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

Mark P. Line wrote:

>Danny Wier said:
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>>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.
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>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.
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Actually, they are.  All European laws will apply only to Greek Cyprus,
and only Greek is becoming an official language.

>>Will
>>this change the number of official languages of the European Parliament?
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>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.
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I'm not sure if that's true - surely, an official language is an
official language.

>>But still only two scripts. No Cyrillic-alphabet languages yet.
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>Byelorussian will probably be the first one to use Cyrillic; maybe the
>only one.
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Actually, the first one will be Bulgarian, which will join in 2007.

>>So who will join in the next expansion? Will Turkey and Turkish Cyprus get
>>another shot?
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>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.
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They already have done.  At least to some degree.  I don't expect
they'll make the 2007 expansion, but maybe a few years later.

>>Other Balkan republics?
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>Croatia is a sure thing. Others are still iffy, I think.
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And Romania and Bulgaria.

>>Former USSR states?
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>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.
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Not Belarus, in the next expansion, anyway.  Belarus is practically a
dictatorship, from what I've heard.  Ukraine is a much safer bet.
Armenia, too.

>Albania is not former USSR, but you didn't mention it and it's almost
>certain to join eventually.
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It's a Balkan state, but that'll be a long time.

>>An independent Faeroe Islands or Greenland?
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>When Hell freezes over. I expect Iceland to join eventually, though, so I
>guess it evens out...
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>Norway and Liechtenstein seem to have made themselves comfortable with the
>status quo, and I don't see that changing.
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I think Norway's planning to have a referendum soon.  Iceland will join
in a while, but, again, not in the next expansion.

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