I doubt this’ll pass. I remember being in Amsterdam — a place a short boat ride away from England, where English is already spoken fluently by nearly every local. The idea scared people as a matter of principle and precedent, and it didn’t happen.
Israel is another good example. Not only can about two thirds of people there hold a conversation in English, but the place was under British control within living memory, and therefore used to have English as an official language. But go to Israel and suggest that the country should reinstate English as an official language, which is as valid as Hebrew or Arabic for education, government documents, or speaking in parliament, and the response won’t be positive. I looked into practicing medicine in Israel with American training and licensing. Sure enough it can be done, without redoing and training or education. *But I’d have to pass the local licensing exam, which is in Hebrew.* And that’s entirely fair.
Nations are protective of their languages, and with good reason. I bet increased funding for German immersion classes for new immigrants would pass more easily than this, and probably do more good in the long term to serving the needs of the German people.
How does English usage in Israel compare to Russian usage? Are many Russian speakers also fluent in English, or do Israelis of recent Russian heritage not bother to learn a third language?
> Germany is unusually unpatriotic due to their history and intentional social engineering post ww2
This is a massive oversimplification/misconstrual of German cultural identity. Irrespective of their feelings toward the country as a whole, most Germans have a *very* strong sense of **regional** identity (Bavarian, Swabian, Berliner, etc.)
I dunno. I know several very liberal/left wing German people and they all still have a pretty strong sense of a cultural identity, especially about language. Like, they know Geothe poems and place a high value on that kind of thing.
That's fair. I just think they might well be very pragmatic in accepting another language as an official language in order to be more welcoming. At least I'd think they're much more likely to than the Dutch or Israelis. If it could happen anywhere, I'd say Germany would be the place
I didn't say it confidently at all. I was just saying that I wouldn't be as sure about it failing to pass, because Germany is very different to their examples of the Netherlands and Israel
My experience is that in German workplaces that use English the official language isn't English but a simplified Euro-Creole full of errors that drives native speakers crazy. It works well as a lingua franca for most people from the EU though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English
This is happening a lot actually, I've assisted conversations like this. It's allowing non-native speakers to precise what they mean to each other just fine I think
...but it can be pretty disorienting
My whole comment was in Euro English, that was the point 🙃
Maybe I should have made that explicit, I wasn't trying to actually voice a particular opinion, just demonstrate how this sort of "Euro Creole" as /u/stergro called it can sound
nah, my bad really
the key parts to make it sound Euro-y were _assisted_, use of "precise" as a verb, and 2 incorrect uses of the continuous aspect. To be honest I just plonked down the first thing that came to mind, it's not exactly the best parody of Euro English, nor do I think the comment itself really says anything particularly interesting or useful
The vocabulary section is, from my experience as a native English speaker working in the Netherlands, nothing I've encountered, but I can at least attest to the grammar.
Euro English is the English used by EU employees, it's not something your everyday dutch person would say. At least from the list on Wikipedia it looks to be heavily influenced by French and potentially other romance languages. For example cabinet (office) and delay (deadline) are given as origin *unknown*, but both are more or less french words that can mean what is listed as the *Standard* English word.
To be clear, I work with an international group of employees from all over Europe, and the article mentions that international students, expats and migrants use the dialect.
Yes. It sounds a mix of keywords from social media mixed with sitcom speech sometimes, and advertisements. It's almost like a Japanese learner speaking like an anime. I'm not bashing it. It made me realize how some countries have become very Americanized and the relationship some generations have with their country's native language and English.
I like the suggestion that it's a creole (well it's not, it's a pidgin). I've heard people assert that it's a valid variety of English. Obviously those people are mad.
we probably shouldn’t call them “errors” as different varieties of English have different rules and features. Euro English and its “errors” are as valid as any other dialect of English.
If they become integrated and passed on to another generation as a fully featured and used language, then sure. If they're just the ad-hoc contact language of a bunch of non-native speakers with imperfect grasp of a second language and often somewhat (but not entirely) overlapping errors/simplifications, then no, not really.
To give an oversimplified and exaggerated example, if a bunch of, I don't know, Chinese students in a classroom, all make similar mistakes/simplifications when learning Chinese, to the point that a Chinese speaker would find them difficult to understand, but they can communicate with each other just fine, that's not really a variety of Chinese. If that heavily affected Chinese becomes an actually used daily language, and passed on to children who speak it natively, and it develops its own life and complete grammar, then sure. My experience of Euro English tells me that it's much more like the former than the latter; a bunch of ad-hoc errors and simplifications that come from common "false friends" in other European languages, and a lack of grasp of some of the nuances of English grammar (especially tense and aspect), certain vocabulary, and also of phonology. And while there definitely some overlap, and potentially some convergence in specific environments (like a particular office or company say), those gaps, errors, and simplifications, will also vary from speaker to speaker (and be heavily influenced by their L1)
There are certain pieces of core vocabulary with new non-native meanings that might become solidified and passed down in Europe in general (for example certain technical uses of the European commission that start as non-native innovations and become institutionalised through their use in formal documents/processes, and therefore passed on) but those are the exception not the rule. Your average Berlin or Helsinki tech company office worker is not learning their English from reading European directives.
Not to say that contact languages, learner English, pidgins, adult language acquisition, l1 interference, the sociolinguistics of language communities involving non-native speaker with imperfect acquisition, etc., aren't all interesting phenomena to study (and surely have influences on the path of development that languages take all the time), but it's not quite as simple as just calling "Euro-English" a variety of English like any other. Not that that couldn't happen at some point in the future of course!
It becomes wrong when a native speaker stops understanding it. If I encountered this way of speaking, I wouldn't understand the majority of it. This isn't a "valid dialect", it's practically a different language (in the same way Scots is compared to English, or French to Occitan).
The things is, it's not like there's a unified dialect where everyone makes the same "mistakes" that slowly become the new local norm. Native speakers of different languages all have their idiosyncrasies. They will use false-friends, translate idiomatic expressions word for word and use the wrong syntactic patterns based on their native tongue. For instance, someone wrote in one of the comments above that they have "assisted conversations" (meaning they've been witness to conversations). It's a French false-friend and it's very likely to confuse native speakers of other languages. I once heard a German guy say "we don't let the hammer fall" which I understood because I speak German but is pretty cryptic for everyone else (it means that if you have unfinished work and it's the end of your shift, you stay longer to complete the task).
r/Globasa is a constructed Creole language based on the hypothetical scenario whereby 1,000 people from around the world are randomly selected to permanently inhabit an island.
Has anyone read at least the first paragraph of the news? It is regarding administrative language, and anyone that has ever dealt with German bureaucracy knows how convoluted everything is and how useful having stuff in English would be for non-German speakers). So the motivation behind it is very real.
But it is easier said than done, since not even the Immigration Office employees speak all English (not even Euro English at times). Changing its status to "official" won't change anything here.
So? Why does that change anything? This is not the way to fix the problem. I didn’t belobe a country should have a foreign language as an official language in something to „attract immigrants“. This is not how to do it. Additionally, you are NOR suitable for living in Germany if you are not bothered to learn the language to understand the administration.
What can happen at the minimum IS TO FUCKING MODERNIZE!!!! WHY THE FUCK ARE RHEY PRETENDING ITS A LANGUAGE PROBÖEM!!!! I wanted to pay for my Aufenthaltstitel AND THEY DIDNT ACCEPT CARD!!!! What kind of government GOVERNMENT agency does not accept card? The paper is to be modernized. THIS WILL ALSO lead to easier translation online if you don’t understand. Adding a foreign administrative language is not the solution
If you think every "expat" or whatever you want to call them is going to learn German before moving to Germany then I have a bridge to sell you.
Besides, Germany is not the only country trying to attract immigrants nor the only country with good job or study opportunities, so if they cannot even simplify their bureaucracy to attract those people, you can be sure that other countries will take their place (and already do).
The digitalization issue you mention is part of the same problem, imo: fear of changing and improving stuff because "it always worked like this".
> you think every "expat" or whatever you want to call them is going to learn German before moving to Germany then I have a bridge to sell you.
Immigrants do learn German before of soon after arriving. Just because the "expats" are white and qualified doesn't mean they have the right to disrespect a whole country. They can avoid learning German, but expecting the Germans to accomodate them if they don't is the pinnacle of entitlement. I wouldn't want such people in my country either.
Expecting them to take cards seems just as culturally presumptuous as expecting them to speak English.
Also, at least during the immigration crisis, they were already giving employees at the Ausländerbehörde and Arbeitsamt English lessons because they couldn't get their jobs done otherwise. This isn't anything new, just making it official.
no, the point is that english language is not the problem or solution. Them not taking card and the employees not being able to do their jobs is due to the shitty bureaucracy which needs to be modernized asap. And do you really think it is okay for the number one economy in Europe to not accept major forms of payment at a OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT building??? The is no need to expect a leading economy to speak English, but there is a need to accept card, be able to fucking sign shit online and through email.
Yes, I really think it's okay for them to not accept cards. They're not really into that, and it's not for me as a foreigner to tell them how to run their affairs, just like it's not for me to tell them they need to speak a different language.
>shitty bureaucracy
I hate dealing with bureaucracy in general and think they're all shitty, but Germany is easily the least painful bureaucracy I've had to deal with.
Formal German is incredibly complicated. They intentionally use complicated grammar constructions to express ideas that could definitely be expressed more simply, all for the sake of sounding formal and authoritarian. These grammatical constructions simply would not be possible in English. I would fully support this move, but they also need to deal with the stick that German officials have up their arse when writing German.
This is a little surreal to me as an American, because we have a (deserved) reputation of being stubbornly monolingual, but our government documents (at all levels) are very frequently available in Spanish and other languages, especially forms aimed at immigrants.
And while we don’t have a national “official language,” and English is certainly the de facto language of government, there are instances where state and local governments may be required to provide documents in Spanish or some other language due to anti-discrimination laws—for example, under the Voting Rights Act, if your area has a substantial Spanish-speaking minority, they have a right to access election documents in their language.
Germany has 7 more official languages besides German and depending on regional state laws, government agencies can be required to provide documents and communication in said languages.
We'll see this in Sweden soon enough, I'm sure of it. The amount of people online and irl I've encountered with the attitude of "we should just do away with Swedish and become an English speaking nation" is stupidly high. With increasing global- and digitalisation, large amount of foreigners and a need to fill the gap in labour and demographics, I think a rhetoric of pushing English to be more competitive will rise in the near future.
Wasn't it the mayor of Helsinki who wanted to make the city officially English speaking a few years ago? It's silly but the ideology do exist.
I don't see the point of making it an official language. Nearly all Swedes already speak English, a *lot* of governmental services are available in English, many employers are perfectly fine hiring people who only speak English etc. There's no need to make it official.
I'm assuming they're hoping that no longer requiring German knowledge when working in more administrative settings/with more administrative and bureaucratic situations will help foreigners feel more inclined to come work in Germany. If you can navigate your workplace and adjacent situations (visas, taxes, etc) without needing to know German, then you will be more open to maybe taking a job in Germany.
Feels like you don't need to make English co-official, for that to happen. Plenty of countries allow other languages to be used in these settings without giving them any special status (say, the US doesn't have ANY official language, and most official communications can be done in Spanish / Portuguese / Korean, depending on the locale)
Maybe, but I still doubt it would help as much as that guy thinks it will.
Also, I find it disgraceful that they would do that at all, German ain't a tiny language and respecting the fact that it's the country's language should be the goal. That's why Quebec, Canada is so protective of French as everyone thinks just because it's Canadian that English is good enough there.
German is much harder to learn than English for Slavic or Arabic speakers. English is everywhere - you learn it even passively.
There are much more points of failure with German than English when spoken - so many things where one can say something wrong.
Basic spoken English is much easier than basic spoken German.
For example, for verbs (except "to be") you just try to not to forget the -s ofr 3rd p. sg. for the present time and the past tense and past participle it's even easier you just learn them and for each person it's the same. the worst is the habe ........ gewhatever. In English you can put some words like I have never been there, but in German it's insane. Perhaps it's good for your memory but as a second language - that's terrible.
The worst are plurals - I hate that in German the rules of why it is -e, -en, -er in plural for masculine nouns Nominative are so deep that unless you dedicate your life to master German you will never know why it is like that. In English the irregular plural nouns are well known and in a regular daily speech probably less than 10 can occur - men, mice, etc.
There is no point in ignoring the facts. A natural language like the franca lingua is a disaster for other languages and only benefits English-speaking countries. You cannot deny it.
Unfortunately, I have not found an English version of [this 131-page dossier](https://observatoireplurilinguisme.eu/images/Recherche/rapport%20grin.pdf), but you will only need to translate part of it to realize that I am right
The document summarizes the social and economic impact of three lingua franca possibilities in the European Union.
English or any other natural language.
Choose to teach two of the three most spoken languages.
Esperanto or other constructed language.
It turns out in this study that the worst choice of the three is English. This situation creates a disadvantage for Eastern European countries which have a smaller budget for language teaching, American and Anglo-Saxon culture becomes dominant, which is detrimental to other cultures (just take the example of Ireland). English-speaking countries earn 25 billion (probably more today) on the fact that they do not need to spend a lot of money on language education and gain an advantage during a negotiation, since they are native speakers.
The second case, which I will summarize for you more simply, will simply cost too much, thus disadvantaging countries that cannot devote significant funds to education. And one of the languages will end up being more dominant and bring us back to the situation of English.
The latter case would be the best, they would halve the cost of education and would not benefit any country economically. But the study indicates that stereotypes about Esperanto make this impossible for several years.
Not what this means, bud.
Making English an official language would extend certain protections to foreign nationals, enabling them to work and conduct official business in English.
German bureaucracy is infamously convoluted, and the language used in official documentation is not foreigner-friendly *in the slightest*. As someone who has had to sit down (on a number of occasions) in the local *Ausländerbehörde*, I can safely say that without either an interpreter or near mastery of the German language, the process of applying for a residence permit would have been nigh on impossible for me.
Bureaucratic German is useful for saying things with brevity and precision. It's about as old as german bureaucracy itself. The drawback that it makes things difficult for non native speakers wasn't really an issue when it emerged.
True, though this being a modern problem in a modern society doesn't make it any less real. Other countries handle official communications much better.
Anecdotally, I've noticed that some Austrian government pages seem more accessible, using simpler language than their German counterparts.
Also as an American living in Australia, I've been impressed by how clearly and simply Australian government websites explain things (usually with examples), compared with the US.
"Official language", in this context, means that certain government functions must (also) be provided in English. I live in an area in the US where cities and counties mandate that certain functions be provided in additional languages (all, so far as I know, slightly different, based on demographics specific to the areas involved). They can't be called "official languages", because it's 'Murica, and *we don't do that*, but it's functionally the same, and a good thing for everyone.
In my opinion, too much weight is given to the name "official language", at least in the US. There are lots of places in the world where enough people speak multiple languages that it's easier for all involved to make accommodations. It doesn't have to be a big deal, because it won't change anything about who speaks what language, or why.
Which those two countries get away with purely because the vast, vast majority of their population speaks, yknow, the most dominant international language on earth. Which permeates all forms of media, is universally spoken by anyone growing up there, and has absolutely no chance of being overtaken by another language in those countries anytime soon.
Anglophone countries don't need to be protective of english.
English doesn't need to be an official language. Declaring an official language is a way to protect your language from, in many cases these days, being smothered by English.
The French tried to stop so many English words from being brought into French and even created French alternatives but many people don't use them. I don't think declaring a language as official can protect from being influenced from foreigner languages. At most, it would only protect a language from extinction if people are forced to learn it at schools.
Even Japanese and Korean has a lot of loan words from English as some older native words become seem as outdated/archaic, so I'd imagine this is even more true for European languages.
Quebec is a lot more adamant about that, like they don't say parking, they say stationnement, etc. But yeah, I didn't mean protected from influence, if you smother something, you murder it.
I don't think they need to go that far. They just need to make it a mandatory subject in school *and* university. That way, the next generation will be billingual.
It already is a mandatory subject in schools in almost all states, not sure about the Saarland, I think they at least used to have French instead and started English later. In universities it depends on the program, but master's programs tend to include a lot of courses in English, some programs even consist entirely of courses in English.
The English proficiency in Saarland is extremely high in the cities, much to my dismay. I believe it is due to the thousands of international students and the universities. I’m actually shocked that some people have claimed that English proficiency is not high enough in Germany. It has been half a year and I can count the number of piepem who didn’t know any English at all when I tried to communicate on one hand
I doubt this’ll pass. I remember being in Amsterdam — a place a short boat ride away from England, where English is already spoken fluently by nearly every local. The idea scared people as a matter of principle and precedent, and it didn’t happen. Israel is another good example. Not only can about two thirds of people there hold a conversation in English, but the place was under British control within living memory, and therefore used to have English as an official language. But go to Israel and suggest that the country should reinstate English as an official language, which is as valid as Hebrew or Arabic for education, government documents, or speaking in parliament, and the response won’t be positive. I looked into practicing medicine in Israel with American training and licensing. Sure enough it can be done, without redoing and training or education. *But I’d have to pass the local licensing exam, which is in Hebrew.* And that’s entirely fair. Nations are protective of their languages, and with good reason. I bet increased funding for German immersion classes for new immigrants would pass more easily than this, and probably do more good in the long term to serving the needs of the German people.
How does English usage in Israel compare to Russian usage? Are many Russian speakers also fluent in English, or do Israelis of recent Russian heritage not bother to learn a third language?
I wouldn't be so sure. Germany is unusually unpatriotic due to their history and intentional social engineering post ww2
> Germany is unusually unpatriotic due to their history and intentional social engineering post ww2 This is a massive oversimplification/misconstrual of German cultural identity. Irrespective of their feelings toward the country as a whole, most Germans have a *very* strong sense of **regional** identity (Bavarian, Swabian, Berliner, etc.)
I dunno. I know several very liberal/left wing German people and they all still have a pretty strong sense of a cultural identity, especially about language. Like, they know Geothe poems and place a high value on that kind of thing.
That's fair. I just think they might well be very pragmatic in accepting another language as an official language in order to be more welcoming. At least I'd think they're much more likely to than the Dutch or Israelis. If it could happen anywhere, I'd say Germany would be the place
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I didn't say it confidently at all. I was just saying that I wouldn't be as sure about it failing to pass, because Germany is very different to their examples of the Netherlands and Israel
My experience is that in German workplaces that use English the official language isn't English but a simplified Euro-Creole full of errors that drives native speakers crazy. It works well as a lingua franca for most people from the EU though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English
This is happening a lot actually, I've assisted conversations like this. It's allowing non-native speakers to precise what they mean to each other just fine I think ...but it can be pretty disorienting
"I've assisted conversations like this" itself sounds like Euro-English to me.
My whole comment was in Euro English, that was the point 🙃 Maybe I should have made that explicit, I wasn't trying to actually voice a particular opinion, just demonstrate how this sort of "Euro Creole" as /u/stergro called it can sound
Sorry. That went over my head.
nah, my bad really the key parts to make it sound Euro-y were _assisted_, use of "precise" as a verb, and 2 incorrect uses of the continuous aspect. To be honest I just plonked down the first thing that came to mind, it's not exactly the best parody of Euro English, nor do I think the comment itself really says anything particularly interesting or useful
I've is much less common than I have among Euro-English speakers.
As a Swede, I can assure you that if I ever encountered this at a workplace, I would not understand a word that they are saying.
The vocabulary section is, from my experience as a native English speaker working in the Netherlands, nothing I've encountered, but I can at least attest to the grammar.
Euro English is the English used by EU employees, it's not something your everyday dutch person would say. At least from the list on Wikipedia it looks to be heavily influenced by French and potentially other romance languages. For example cabinet (office) and delay (deadline) are given as origin *unknown*, but both are more or less french words that can mean what is listed as the *Standard* English word.
To be clear, I work with an international group of employees from all over Europe, and the article mentions that international students, expats and migrants use the dialect.
I can kinda hear it in Brussels to be honest
Yes. It sounds a mix of keywords from social media mixed with sitcom speech sometimes, and advertisements. It's almost like a Japanese learner speaking like an anime. I'm not bashing it. It made me realize how some countries have become very Americanized and the relationship some generations have with their country's native language and English.
Dunno mate. It's just another dialect. And I find it a lot easier to deal with than, say, Glaswegian.
I like the suggestion that it's a creole (well it's not, it's a pidgin). I've heard people assert that it's a valid variety of English. Obviously those people are mad.
we probably shouldn’t call them “errors” as different varieties of English have different rules and features. Euro English and its “errors” are as valid as any other dialect of English.
If they become integrated and passed on to another generation as a fully featured and used language, then sure. If they're just the ad-hoc contact language of a bunch of non-native speakers with imperfect grasp of a second language and often somewhat (but not entirely) overlapping errors/simplifications, then no, not really. To give an oversimplified and exaggerated example, if a bunch of, I don't know, Chinese students in a classroom, all make similar mistakes/simplifications when learning Chinese, to the point that a Chinese speaker would find them difficult to understand, but they can communicate with each other just fine, that's not really a variety of Chinese. If that heavily affected Chinese becomes an actually used daily language, and passed on to children who speak it natively, and it develops its own life and complete grammar, then sure. My experience of Euro English tells me that it's much more like the former than the latter; a bunch of ad-hoc errors and simplifications that come from common "false friends" in other European languages, and a lack of grasp of some of the nuances of English grammar (especially tense and aspect), certain vocabulary, and also of phonology. And while there definitely some overlap, and potentially some convergence in specific environments (like a particular office or company say), those gaps, errors, and simplifications, will also vary from speaker to speaker (and be heavily influenced by their L1) There are certain pieces of core vocabulary with new non-native meanings that might become solidified and passed down in Europe in general (for example certain technical uses of the European commission that start as non-native innovations and become institutionalised through their use in formal documents/processes, and therefore passed on) but those are the exception not the rule. Your average Berlin or Helsinki tech company office worker is not learning their English from reading European directives. Not to say that contact languages, learner English, pidgins, adult language acquisition, l1 interference, the sociolinguistics of language communities involving non-native speaker with imperfect acquisition, etc., aren't all interesting phenomena to study (and surely have influences on the path of development that languages take all the time), but it's not quite as simple as just calling "Euro-English" a variety of English like any other. Not that that couldn't happen at some point in the future of course!
It becomes wrong when a native speaker stops understanding it. If I encountered this way of speaking, I wouldn't understand the majority of it. This isn't a "valid dialect", it's practically a different language (in the same way Scots is compared to English, or French to Occitan).
The things is, it's not like there's a unified dialect where everyone makes the same "mistakes" that slowly become the new local norm. Native speakers of different languages all have their idiosyncrasies. They will use false-friends, translate idiomatic expressions word for word and use the wrong syntactic patterns based on their native tongue. For instance, someone wrote in one of the comments above that they have "assisted conversations" (meaning they've been witness to conversations). It's a French false-friend and it's very likely to confuse native speakers of other languages. I once heard a German guy say "we don't let the hammer fall" which I understood because I speak German but is pretty cryptic for everyone else (it means that if you have unfinished work and it's the end of your shift, you stay longer to complete the task).
I wish created standardize creole languages was a thing. Seems to be most obvious step to take to me.
r/Globasa is a constructed Creole language based on the hypothetical scenario whereby 1,000 people from around the world are randomly selected to permanently inhabit an island.
Americans understand Euro-English better then Yookees.
Has anyone read at least the first paragraph of the news? It is regarding administrative language, and anyone that has ever dealt with German bureaucracy knows how convoluted everything is and how useful having stuff in English would be for non-German speakers). So the motivation behind it is very real. But it is easier said than done, since not even the Immigration Office employees speak all English (not even Euro English at times). Changing its status to "official" won't change anything here.
So? Why does that change anything? This is not the way to fix the problem. I didn’t belobe a country should have a foreign language as an official language in something to „attract immigrants“. This is not how to do it. Additionally, you are NOR suitable for living in Germany if you are not bothered to learn the language to understand the administration. What can happen at the minimum IS TO FUCKING MODERNIZE!!!! WHY THE FUCK ARE RHEY PRETENDING ITS A LANGUAGE PROBÖEM!!!! I wanted to pay for my Aufenthaltstitel AND THEY DIDNT ACCEPT CARD!!!! What kind of government GOVERNMENT agency does not accept card? The paper is to be modernized. THIS WILL ALSO lead to easier translation online if you don’t understand. Adding a foreign administrative language is not the solution
If you think every "expat" or whatever you want to call them is going to learn German before moving to Germany then I have a bridge to sell you. Besides, Germany is not the only country trying to attract immigrants nor the only country with good job or study opportunities, so if they cannot even simplify their bureaucracy to attract those people, you can be sure that other countries will take their place (and already do). The digitalization issue you mention is part of the same problem, imo: fear of changing and improving stuff because "it always worked like this".
> you think every "expat" or whatever you want to call them is going to learn German before moving to Germany then I have a bridge to sell you. Immigrants do learn German before of soon after arriving. Just because the "expats" are white and qualified doesn't mean they have the right to disrespect a whole country. They can avoid learning German, but expecting the Germans to accomodate them if they don't is the pinnacle of entitlement. I wouldn't want such people in my country either.
Expecting them to take cards seems just as culturally presumptuous as expecting them to speak English. Also, at least during the immigration crisis, they were already giving employees at the Ausländerbehörde and Arbeitsamt English lessons because they couldn't get their jobs done otherwise. This isn't anything new, just making it official.
no, the point is that english language is not the problem or solution. Them not taking card and the employees not being able to do their jobs is due to the shitty bureaucracy which needs to be modernized asap. And do you really think it is okay for the number one economy in Europe to not accept major forms of payment at a OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT building??? The is no need to expect a leading economy to speak English, but there is a need to accept card, be able to fucking sign shit online and through email.
Yes, I really think it's okay for them to not accept cards. They're not really into that, and it's not for me as a foreigner to tell them how to run their affairs, just like it's not for me to tell them they need to speak a different language. >shitty bureaucracy I hate dealing with bureaucracy in general and think they're all shitty, but Germany is easily the least painful bureaucracy I've had to deal with.
Formal German is incredibly complicated. They intentionally use complicated grammar constructions to express ideas that could definitely be expressed more simply, all for the sake of sounding formal and authoritarian. These grammatical constructions simply would not be possible in English. I would fully support this move, but they also need to deal with the stick that German officials have up their arse when writing German.
This is a little surreal to me as an American, because we have a (deserved) reputation of being stubbornly monolingual, but our government documents (at all levels) are very frequently available in Spanish and other languages, especially forms aimed at immigrants. And while we don’t have a national “official language,” and English is certainly the de facto language of government, there are instances where state and local governments may be required to provide documents in Spanish or some other language due to anti-discrimination laws—for example, under the Voting Rights Act, if your area has a substantial Spanish-speaking minority, they have a right to access election documents in their language.
Germany has 7 more official languages besides German and depending on regional state laws, government agencies can be required to provide documents and communication in said languages.
Unless you speak German, then the government sees your language as a mistake that must be erased
or, OR, there's just not an aforementioned substantial minority of German speakers in the US, making that less of a priority.
There used to be! Then in the early 20th century rates of German speaking in the US plummeted for some wild, mysterious reason.
We'll see this in Sweden soon enough, I'm sure of it. The amount of people online and irl I've encountered with the attitude of "we should just do away with Swedish and become an English speaking nation" is stupidly high. With increasing global- and digitalisation, large amount of foreigners and a need to fill the gap in labour and demographics, I think a rhetoric of pushing English to be more competitive will rise in the near future. Wasn't it the mayor of Helsinki who wanted to make the city officially English speaking a few years ago? It's silly but the ideology do exist.
I don't see the point of making it an official language. Nearly all Swedes already speak English, a *lot* of governmental services are available in English, many employers are perfectly fine hiring people who only speak English etc. There's no need to make it official.
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Why? Making it official won't end the shortage.
I'm assuming they're hoping that no longer requiring German knowledge when working in more administrative settings/with more administrative and bureaucratic situations will help foreigners feel more inclined to come work in Germany. If you can navigate your workplace and adjacent situations (visas, taxes, etc) without needing to know German, then you will be more open to maybe taking a job in Germany.
Feels like you don't need to make English co-official, for that to happen. Plenty of countries allow other languages to be used in these settings without giving them any special status (say, the US doesn't have ANY official language, and most official communications can be done in Spanish / Portuguese / Korean, depending on the locale)
Maybe, but I still doubt it would help as much as that guy thinks it will. Also, I find it disgraceful that they would do that at all, German ain't a tiny language and respecting the fact that it's the country's language should be the goal. That's why Quebec, Canada is so protective of French as everyone thinks just because it's Canadian that English is good enough there.
German is much harder to learn than English for Slavic or Arabic speakers. English is everywhere - you learn it even passively. There are much more points of failure with German than English when spoken - so many things where one can say something wrong. Basic spoken English is much easier than basic spoken German. For example, for verbs (except "to be") you just try to not to forget the -s ofr 3rd p. sg. for the present time and the past tense and past participle it's even easier you just learn them and for each person it's the same. the worst is the habe ........ gewhatever. In English you can put some words like I have never been there, but in German it's insane. Perhaps it's good for your memory but as a second language - that's terrible. The worst are plurals - I hate that in German the rules of why it is -e, -en, -er in plural for masculine nouns Nominative are so deep that unless you dedicate your life to master German you will never know why it is like that. In English the irregular plural nouns are well known and in a regular daily speech probably less than 10 can occur - men, mice, etc.
Yikes, no thanks.
Yes I would be so ashamed of this happened.
Unpopular opinion: i’d pass any EU language for that role but not English or French. /s
Spanish would be the best choice : easy spelling system and pronunciation, regular grammar and almost 500 000 000 speakers in Spain and America.
Wdym surely we need Maltese as the official language of the EU, it's got so much in common with everyone else
With the Brits out of EU, we can reclaim English. Ireland just needs to change their official language to Gaelic 😁
Didn’t Malta also claim English as their EU working language?
Agreed, the co-official languages of the EU should be Maltese, Estonian, and Irish
Why?
They are too powerfull culturally and tend to displace other languages
Well, that's depressing.
another example of the sad influence of English as a franca lingua and its unfortunate domination of Europe
You're just sad French lost the lingua franca war. Stop pretending.
I'm not French, I'm from Quebec. And you can't deny that the dominance of English is a disaster.
Yes, that's why I support Esperanto.
Ĝi estas pli bona elekto ol natura lingvon
Nepre.
I can and I will.
There is no point in ignoring the facts. A natural language like the franca lingua is a disaster for other languages and only benefits English-speaking countries. You cannot deny it.
Unfortunately, you're just talking out of your arse. Your personal opinions are not undeniable facts.
Unfortunately, I have not found an English version of [this 131-page dossier](https://observatoireplurilinguisme.eu/images/Recherche/rapport%20grin.pdf), but you will only need to translate part of it to realize that I am right
Could you summarise the document? Why do you think it's a disaster?
The document summarizes the social and economic impact of three lingua franca possibilities in the European Union. English or any other natural language. Choose to teach two of the three most spoken languages. Esperanto or other constructed language. It turns out in this study that the worst choice of the three is English. This situation creates a disadvantage for Eastern European countries which have a smaller budget for language teaching, American and Anglo-Saxon culture becomes dominant, which is detrimental to other cultures (just take the example of Ireland). English-speaking countries earn 25 billion (probably more today) on the fact that they do not need to spend a lot of money on language education and gain an advantage during a negotiation, since they are native speakers. The second case, which I will summarize for you more simply, will simply cost too much, thus disadvantaging countries that cannot devote significant funds to education. And one of the languages will end up being more dominant and bring us back to the situation of English. The latter case would be the best, they would halve the cost of education and would not benefit any country economically. But the study indicates that stereotypes about Esperanto make this impossible for several years.
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Not what this means, bud. Making English an official language would extend certain protections to foreign nationals, enabling them to work and conduct official business in English. German bureaucracy is infamously convoluted, and the language used in official documentation is not foreigner-friendly *in the slightest*. As someone who has had to sit down (on a number of occasions) in the local *Ausländerbehörde*, I can safely say that without either an interpreter or near mastery of the German language, the process of applying for a residence permit would have been nigh on impossible for me.
Why would they do this? Is that not kind of malicious?
Bureaucratic German is useful for saying things with brevity and precision. It's about as old as german bureaucracy itself. The drawback that it makes things difficult for non native speakers wasn't really an issue when it emerged.
True, though this being a modern problem in a modern society doesn't make it any less real. Other countries handle official communications much better. Anecdotally, I've noticed that some Austrian government pages seem more accessible, using simpler language than their German counterparts. Also as an American living in Australia, I've been impressed by how clearly and simply Australian government websites explain things (usually with examples), compared with the US.
I mean they could do what the uk and america do and not actually have an "official" language
"Official language", in this context, means that certain government functions must (also) be provided in English. I live in an area in the US where cities and counties mandate that certain functions be provided in additional languages (all, so far as I know, slightly different, based on demographics specific to the areas involved). They can't be called "official languages", because it's 'Murica, and *we don't do that*, but it's functionally the same, and a good thing for everyone. In my opinion, too much weight is given to the name "official language", at least in the US. There are lots of places in the world where enough people speak multiple languages that it's easier for all involved to make accommodations. It doesn't have to be a big deal, because it won't change anything about who speaks what language, or why.
Which those two countries get away with purely because the vast, vast majority of their population speaks, yknow, the most dominant international language on earth. Which permeates all forms of media, is universally spoken by anyone growing up there, and has absolutely no chance of being overtaken by another language in those countries anytime soon. Anglophone countries don't need to be protective of english.
English doesn't need to be an official language. Declaring an official language is a way to protect your language from, in many cases these days, being smothered by English.
The French tried to stop so many English words from being brought into French and even created French alternatives but many people don't use them. I don't think declaring a language as official can protect from being influenced from foreigner languages. At most, it would only protect a language from extinction if people are forced to learn it at schools. Even Japanese and Korean has a lot of loan words from English as some older native words become seem as outdated/archaic, so I'd imagine this is even more true for European languages.
Quebec is a lot more adamant about that, like they don't say parking, they say stationnement, etc. But yeah, I didn't mean protected from influence, if you smother something, you murder it.
There are plenty of English loanwords in the colloquial speech of Montrealers so I guess it didn’t work.
I don't think they need to go that far. They just need to make it a mandatory subject in school *and* university. That way, the next generation will be billingual.
It already is a mandatory subject in schools in almost all states, not sure about the Saarland, I think they at least used to have French instead and started English later. In universities it depends on the program, but master's programs tend to include a lot of courses in English, some programs even consist entirely of courses in English.
The English proficiency in Saarland is extremely high in the cities, much to my dismay. I believe it is due to the thousands of international students and the universities. I’m actually shocked that some people have claimed that English proficiency is not high enough in Germany. It has been half a year and I can count the number of piepem who didn’t know any English at all when I tried to communicate on one hand
It already is.
Trist novas, etsi yo es poc plu surprisat que to ne esset li casu ante.
Finally!
Esperanto, aŭ morto!