyme, although the rest are truly irregular. Then there are a couple of truly irregulars: be, do, and the modal auxiliaries. These aren’t generally regular in any other European language either, so English is no worse than its counterparts. But the verbs are special, so it makes sense that they don’t follow the normal pattern.
Now, let’s compare that to Latin with its multiple conjugations, containing myriad irregular verbs. Or to Spanish or French with 3-4 major conjugations, and then a set of irregulars. They still often have irregular past tenses, far more so than English. The less said about German, the better. Oh, and those languages have noun genders and inflected adjectives. English has invariable adjectives and nouns don’t fall into any classes (except for a small number of irregular plurals, easily learned).
I could go on and on, but there’s nothing particularly bad about English grammar or syntax (it’s straightforward SVO language, compared, again, to German with it’s strange V2 syntax, or French and Spanish with strange orderings of pronouns and weak elements). Why do people keep hating on English?
For exactly the same reasons why you British hated (and probably still hate) French.
It is more difficult to understand why you people are hating Esperanto, that never was in a dominating position (or is it threatening to be?).
English is not universal but is the language a lot of people learn as a second language.
Though I would always prefer something spoken in my native language, I would prefer listening to a good English speech translated by a good human translator instead of listening a poor Spanish (my native language) speech translated by software… as the same article says, the software is far far from be near perfect.
The most practical suggestion, I would imagine. But good luck getting the French to agree – if Canada* is any indication, at least.
(A country where 100% of our population has to take 9 years of mandatory French classes – because 15% of the population is still unable get over losing on the Plains of Abraham 300 years ago.)
About that, I learned a very interesting thing a few days ago:
Until WWII, the most widely taught second language in Europe was French. Interestingly enough, the first reason why English gained preeminence was that one of the condition for a country to benefit from the Marshall Plan was to make English the most widely taught second language.
According to my source, the reasonning behind that was that if everybody spoke the same language, wars could be avoided.
Well, here we are, 60+ years later, and despite the huge effort, the great majority of Europeans are unable to really have a conversation in English.
I really wonder how things would be if it’d been Esperanto or another similar language that had been picked up…
I’m with you.
I’m Dutch, and I love my language, but the situation in the EU is bloody ridiculous. We should standardise on English. The end. I don’t care what the French, Germans, or us Dutch think, I’m sick of hearing they spend MORE THAN ONE BILLION EUROS on translating alone. That’s bloody retarded.
In fact, it’s one of the two reasons why I consistently vote down anything related to Europe. The language issue clearly shows the inherent flaw of the EU: they pose as a supranational body, but in fact it’s nothing more than a bunch of nation states acting like they like each other.
Standardise on English, and stop moving the EU government between Strassbourg and Brussels/Bruxelles twice a year. Then we’ll talk.
It’s a big number, but expressed as a fraction of the GDP of the EU, it’s manageable. The IMF estimates that the EU GDP for this year will be 11.9 trillion Euros. The cost of translation is less than 1/10,000 of that figure.
If you think of the cost of translation as a tax on European goods and services, it is about 1/100 of one percent. And it gives a lot of people jobs.
Machine translation isn’t even close to usable at this point: getting 70% of the words right means multiple errors in every sentence. The most it’s good for at this stage is to speed up the work of a human translator, who can look at the original and the machine translation, fix the errors, and perhaps train the machine translation to improve (if the program allows for training).
So, you basically want that only highly educated people get elected?
Then there’s the problem of giving one country a language advantage in negotiations because they’re language is the “universal” lingua franca.
In my opinion Esperanto would work much better. First, not that many people do speak it well enough to start diplomatic and political negotiations in as many would like to think. second everybody has the same chances, a second non foreign language to negotiate in.
Esperanto is a joke. A bad one at that.
/me mostly can’t stand listening to it spoken…
argh, my EARS!!
Edited 2008-05-03 03:39 UTC
Did you ever factor in the cost or retraining and teaching everyone who don’t speak or understand english into your nonsense ?
If the easy solution was to make everything english it would have been done a long time ago , But you know some people don’t understand , write or speak in english , that’s the majority of people in the EU by the way not the minority.
Spending 1 billion in translation is so intelligent that all european armed forces have seen there armed forces budget decline and there as never been in all of history such a long peace time between European country , mostly due to people figuring out that the other’s where not insulting them because of translations.
The language issue is nonexistent and is not an issue at all , except for some idiot and racist. Who are trying to destroy it and point at it’s flaws.
English is taught all throughout the EU, starting in high school (and in my country, even in primary school, I’ve been studying English since I was ~8).. The infrastructure is already there – and let’s face it, English already IS the de-facto standard language of the world. People might not like it, but that doesn’t make it any less so. English is the only sane choice, not just from an EU perspective, but also from a world perspective.
Indeed, it would have been done a long time ago if it wasn’t for the irrational nationalistic feelings in the EU’s member states. As if making English the standard language of the EU government in ANY WAY threatens the existence of languages like German, French, or my own, Dutch. I’m talking about the EU government, not the people themselves.
As for people claiming 1 billion isn’t that much – utter nonsense. I’d rather see that 1 billion Euros spent on something that REALLY matters, like fighting poverty in the EU, or improving the environment. That’s a million times more important than catering to irrational and idiotic nationalistic feelings.
Look, I’m as Dutch as they come, and I’m proud of that fact. I’m proud to be where I’m from, and in fact, I support policies that improve the awareness of local langages, like Fries in my own country, or Scottish Gaelic in Schotland (I’m learning Scottish Gaelic myself). As a linguist, I understand more than anyone the importance of a language when it comes to culture, and feelings of identity, of belonging, of unity.
But to claim that mandating a single language IN THE EU GOVERNMENT and its documents and proceedings somehow threatens the existence of national languages is moronic. In fact, it just proves how insecure people are about their cultures these days – as also evidenced by the irrational fear towards the muslim culture.
Call me a racist one more time, Moulfijrgr, and you’re banned for life on OSAlert. I hope I made myself VERY clear. I demand a public apology.
DISCLAIMER: I speak, write and understand/read Dutch and English fluently, and I can understand/read German fluently (speaking and writing is slightly more problematic). I have a basic understanding of French (I can keep up as long as they speak slowly), Latin, and ancient Greek.
Edited 2008-05-03 15:53 UTC
I don’t think that Mollinneuf was talking about you when he said that and I do find it funny that you took it so personal, especially given that English is not your mother tongue. After this rant of yours, I believe that he is the one that is entitled for apologies. Guess from who?
As for this language thing, I also happen to think that the native English speakers here are pushing their agenda again with the exception of sbergman27 – who gave a fairly detailed and reasonable explanation of why he thinks that it is a bad idea (although I still think that English is easier to learn than most languages out there, Steve!) – and the gentleman that is said to be an English teacher.
This stupidity has been raised once not so long ago by kaiwai and it was properly shotdown as the gibberish that it is. You can’t just push a language onto millions of people like that: it doesn’t work this way. And if, as you say, that only the EU parliament should use it as a common language, then I don’t see any problem as long as everybody agree to that term. If they don’t, fine, too. Try to push the international languages like Esperanto and others instead that were designed to be used in such cases.
And for the record, I agree that to try to push one language to someone who does speak other language and has no interest whatsoever in learning the former in the first place is indeed elitism. Feel free to ban me from your website if that pleases you, Thom. Anytime!
1)I did not call you a racist.
2)I appologize if my use of the word racist got you upset , because you misunderstood what I said because it’s not written with a lot of explanation as to what I meant or even targetting you.
There are people who attack the EU because they are idiot and racist and there only intent is to destroy it. You oppose it and say what you don’t like about it , it’s not the same thing … your objective is not destruction.
Look Thom , sorry on this your being completely unrealistic , sure the language of internationnal commerce is english , except the reality is most people don’t work at the internationnal level but at the local level , In what language do you exchange the most with the people around you , not on the internet , but with people you meet face to face ? Just do the real experiment and stop talking or writing to everyone around you in any other language but english. You will see the real reality.
You say that the training center are in place , well how come the majority of those who come out of school from the Netherland don’t all adopt English in there daily life ? Because they failed it / at it. But in your explanation your ommiting the fact that there is not just student who need to learn it , but everyone else who don’t speak , write or understand it. The schools system is already at near maximum capacity imagine if it had to take on 2/3 of the rest of the populations.
You say that the biggest problem is nationalistic pride , when the fact is people are not created equals and that for the majority they barely are able to speak and write in there native language , they are unable to learn easily other language.
The EU governement is made up of people , why do you think they have translators during the sessions , because they like to spend money to protect the languages ? No because the majority are not perfectly bilingual or knowledgeable in all language used …
Also your not alone at talking about this point and the majority of attacker ( do I need to point your not an attacker ?) are saying at all level.
Thom , some of us do have business that deals with translators. It’s not cheap at all and with the numbers of papers that come out of the EU that need translation it’s not even a percentage of a nano cent per all individual who are in the EU population.
People don’t go to war over poverty and the environment , they do when they don’t understand each others or think there rights and privilege are trumpled down. Your taking money that solve a problem of communication and want to divert this problem solving amount to direct it untargetted at other problems that are not economic in natures. If 1 Billion was the number needed to solve the environment and poverty problem there would be thousand of people with the money linning up to pay it cash …
Moulinneuf is my real life name …
Sorry Thom but your using a computer and talking in another language and went to school above the high school level. Your not like the majority of people.
Most people don’t use computers because they don’t understand them and a good majority of them can’t afford them and a good portion of them are scared of them.
The majority of people have trouble communicating in there own language.
Example based on true events : There is an old lady who speak french who received her medication in english , the drugstore made a printing error , the old lady died , unable to read what was what.
A familly of four from Ontario ( mostly english speaking province ) came to Quebec as tourist some of the the road sign are in French only , missread an exit and panicked try to accelerate and take the next exit , they got into an accident , they all died.
There are tons of language based deadly accident happening everywhere around the world, from people who speak the language.
Your also creating this super governement individual who just don’t exist in reality and cloning it multiple times to support your idea , we would be lucky if they had 1/10 of your good intentions or all your ability. They just don’t exist in reality.
Sorry.
Edited 2008-05-03 21:02 UTC
Source…?
Surely at least some European countries include language information as census questions?
I’m very curious about the answer to this question, because understanding English is currently the key that unlocks the door to a vast majority of the Internet.
Well, some countries, especially the northern countries, spend heaps of resources on learning their full population to use English as second language. Others, mostly southern Europe, limit their English teaching effort mostly to the higher educated part of society. I.e. The Netherlands starts with English at young age while Italy lets its children only play with it at young age, postponing real English lessons to secundary education schools where it makes sense.
While possesing knowledge of English unlocks a vast amount of knowledge and culture, the resources a society needs to spend on learning English as secondary language cannot be underestimated. One has to consider direct financial costs of teaching English, as well as account of spending usefull and valueable education time that could also be spent on teaching other subjects.
In fact, it is quite likely that for some of the larger European languages, spending some extra money into making resources available in the national language is economically more efficient than spending the resources on making every individual able to understand and communicate in English.
Thank you for the additional information. Could you please clarify the meaning of “secondary education schools”?
In the case of Italy, primary education would be the “Scuola Elementare”, while secondary education is “Scuola Media”. There are a few forms of “Media”, which vary a lot in what is being teached, including language teaching. Note that I’m not an expert on the Italian education system.
Apparently you understood nothing.
“Lernens Geschichte” [~ “Learn history”] as one of our politicans once said.
If you look at the facts a lot of people and countries of the EU profited. Countries that isolated themselves like Switzerland are falling behind.
When was the last war between members of the EU? Right more than 60 years ago, before there was even the EU. –> one of the reasons to found such body was that “incident”.
Understanding each other is not retared, losing the connection with your citizens is.
What you are saying is that you want some kind of ancient Rome with one language, no matter if the people far away of Rome understand you or not. Imo one language would result in a system where everybody is “ruled” by “the EU”, the perception would be worse than it’s now.
Go on wasteing your votes without informing yourself.
Lets put it this way, all the new members of the EU have English as their official second language; so one can assume that they aren’t the barriers. So basically it comes down to certain countries who speak a certain language who see ‘sticking it to the English’ as part and parcel with ‘sticking it to the American’s’ by their refusal to speak English not only properly but at least put some effort into learning it in the first place.
Making English the standard for communication in business has already happened. Anyone remember in France the commotion made when a business leader said that English is a world language – get used to it? then in Luxembourg over the ‘creeping in of English’ into French? So I’m sure you can work out who the main instigators for derailing anything that resembles Anglo-Saxon.
One only need to look at the pathetic and juvenile reaction to economic reforms in France and labeling them as ‘too anglo-saxon’ to understand the immaturity one is actually dealing with. I can’t believe that a country that spurred off the enlightenment with great thinkers is basically nothing more than a country of knee jerk reactionaries to anything from outside France.
Edited 2008-05-02 23:27 UTC
Let’s see…
First, English is far from being the most widely spoken language in Europe: that’d be either French or German (Germany is now the most populated country in the EU, and French is spoken in four European countries, three of which are part of the EU).
Next, English is neither spoken by most people in Europe, nor easy to learn. In effect, making it the one official language in the EU would exclude most people from understanding what the various EU’s bodies are saying. When such a thing happen, you haven’t an union, you have an empire.
Having English the official EU’s language has always been the wet dream of both the US and UK, and of a minority of people who can so put themselves above the unwashed masses.
Disclaimer: I’m French and an English teacher.
What you say is far from true, according to EU sources quoted on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Union
13% of the EU population can speak English as a mother tongue. This exceed french, on 12%, but lags German, on 18%.
38% of the EU population can speak english as a second language, a figure that complete dwarves French (14%) and German (14%).
In total, a mighty 51% of the EU’s population can speak english, which crushes French on a paltry 26% ad German on 32%.
So perhaps you should do some research before opining on what the most widely spoken languages of the EU are. English has twice the speakers of French and German and so is by far the least elitist. To make the official language either French of German would be pandering to an elite minority of bureaucrats. To make english the official language would be the popular democratic thing to do.
But don’t let that stop you spinning lies and pretending it is still 1812 and french the language of culture, business, and statecraft.
Come on.
Those % don’t change anything.
What is “speak English”?
The skill varies a lot so its close to useless imo to quantify how many people “speak” English as second language.
Personally I don’t think that changing the language would help the EU, I rather think that it would be the first step into its destruction. As history showed a lot of nationalistic movements emerge if the culture of an ethnic group is “oppressed”.
One very important part of culture is the language you interact with.
Heck, even the UK did not manage to have one single football team to represent their country and now you ask as to speak one language only, concerning at least the administration?
And no, the “business” example does not count. Companies are no democratic bodies, the stakes are not even close to evenly allotted
–> I oppose the “United States of Europe”, but no the EU.
I’m not proposing that English be made the official language f the EU, I’m opposing the idea that french or german are better candidate for it or more widely spoken and understood.
However I think english is the least nationalistic language. It is not the official language of the UK, it is just the language everybody happens to speak in the UK. There are many more native speakers of english outwith the UK than within. Unlike French particularly, English is a free language, divorced from the state. There’s no Academy of English that we have to live under the tyranny of, no “French is the language of the Republic.” in the constitution. English is defined far more by those who speak it beyond the shore of the UK, in a global free for all.
English is free, and it makes free those that speak it. It’s the open source language, unlike french and german. If we are to choose a language for the EU, it should be English, the language that is most widely spoken, the language that belongs to the people and not to any state or nation.
This is a poll, not a census.
28,694 citizens
with a minimum age of 15 were asked in the then 25 member-states as well as in the then future member-states (Bulgaria, Romania) and the candidate countries (Croatia, Turkey) at the time of the survey. Only citizens, not immigrants, were asked.
28,694 citizens where polled out of 497,198,740.
I wonder why that’s even accepted and still there ….
Why? It is a poll so it is wrong? They went out and asked a huge number of people what they speak, and it therefore wrong? Come now!
“Why?”
Because it’s not accurate.
“It is a poll so it is wrong?”
Yes. you have 95% + of the population who is not accounted for in your Poll.
“They went out and asked a huge number of people what they speak, and it therefore wrong?”
28,694 citizens out of 497,198,740 is huge ? By what measure ? Bulshit and biased new standards ? You have a more numerous group at a Football event or any other events …
“Come now!”
No ….
Reminds me when I was at work, some French people were chatting, and I was able to answer their question in English. Their reaction, “oh, do you understand French” – my response, “well, when I was at high school I took a bit of interest in Latin. Since I know some basic Latin, I could work out the gist of what you were saying in your bastardised Latin” (btw, what is it with Eurotrash leaving their table like a tip – is it because their mummy and daddy look after them till the age of 28 or something?).
English is a morphing and evolving language that is easy to use, willing to adopt new words from other languages with no hesitation. New words are added on a daily basis, phrases and colloquialisms are being updated and created all the time. Its a living, breathing language when compared to the decrepit crap that is French, with its legalistic bureaucratic behemoth – because shock bloody horror, if you allowed the language to be controlled and moved forward by the dirty unwashed masses!
PS. Ask yourself, how come there hasn’t been a descent French comedy yet using witty double entendre’s, turn of phrase etc. etc.
Edited 2008-05-03 12:56 UTC
Even if I stay very conservative, if I take the UK, Ireland and Malta’s population, they add up to about 67 millions. On the other side, taking a low 40% of Belgium’s population and that of France, I get 68 millions of people.
I used the same source you did for these numbers: Wikipedia.
To know which language is spoken where: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Union
UK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uk
Ireland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland
Malta: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malta
Belgium: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium
Languages of Belgium: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Belgium
Now could someone explain to me how this one million person difference in favor of French ends up in a 1% difference in favor of English?
Nobody?
Nevermind, I already know the answer. From the same article: “Special Eurobarometer 243” of the European Commission with the title “Europeans and their Languages”
I’ll also quote: “This is a poll, not a census. 28,694 citizens with a minimum age of 15 were asked in the then 25 member-states as well as in the then future member-states (Bulgaria, Romania) and the candidate countries (Croatia, Turkey) at the time of the survey. Only citizens, not immigrants, were asked.”
The same survey says that in a paltry five years, 9% more people are able to hold a conversation in a foreign language. As far as I’m aware, in that timeframe (2001 to 2006), no country has implemented a radically different way of teaching languages (whichever one). That is completely coherent with the fact we’re talking feeling here, not facts.
Another point is that the number of surveyed people are the same in each and every country (about a thousand people). Considering, for instance, that France’s population is close to six times the size of that of Belgium (and there are more extreme cases), I begin to doubt the value of said survey. One last point to consider is that this has been done at the behest of the European Commission, which is known for its willingness to favor English above any other language…
That said, you misunderstood me in thinking I’d favor teaching French or German in place of English. What I’d like would be for the first foreign language to be taught throughout Europe to be either Esperanto, Interlingua or some such. These are easy to learn, and don’t put any country and its citizens above the others. In addition, I feel it absolutely necessary to keep translating any and all EU’s documents in every EU’s languages. It’s the only way Europe can keep at least a semblance of Democracy.
Quite the opposite. As a Brit I can tell you the typical British person never thinks about the international penetration of English as a second language. It just happened, as if by accident. If French was in the position of English I would be only too happy to use it as a universal second language.
The problem here is not the accidental popularity of English, but the irrational national pride of some countries determined to block progress.
Aren’t you really projecting the French “wet dream” onto English speakers ?
You misread me. I didn’t say the US and UK’s people, I said the US and UK.
This translates into:
– The ruling bodies and the people whose social/professionnal circles are somewhat to them explicitely want that to be achieved.
– Although they claim indifference, the population tend to expect everybody to be able to speak English. This last is especially true with Americans, but I’ve seen it often enough with Brits as well to know it’s something pretty widely spread in the UK as well.
“Can’t the EU simply mandate a common language?”
It’s not part of the EU mandate and democracy as opposed to republic or monarchy can’t impose on it’s people from the top down , but rather the people must first mandate the EU to do so and they must vote in the favor of the application of a law on the subject.
“What’s to stop them?”
The majority of the people in the EU. It’s real easy to impose commercial and monetary changes , because it’s the property of governement. It’s another to try to impose languages most people don’t know or use or understand.
Most of those who are against translations don’t factor in that learning a new languages as a cost and that retraining all the people people into another languages is 1 trillion or more time higher then doing translations.
Good thinking, good thinking, my friend.. that would have to be German then, since it is the widest spoken language in the EU. We already tried to establish that ~60 years ago but the idea didn’t exactly fly back then..
They should borrow the technology from the United Federation of Planets. No use developing this yourselves. Either that, or just go with the obvious choice: US English.
I personally volunteer to liaise with Hoshi on this project.
US English being obvious? Here in Poland we’re usually taught British English in schools. I’d guess that’s the case too in other european countries.
Even though I’ve picked up most of the new words in last few years from TV and other media (meaning that they’re more likely to be US variations) I still insist on writing “colour” and generally prefer british spelling if I’m aware of both. They are more natural, US English spelling seems to be bastardized and not far from horrors like “how r u” and “your dumb” (given the adoption rate of the latter I wouldn’t be surprised if it became a norm in 30 years
). I’m aware that I probably do a lot of mistakes like that myself though so feel free to correct me!
If we had to pick one language I guess people would be more comfortable with european one – although that’s still very distant future (60 years? at best).
It truly is a shame that my own native language, English, has become such a world standard instead of something that would have made more sense, like Esperanto.
This idea is stupid, stop.
Let’s say, why would we have thousands of gnu/linux distros??? let’s wipe’em out!!! only Red Hat.
Boooh ya!!!
If you don’t like Dutch, GET OVER!!!
I LOVE MY MOTHER TONGUE SPANISH
No. A standard language that makes logical, gramatic, and phonetic sense, is consistent and easy to learn, and is naturally extensible in a straightforward way is not a stupid idea. People always bring up the idea of how wonderful language diversity is. But it seems to me the concept pales next to the idea of any two or more of more of the 6.5 billion human beings on this earth being able to exchange ideas, rather than everyone being balkanized into small groups who happen to be able to communicate.
The Linux distros you refer to all share source compatibility, and in that way are more demonstrative of the advantages of a common standard than of the advantages of balkanization. And they are also exceedingly top-heavy… with language packs.
BTW, coincidentally, I have started self-studying Esperanto and am finding this site quite helpful for getting started:
http://en.lernu.net/
Edit: On Ubuntu Hardy an apt-cache search for the string “language-pack”, which is hardly a comprehensive search, turns up nearly 1200 packages. Talk about wasted and redundant effort…
Edited 2008-05-02 23:24 UTC
Come on, Esperanto is a stupid idea. First of all, it is not “universal”, or easy to learn for everyone – it is hugely biased toward latin language speakers. Esperanto is much more difficult to learn if you are an english speaker of a japanese speaker than if you speak, say, italian.
So all this stuff about how it is less culturally biased is a load of tommyrot.
Secondly, 51% of the population of the EU’s 27 countries can speak english, right now. This compares to the 0.000000000000001% (or whatever it is) that can speak esperanto the language of latinate nerds.
So from a practical perspective you would have to retrain a huge population of people to speak your made up language all at once. A colossal waste of human time for billions of people. Nothing short of a brutal global totalitarian state could make esperanto a success, or ever could.
So there’s no point whinging on about it and how superior it supposedly is. It’s pointless and wrong in every way.
Languages do make logical and grammatical sense, but unfortunately, that logic is more complicated than most people care to deal with, so they just say “English is illogical and stupid! Waa waa waa”. The reality is, every feature of English has been vetted by the usage of millions of people over thousands of years. It’s all there for a reason and it serves the speakers well. A language designed by a guy with a Latin fetish is less logical and less likely to suit the needs of its speakers than any natural language. Esperanto, especially, has a number of problems.
http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven/lang/esp.html“ rel=”nofollow”>http://web.archive.org/web/20020802185046/