Re: CHAT: The EU expands (was Re: THEORY/CHAT: Talmy, Jackendoff and Matchboxes)
| From: | Mark P. Line <mark@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Sunday, May 2, 2004, 2:48 |
|---|
Danny Wier said:
>
> 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.
Cyprus means Cyprus, which is bilingual. (There are probably some Cypriots
who would disagree, but that's the EU position as nearly as I can tell.)
The Translation Directorate is expanding to include Turkish as a
co-official language or something like that -- Turkish Cypriots are
certainly not being left out in today's expansion.
> Will
> this change the number of official languages of the European Parliament?
Yes. Twenty official languages, but Malta has agreed to restrict the use
of Maltese to treaty texts. They'll muddle through with English for
everything else.
> But still only two scripts. No Cyrillic-alphabet languages yet.
Byelorussian will probably be the first one to use Cyrillic; maybe the
only one.
> So who will join in the next expansion? Will Turkey and Turkish Cyprus get
> another shot?
Turkey may or may not get its act together. There's a lot of pressure from
Germany and Skandinavia for them to clean up their human rights violations
against the Kurds, which they may or may not find it opportune to do.
> Other Balkan republics?
Croatia is a sure thing. Others are still iffy, I think.
> Former USSR states?
Byelorussia for sure. Ukraine probably won't get a domestic mandate to
join the EU in my lifetime. Armenia and Georgia will almost certainly
join, though I wouldn't bet on it being in the next expansion.
Albania is not former USSR, but you didn't mention it and it's almost
certain to join eventually.
> An independent Faeroe Islands or Greenland?
When Hell freezes over. I expect Iceland to join eventually, though, so I
guess it evens out...
Norway and Liechtenstein seem to have made themselves comfortable with the
status quo, and I don't see that changing.
> And will Esperanto or any other IAL get widely
> accepted in the Union government, or will they just give up on that
> altogether....
No. It's possible that there will be much larger programs to promote
Esperanto, but that's not the same thing as getting "widely accepted" in
the EU government, which it will never do.
> (I live in the USA; we're still trying to get used to TWO languages here.)
So do I, now, but I lived in the EU most of my adult life.
-- Mark
Replies