Talk:English as a lingua franca for Europe

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Contents 1 Removal of NPOV tag 2 VfD 3 Hello, I wrote the original article 4 Individual inaccuracies and correction 4.1 Counting 5 Cultural Difficulties 6 Comparison with German 7 Merge into Euro English 8 Status 9 There is No Linguistic Authority for English 10 Aren't These Concerns Overrated? 11 Similarity 12 Serious?

[edit] Removal of NPOV tag

Based on a skim of the talk page, it seems like the NPOV complaints have been addressed. My reading of the article (before reading the talk page) doesn't find any blatant POV problems... it appears as a factual description of a movement in Europe. There are also descriptions of speech differences between different languages, but again, that information seems to be in good NPOV form. I'm going to try removing the NPOV tag to see what happens. Feco 20:57, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

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This article needs some work to make it more objective. Granted, I'm an American, and I don't speak any other European languages (except for some forgotten Spanish), but this is pretty blatantly biased. Things like "Germans and Scandinavians have a nasty habit of not voicing consonants at the end of words" (emphasis added), "Still, this isn't enough of a simplicity for foreigners! They can't seem to remember that there's an 's' there", and "The French do not count like other peoples" really degrade the quality of this page. Bigpeteb 17:41, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you ; indeed I don't see how the article was built. Its first paragraph is clearly relevant to its title (the result is short, hardly encyclopedic, but this is another matter). The next paragraphs are interesting remarks about English difficulties for foreigners (I know I should remember not to leave a space before a semicolon...) but have hardly any relation to the title, except to mean "English as a lingua franca for Europe is a bad thing", which is harldly NPOV ! --French Tourist 17:47, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This had the taste of original research to me. It seems its origins is this article here, or a similar one: [1]

The problem (or rather *one* of the problems) is that I don't see anything having to do specifically with the European Union. So I'm *factually* challenging this article as well, if it claims that ELFE is related to the EU project. Unless some article can offer a reference to a connection with the EU? Aris Katsaris 20:00, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] VfD

For the vfd debate related to this article see Talk:English as a lingua franca for Europe/delete

[edit] Hello, I wrote the original article

Hello, I've been adding small things to articles for a few weeks now, such as the middle section of Phonetic alphabet, and I had thought of starting this page. Yes, one of my sources was #1 given above, but here is a more professional source: [2]

I tried to write things in my own words so as not to break copyright law, which may have brought about the clumsy language. And it was easy to run on to add things from my own experience, and attitude, which you may of course remove.

Languages change all the time, and this makes many people uneasy. Earlier I had come across some things on the web about Estuary English, which has {gotten|got} its own wiki-page since then. The source material on that topic made it appear that Received Pronunciation was being overwhelmed by persons who spoke in a new manner. It seemed to me that it could be the same thing for "ElfE", from the examples given by teachers in its own source articles. The articles made it appear that continental European countries would soon be satisfied with hiring teachers who are not native speakers of English. Now once that is done, there is the problem of certification. These countries would have to establish standards to certify them, and the articles made it appear that this would be done as many standards are done in the European project -- by official bureaux. Many firms in Europe do already use English as a lingua franca in certain fields of commerce, and I'd hate to see a new form appear and gain international official status.

And earlier, I put in vocabulary examples from PAGE 10 of: [3] But these were removed since then. These words were intended to suggest how such a language would develop. Usually, words enter English from French in a clumsy manner (in aviation, "nacelle" was chosen instead of "fuseau-moteur", and "gondola" instead of "nacelle"; "actuel" and "eventuel" didn't get accepted into English in any comprehensible form, although the Germans lapped those words up). The grandeur and significance of the European project has made words go directly from the French discourse at the ministries into pseudo-English, skipping the intermediary step of getting {mis}understood by native speakers of English, which struck me as an analogy to the way that grammar and syntax would get changed.

If this is shading off into just my own supposings, then it is all right that other people can figure out how to write an encyclopedic article. I guess that Estuary English has had enough time to develop to the significance to get people to form it into a well-written page. Perhaps someone else will make such a page for "ElfE" at a later date. --Sobolewski 05:39, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

P.S. The phrase "for Europe" in the source material sometimes indicated the passive notion that the varied particulars of the various languages would be expected to mix on the whole to produce an average pronunciation, grammar, and syntax which would be different from that of its use as an official language of India, say, or a former African colony of Britain, not necessarily that this was a long-term plan of the EU organization. --Sobolewski 13:44, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There is no need for one but for many lingua francas (or for those who still have some sense of latin: linguae francae). It would be so sad to see that everybody speaks the very same language, in fact european integration is not just about shifting to something common, but also preserving local differencies. Just read the Europeam Charter on minority languages. Then think again.

Atlasz 13:28, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is hardly encyclopedic: this is a POV article that is based on some philosophy that all Europeans should standardize on English for conversation because it is a "lingua franca". We should respect our cultural differences, not expect everybody to be assimilated. Ce qui fait l'amitié est l'accueil des différences culturelles, non pas l'assimilation. --Andrew pmk 22:40, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry but I heavily disagree, Atlasz. Belonging to a relatively small European nation, I can say that promoting a lingua franca is definetly not about destroying the local language/culture. Lingua franca would rather promote communication between nations and thus prevent war and spread mutual understanding - and maybe that way help to preserve original cultures. A lingua franca would be an easy second language which people could use to communicate with other people not speaking their native language. Just think if everyone in Europe (or on the whole planet!) spoke their native language and a common lingua franca. Native languages would ofcourse remain for use inside the tribe/nation. No one would need to learn more than two languages for perfect international communcation - the franca and the local one. --Hydrox Feb 1, 17:27 (EET)

I agree with Hydrox, the idea of lingua franca is a Good Thing. Again I prefer Esperanto for a host of reasons, but anyway, my idea is that a language is not like a currency—while adopting the Euro means dropping your currency, you can keep more languages in your head (I currently have three I can use fluently and a few others I can hack with). Otherwise, I think the 47% figure is ludicrously exaggerated. They probably took a conversation like "Excuse me, where is the station?" or similar. In some countries that might be possible (Scandinavian countries, Netherlands...), but in France, Italy or Spain that figure is likely about 5%. I personally found some time ago a criterion on the Usenet: you can speak a language when you can solve crosswords in it, or equivalently quarrel furiously in it... but then that 47% would plummet in some ppm value. --Orzetto 23:20, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Orzetto, nether English nor Esperanto will become Lingua Franca in Europe: 1st because many states will veto it 2) it would destroy the EU, because it would be very unpopular in most countries (if it is English, Esperanto ou name it) 3)language is not a currency or borders, or taxes, or even politics. This article is like someone's dream or a bad joke. Please stop living in your bedroom/office. If it wasnt for wikipedia, I would barely speak English. I still have difficulties with it, even if it is a simple language. Most of people that studied English with me, can say just a few sentences, because they dont use it. I was forgetting it like I was with French and Greek. This should go to Vfd, or to someone's blog. Esperanto hasnt a single chance to be Europe's lingua franca. a family's POV: My father cant stand music in English. I also hear music in Creole, he also doesnt understand it but he doesnt complain, so I rarelly hear English music. I dont see English has an ugly language, it isnt, the French influence molded the language and has done a great job, unlike Dutch and German, which arent in the ranking for the most beautiful languages. Besides, It would be more natural to be French or German, countries that have a lot of influence in Europe. The UK has marginelized itself. Even Spain is starting to be more important in the EU than the UK. Finnaly, put this on Vfd. -Pedro 03:42, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

^ This sounds more like you've a problem with the UK. If you want to forget English, feel free. Wikipedia comes in several languages.

[edit] Individual inaccuracies and correction

[edit] Counting

I have rephrased the sentence on telephone number formatting and left out the bit on the French "not counting like other peoples" which a previous author assumed led them to grouping digits by pairs.

• French telephone numbers have not always been grouped by pairs, groups of three digits have been in wide use earlier, a typical Paris number in the 1980s would have the 123 45 67 format; in older documents you are likely to find 123-456 formats (with a hyphen). While this has changed over time and with the numbers getting longer, the way the French count has not changed. I suggest there is no relation between the two.

In fact the two digits grouping is used for most mobile phone numbers and geographical phone numbers, but very often, the special numbers are grouped by 3 digits (many toll-free numbers or value-added members are presented as: 0 8xx xxx xxx, where the leading 0 for the default carier selection is always spelled separately because it may be replaced by other carrier selectors, and the next 3 digits are known prefixes for special numbers, then grouped by 3+3 or 2+4). Some geographical numbers group their last 4 digits when the last 3 ones are all-zeroes. And there are short numbers that don't have even number of digits (notably those special emergency numbers 11x, or diary numbers 118 xxx). Grouping by 2 digits is just the prefered default spelling in absence of mnemonic features in the number. 81.250.116.77 20:56, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

• If some languages do treat two-digit numbers very differently two English or most other European languages, this would be German and Dutch. The French language of France merely has original forms for the numbers 70, 80, 90, otherwise follow main European usage. Danish has a yet more original system. By contrast, German and Dutch name the units before the tens, as in dreiundneunzig/drieënnegentig as opposed to ninety-three, which really singles out two-digit pairs.
• Yet telephone number formatting in the countries using German and Dutch languages does not seem to follow a strict two-digit grouping standard.

Philippe Magnabosco 08:22, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural Difficulties

This section has nothing to do with difficulties of the English language. The idioms may be culturally insensitive, but that does not necessarily hold true for the language. A native English speaker (i.e. no difficulties with the language), I had never heard any of these Dutch idioms before and had no idea what they meant. Therefore, for purposes of accuracy, I have chosen to remove that paragraph. Please do add any other cultural difficulties that are not idiomatic (possibly proper names like deutchland vs. germany and French fries?), I would like to see them.

[edit] Comparison with German

"In most of the other Germanic languages, like German and Dutch, consonants at the ends of words are never voiced, and so native speakers of those languages tend not to voice consonants at the ends of words in English, hence mug and muck, and bat and bad are pronounced alike to them. "

If someone doesn't provide a source of example for this statement, I'm going to remove it as inaccurate. From the looks of it, it is inaccurate. That or there's a whole different breed of German language other than that which I learned.

I can assure you that final consonants in German words are *never* voiced, even if they are written with "soft" letters (b/d/g) instead of "hard" ones (p/t/k). The "d" in "Hund" is quite distinct from the "d" in "found", but very similar to the "t" in "hunt". —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 20:52, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge into Euro English

The whole content of this article is relevant to Euro English which is a much better title for this topic and it is also in better relation to the actual line of EU language policies to promote regional languages and a multilingual work environment in Brussels! (see: Languages of the European Union) Please comment. 26 February 2006

• I'm in favour. —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 20:52, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

• Disagree - I don't think the articles on Euro-English and Enlish as a lingua franca for Europe should be merged. In my opinion these are two different concepts:

English as a lingua franca for Europe refers to the English spoken by Europeans of different origin when necessary to get information or communicate with other Europeans (also British) on a fairly basic level. Important here is the necessity and the focus on the "function of English".

Euro-English on the other hand is a term - also used in socio-linguistics - to refer to the kind of English spoken by all Europeans. There is a lot of research going on to find out if there are features of "a European variety of English" common to Europeans of all nations. Jennifer Jenkins, Barbara Seidlhofer and Manfred Görlach are among the linguists interested in answering this question. In this respect lexis, syntax, phonology, etc. are of interest. The extent to which English is used among the people of a single European nation also plays a role. The Netherlands for example were close to vote for English as their single official language in the 90s I think. And the people in Sweden are fairly bilingual with Swedish and English, sometimes even switching back and forth while talking.

I hope this is enough to get across what I think the differences are between the concepts. 07 April 2006

• Disagree, as I agree to the statement above, only Euro-English and ELFE are used vice versa IMHO: Euro-English describes the simple English, and ELF or ELFE is the term used for the high level europized (=sic=) English, which develops from communication of scientists, artists and intellectuals from all over Europe.

Sorry to contradict, but I think you mixed up something! Euro-English is thought to be a variety of English spoken by all Europeans. A language with a set of rules or fixed norms (still to be proven) characteristic for it, so Euro-English as a language in its own right similar to i.e. Indian English. Lingua Franca on the other hand denotes the basic knowledge and usage of English as a means for ad hoc communication and for special purposes i.e. trading, holidays, internet etc. 26April2006

• Disagree, for the reasons above mastodon 20:33, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Status

The article clearly lacks information on the current status of ELFE.

It seems it is just a proposal by "some linguists", and as such I doubt its relevance as an article on Wikipedia. The majority of the article is the "Current problems with English" section, which is not strictly about ELFE. The article clearly lacks explanations to how the "problems" are relevant to defining an ELFE. In general, the biggest issue with the article is that it is very unclear who is behind this, and if it is recognised by anybody.

Since the whole thing seems rather silly, as far as I can tell from the artice, I'd be quite interested to know if anybody with any influence takes ELFE seriously. Would anybody actually think it would be a good thing to standardise a bastardised version of English, containing various neologisms and non-standard fixes to the "Current problems" listed? Let's force all Europeans to speak a language that is natural to no one, and fully understood nowhere. Brilliant! Kriko 00:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] There is No Linguistic Authority for English

The fact that there is no linguistic authority for English makes the proposals discussed in this article somewhat moot, if not wholly academic. It should be noted that both the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as Australia, lack official languages and use English as a matter of custom rather than as a requirement of law (though that may be changing in the United States). The first widely used dictionary of the English language was the work of one scholar, Samuel Johnson, who had been commissioned by a group of booksellers. It was not produced by an official body, as there was no official body with authority over the English language in the 1760s just as there is no body with authority over the English language today. Since there is no body to declare what does and does not qualify as native English, why should there be a body to declare what does and does not quality as non-native English? People who use English in business tend to be tolerant of the pronunciation of non-native speakers, as long as it is understandable, so why not just leave it at that? No one ever set out to make English a lingua franca, and it is arguably poorly suited to that role. Spanish, with its relatively regular grammar and its close correlation between spelling and pronunciation, would be more suitable for mass adoption. But for a variety of reasons, English has become a lingua franca. The fact that English is defined by those who speak it (and not by an Academy of the English Language) is a good thing, perhaps even a great thing, about the language. To the extent English is being asked to function as a lingua franca, this lack of formalism may be its only advantage over other possible choices. Since the world's 400 million or so native speakers of English (potentially more if one includes uncounted bilingual native speakers in South Asia) have never felt compelled to create a formal body to proclaim what does and what does not constitute "true" native English, it is unclear why it should be necessary to create an "official" form of the language solely for use by non-native speakers. -- Bob

Nice, total relativism. By your reckoning, I guass aye cold spael stuv laik thees. Way to go, pull it all down, pull it all down!! Jackmitchell

Well, you could, and I would understand you. Since you are, I presume, a native English speaker, I'd think you an idiot for doing so¹, but if you were an Elbonian with nevertheless some English, I'd simply be glad we were able to communicate. My Elbonian is pretty flakey.

Returning to the original point above, I was amused by the article's assertion that "It is expected that a standardised ELFE would declare many of these neologisms normative, forcing native speakers to use them when communicating with other Europeans" (emphasis mine). I find the concept laughable of anybody forcing English speakers, whether native or not, to do anything. There is no Duden for English. PeteVerdon 00:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

¹ In general, obviously, not here and now in order to make your point.

[edit] Aren't These Concerns Overrated?

In taking another look at this article, one is minded of the fact that the Irish adopted the English language during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, so that the native Irish language was not understood by most native Irishmen by the end of the nineteenth century. This was not, of course, universally popular among the Irish. However, during the twentieth century, Irishmen including James Joyce were overrepresented among the greatest virtuosos of English literature, without themselves adopting English culture. And the Irish have felt completely free to make English their own in terms of usage and accent, not infrequently employing idiomatic expressions and phonetic patterns inherited from the Irish language and not learned from Great Britain. At the same time, the twentieth century saw the Irish assert an extremely successful political and economic independence from Great Britain. All of this occurred notwithstanding Ireland's status as a small and powerless nation at the time the transition to the English language began. How could this twentieth century transition have happened if there is there is a factual basis for the perspective presented by this article? -- Bob

[edit] Similarity

From the article: In most of the other Germanic languages, like German and Dutch, certain consonants are pronounced similarly, hence mug and muck

As far as I know, for native English speakers with less-than-100%-perfect-pronunciation, mug and muck ARE pronounced similarly. No, not exactly the same, but yes, similar. I don't think it's necessary to mention that Germans and Dutch might have problems with this.

Also, why is punctuation listed under problems? I really can't see how something as trivial as punctuation is an argument for English not becoming a lingua franca. That's like saying Americans can't understand British English because the Brits don't write a full stop following abbreviations. MrTroy 18:18, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

The "mug" and "muck" similarity may be normal for British English speakers, but I think there is more of a difference for at least one American English speaker. I know that I pronounce the two words with different vowel lengths, in addition to different final consonants. Thus, "mug" has a momentarily sustained vowel, slightly drawled vowel and "muck" has a short, clipped vowel. I don't know enough to know if there is any connection between this and Canadian raising pronuciation, in which "rider" has a longer vowel sound than "writer" (otherwise the two would be pronounced the same because the t of writer is voiced to a d in typical North American speech), but I find myself doing that, as well. I know that that the article on Canadian raising discusses the writer/rider pair as fairly widespread in North America and not limited to Canada. I haven't seen anything on mug/muck, but I seem to do the same with with bug/buck, dug/duck, lug/luck, and plug/pluck.

The relevance of these observations on pronunciation differences among native speakers of English is that the English language is a big tent that already accommodates a lot of variation in pronunciation. There is no reason to create artificial rules that purport to create an alternative standard to something that was never really standardized in the first place. People should just talk and not be so self-conscious about it.

Even if a Dutchman or German might not make a significant distinction between "mug" and "muck" when speaking English, I find that Dutchmen and Germans frequently speak excellent English, and the fact that there is a noticeable accent doesn't make it impossible to understand them. There are many people in India who speak and write excellent English even though thay have a distinct local accent. I would not pretend to ask them to adopt a different pronunciation since such speakers appear to be very competent to me.

-- Bob Bob99 17:38, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Serious?

Is this article really serious? I would really like to know who these "linguistics experts" that promote the ELFE are. The standardisation sounds like a joke to me. I think the sources and the relevance of this article should checked. Aaker 15:30, 5 January 2007 (UTC)