EU: Do we need 23 official languages?

[Harold F. Schiffman]

[Comment] Do we need 23 official languages?

16.02.2007 - 09:27 CET | By Peter Sain ley Berry

EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - Some years ago, when the Cold War was going through
that uncomfortable period which seemed to threaten mass destruction or
mass democracy with equal probability, two British diplomats found
themselves in conversation on a Moscow Street. "The real trouble with the
Russians," said one, "is that they have no word for dtente." His colleague
nodded solemnly in agreement. The story is of course a joke about
language, which, at the risk of insulting the intelligence of my readers,
I had better explain. You see there is no word in English for dtente
either. Dtente is a French word that the English have simply borrowed.

Even while we were bemoaning the paucity of the Russian language English
was busy borrowing words like 'perestroika' and 'glasnost,' though I am
not sure that many knew what they meant. Twenty years ago they were both
fashionable in essays of this sort but have since fallen into desuetude.
Judging from Mr Putin's recent Berlin sally, not only in Britain it seems.
Other people ask why there is no phrase for 'lingua franca' in Esperanto?
Or maybe there is, for my familiarity with Esperanto is rather less than
my familiarity with Latin, which, of course, was the original lingua
franca, in Europe at least. Indeed it is ironic that just at the time that
we could all well do with the ubiquity of Latin as an independent and
innocent vehicle in which to draft European legal texts, it has virtually
disappeared.

Latin - disappeared too early

Having managed to cling on, dead but not forgotten, for more than a
thousand years after the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin has finally
succumbed a century or so short of guaranteed rehabilitation. Even in my
youth the newspapers regularly carried heroic accounts of vague and
improbable international conversations of great import pursued
successfully through the medium of Latin. Even more improbably, but no
less successfully, the recent Finnish Presidency made a habit of issuing
newsletters in Latin for the edification of classical scholars everywhere.
As a gesture it was most wonderfully romantic, especially as the secret
forest pools of Finlandia remained secret even to the Romans. Nonetheless,
it served to remind us Europeans of our common, though now scarcely
comprehensible, linguistic heritage. There was togetherness in knowing
there were things that we did not know, as Donald Rumsfield might have put
it.

So it was a good thing that the Finns communicated mainly through the
medium of English, which language the Scandinavians seem to imbibe
effortlessly with their mother's milk. Whenever I go there I am amazed at
just how fluently ordinary people, who cannot surely have much opportunity
to practice their English conversation, are able to chatter away with
seldom a mistake of grammar or mispronounced word. English - language of
globalisation The same cannot be said elsewhere in the European Union.
With the notable exception of Mr Barroso, perhaps, proficiency in English
seems to be very much a north-south affair. But whereas in my student
days, French would be the travellers' lingua franca in the west of the
Continent and German in the east, with English running in a poor third,
today it is English that predominates as a second language everywhere. In
part the shift has been driven by business. Decades ago most multinational
corporations took the decision to use English as a common language
throughout their operations. Even some French owned companies bowed to the
inevitable and reluctantly took this route, sacrificing the language of
Voltaire and Montesquieu, not for that of Shakespeare, but for a
jargon-filled and soul-less species of mid-Atlantic Cherokee.

Thus has international English become the modern lingua franca - the
language of globalisation, the working lubricant of multilateralism across
the world from Tokyo to Tallahassee. It has become the dominant language
of business and the only language of international politics. Which makes
it strange, perhaps, that the European Union should have 23 official
languages. As a Briton, the dominance of adjectivally challenged
international English gives me no sense of satisfaction. What has happened
has been an accident of history after all. Had Wolfe not captured Quebec
in 1759; had Napoleon (or rather Talleyrand) not sold the vast Louisiana
tract in 1803;  had the United States Congress not voted against using
German as an official language, I might not have been writing this
European piece in English at all.

Yet that apparently is what many in France, alarmed at the decline of
French within the EU, would like to see. In particular, we read that the
Committee for the Language of European Law is calling for French to become
the official language for all European texts on the grounds of its
precision and rigour. French, they say, should have ultimate linguistic
primacy when a text appears in several languages. But why should that text
be written in (as opposed to translated into)  various languages in the
first place? Surely it is time for the EU to recognise that much would be
gained from formally adopting a Single Language Policy to lay alongside
the Single Currency and the Single Market? The contest between English and
French - German has never really been in the running - has been
effectively settled according to alphabetical order.

With globalisation and with the enlargement of the EU that result was
inevitable. Yet we persist in denying reality. It would be rational now to
cut through the endgame and to implement a Single Language Policy
directly. This would mean only one official language - English - for the
whole Union. Not having to produce official legal texts in all 23
languages would entail significant advantage in terms of efficiency and
cost.  Moreover, the longer we delay the harder we make transnational
debate across the European public space.

Of course, such a move would be controversial and politically difficult.
But that does not make it wrong. Of course, Europe's linguistic heritage
is of immense value; I do not want nor expect to see French, German or any
other language fall away at the national level. But apart from satisfying
national pride do we support a language by making it official? If all EU
business were conducted, and texts formalised, solely in English that
would not mean that we shouldn't speak French in France, or German in
Germany or Spanish in Spain. But in Brussels we should surely speak
English. Otherwise our love of languages may strangle us.

http://euobserver.com/9/23510

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