CHAT: The EU expands (was Re: THEORY/CHAT: Talmy, Jackendoff and Matchboxes)

From: "Jean-François Colson" <fa597525@...>

> And while we're still on the 1st of May...
>
> <UTF-8 ¡¡¡¡¡UNICODE ALERT!!!!!>
>
> Welcome
> Tere tulemast to the Estonians
> Sveiki atvyke to the Lituanians
> Laipni ludzam to the Latvians
> Merhba to the Maltese
> Üdvözlöm to the Hungarians
> Dobrodošel to the Slovenes
> Vitame vás to the Slovaks
> Vítejte to the Czechs
> Witajcie to the Polish
> ?a??s???sate to the Cypriots
The EU now has languages from three families: IE, Uralic and Afro-Asiatic.
Malta was a close vote; the others were not. Turkey got rejected, and I
assume Cyprus means only the Greek part, so no Altaic languages yet. Will
this change the number of official languages of the European Parliament?

But still only two scripts. No Cyrillic-alphabet languages yet.

So who will join in the next expansion? Will Turkey and Turkish Cyprus get
another shot? Other Balkan republics? Former USSR states? An independent
Faeroe Islands or Greenland? And will Esperanto or any other IAL get widely
accepted in the Union government, or will they just give up on that
altogether....

(I live in the USA; we're still trying to get used to TWO languages here.)

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