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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Languages in the EC
Message-ID: <D3nF6z.2q7@spss.com>
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Organization: SPSS Inc
References: <3h3ci5$qc8@agate.berkeley.edu> <elnaD3KB2I.6uv@netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 21:18:34 GMT
Lines: 34

In article <elnaD3KB2I.6uv@netcom.com>,
Esperanto League N America <elna@netcom.com> wrote:
>coby@euler.Berkeley.EDU (Coby (Jacob) Lubliner) writes:
>>English has the distinction of being the Germanic language with the
>>largest proportion of Romance elements.  On that basis alone it
>>would qualify as the ideal superlanguage for the EU.
>>
>This is a clever argument, but it ignores the obvious political problems
>attached to any national language. Other nations will not allow any nation
>(or tribe, religion, etc) to have this kind of built-in advantage. For 
>top-level political debate to occur only in a language which is native to
>some, but secondary to others, cannot be acceptable.
>
>Esperanto has the distinction of being the Romance language with the 
>largest proportion of Germanic elements. It is also politically neutral 
>and planned to be easy to learn. On these bases together it qualifies as
>the ideal international language for the EU and elsewhere.

If practical or political arguments against English are being entertained,
they must be entertained against Esperanto as well.  Politically, it is
doubtful that Esperanto is acceptable; it hasn't been for a hundred years,
and no reasons have been given why this will change (that's "will", not
a "should").  Practically, the number of teachers, texts, software, signage,
etc. place Esperanto low in the running among European languages.  And 
Esperanto has never been used as a language of legal administration,
and probably fairly rarely in business negotiations, news reporting, or
scientific research; it will be lacking terms, phrases, common legal
understanding, and fluent speakers in these areas.

The language with the best claim to be a working language for the EU is
German, with the most native speakers.  German alone would probably not
be practically or politically feasible, so add the next language down
the list, French.  English is important globally, but in Europe it's
just another minority language.
