Europeans: Should Latin become the common language of Europe?
The EU is getting larger and larger. Communication is very important. What do you think about choosing Latin, for example, as the language of business, education and government within the European Union? Of course the individual countries would maintain their traditional languages, minority languages and dialects. It just seems that it would in the long run be easier to get things done if there was a common language. Everyone in the Union could after a generation or so be able to understand each other no matter where in the Union they were living, working or visiting. The children could begin learning Latin in the 1st grade or even preschool, like many in Scandinavia, for example, learn English at a young age.
Tags: business education, dialects, european union, language of business, learning latin, minority languages, scandinavia, traditional languages
November 21st, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Well, I study for European Professional, so we kind of discuss this every week. )) In my class most people do think that French should be the main language of the EU, because the biggest part of the EU does speak this language or a language which is about the same as French, like Spanish or Italian. They are all from the same language group.
Latin is also a language from the same group (I think) , so I agree with you, it would be very easy for everyone if they learn it at school from the beginning. It would be nice if children at least would learn the basics of the language, and of course their own language.
It would be easier to tell eachothers opinions in the EU.
For example, English is not my native language, but I hope most people understand me. So it would also be easy to use just one language in the EU.
November 21st, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Remember Esperanto? It just wouldn’t work because it isn’t practical. There are already widely common languages, namely English and rapidly growing Mandarin. Forcing dozens of nations and groups to change their language to something that barely anyone speaks anymore (it isn’t even an official language of Vatican City) would be met with loud outcry, especially to a language like Latin. Our world has evolved with thousands upon thousands of languages, and an area as large as the European Union can’t be united under one, more so with something as arcane (it became arcane well over a thousand years ago) as Latin. But hey, if the Pope called, anyone could have a conversation.
November 21st, 2009 at 11:14 pm
I’d prefer Esperanto rather than Latin. Latin is too difficult (declensions, three genders…) and people would end up going back to English. Esperanto, on the other head, is one of the easiest languages to learn and has a bit of every major European language in it, so it is equally easy for every European to learn. Latin, however, would be easier for Romance language speakers, and it wouldn’t be fair, just as English isn’t fair today. But we all know Esperanto can’t really work as a lingua franca nowadays so I’d rather stick with English.
November 21st, 2009 at 11:14 pm
By now "de facto" the common language within EU is English, I don’t understand why we should start speaking again a language that none speaks anymore apart from the Pope and some priests in their liturgies…
November 22nd, 2009 at 1:56 am
I’m for Esperanto. It’s a very practical easy-to-use language. I;ve spoken it in fifteen countries over many years. It’s certainly brought me closer to other Europeans.
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:54 am
What drives a language becoming the ‘lingua franca’ of an extensive eco-political zone (the EU) or Empire (Roman, French, German, English… whatever) is dependent on three main factors: Money, Military hegemonic policies and the language of the ruling Elite – who usually control the weapons and the money.
In the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, these three factors were very evident from two Anglophonic civilisations: the British and the Americans.
The American dominance is arguably declining. The Chinese and Indian economies are impacting on the world, agreed, but will either of their languges replace English? I don’t think so. India has hardly expressed any interest in global hegemony. While many might fear the Chinese, I don’t think they’d consider it either, not with the spectre of nuclear weaponry being kept up the sleeve by the EU, Russia and the USA! Also, Mandarin is dauntingly challenging in its ideogramatic writing and tonally-affected vocabulary… it’s a damn hard language to learn and there’d be an enormous amount of cultural resistance! [English, by contrast, while a misery to master is wonderfully tolerant of pronunciation and grammatical abuses. This is why it so rapidly became such an easily acquired 2nd language. Get 200 words useful for trading/money... and you're away!]
So… Europe will sort out its language problem by itself and for itself. If I had to predict the future, I’d go Esperanto as the best choice. It is a much more attractive option than Classical or even Vulgate Latin. Its vocabulary and grammatical constructions make it easy to learn; it arguably doesn’t favour any one nation politically; it uses the Latin alphabet, and has no ugly politicised or cultural baggage. This makes it all easy to teach. Theoretically, within one generation of comprehensive pan-EU schooling there could be as many as 50 – 100 million speakers of the language. That’s one in 8 for the EU. Put it another way; if the decision to make Esperanto the ‘lingua franca’ of the EU was agreed to in 2010, by 2030 it could well be the functioning daily official language of the EU. With the speed of the internet and global communications, concurrent with the retraction of the US economy and the rise of the EU’s, within another 20 years it could by the world’s lingua franca, replacing English.