2021-02-28 20:48:31
For Modiano, this is also about power. “Someone is going to have to step forward and say, ‘OK, let’s break our ties with the tyranny of British English and the tyranny of American English.’ And instead say ‘we are competent second-language speakers. This is our language.’”
In some future Europe, a European commissioner might confidently introduce herself to the British prime minister in fluent Euro-English with a smattering of Brussels babble: “Hello, I am coming from the EU. Since 3 years I have competences for language policy and today I will eventually assist at a trilogue on comitology.”
If it ain’t broke
But Jeremy Gardner, former senior translator at the European Court of Auditors, said there was no need to create a new model, and warned that diverging from the English used in the United Kingdom and Ireland could be damaging.
“It’s a question of democracy because the European citizen wants to, can and does speak in English. If the EU, which it could do, imposed any other language as its main official working language … it would lose its main line of communication to the European citizen,” he said.
Gardner wrote a report of almost 60 pages on English words misused by EU auditors, attempting to clamp down on Brussels-speak such as decommitment, intervention and planification, which veers away from standard British usage.
The British-born linguist argued that schoolchildren and other learners across the Continent still want to learn a form of English that is recognized by native speakers. “They don’t want a model that will help them communicate with a professor in Sweden,” he said.
That said, the English used by EU institutions is not quite the same as what you might hear in Edinburgh, Dublin on London.
As well as using a slew of EU-speak, the Commission avoids using specific cultural references, such as cricket metaphors, in its communications.
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