Viewing Thread:
"One European Language?"

I'm having to do a report and language and translation within the EU. One of the ways of solving the problem of having to translate technical documents would be for eveyone to speak the same language.

What do you think of that? Would you be happy to abandon English and learn a new Euro-Language?

Or would you prefer to make everyone else speak English, as they all learn it as a second language anyway?

Failing that, do you think that all countries should keep their respective tongues and we carry on as we are at the moment?

I'm having to do a report and language and translation within the EU. One of the ways of solving the problem of having to translate technical documents would be for eveyone to speak the same language.

What do you think of that? Would you be happy to abandon English and learn a new Euro-Language?

Or would you prefer to make everyone else speak English, as they all learn it as a second language anyway?

Failing that, do you think that all countries should keep their respective tongues and we carry on as we are at the moment?

Somebody tried to make up one once

It failed miserably

Better chance of building a translator thing, like in Star Trek

A mass marketed Babel fish would be far easier on everybody.

I found that made up language in a Modern Studies book...

I took out some saying like 'hello' etc

And only talked in it for thr rest of the day

Can't remember a thing except people looking at me

L337ist wrote:
> A mass marketed Babel fish would be far easier on everybody.

Yup, but they are rubbish.

What I was trying to get at with the question was whether you'd be annoyed if someone said "Right, you have to learn a new language now. Everyone in the EU will now sound the same."

Or whether your accent/language meant something to you and you wanted to keep it?

A more fair and efficient way is for each country to learn the basics in popular languages:

English
French
Spanish
German

And you need to start them young when you are just learning English... that's what they do in other countries... not start when you're 12 and struggle.

It would never work... very few people could just learn a language like that.

Ah, but we're not looking at it in terms of basics. I have to look at it in the context of technical documentation which has a lot of jargon included in it.

For that kind of thing, automated translators are a bit poo, and it's easy to misinterpret it when it's translated straight from, say, English in to French.

We should just stay as we are I guess but put more emphasis on educated different languages to kids

Can't see any other way unless a super Star Trek thing

Make them all speak English.

But I know they would be asking the same thing and then they would be saying

"Argh, maken themenen speake Allemagne!"

"Ah, oui oui, mon froggy est still alivé! They moost parle en Francais!"

"Jurgen splurgen flargen speaken en Sveeeden"

"vbjkb hijnb fb eihe fnarrr"

"They must-a speaky like-a its-a meeee, Italiano"

Bah

Yes, I would be annoyed.

As would almost everyone. It's too late to implement a universal language, which would invariably be English as it's the most widely spoken one.

Although if we all sounded the same singing and talking with accents would lose their effect.