Skip to content

Comment on Notice to stakeholders: withdrawal of the UK and EU rules on .eu domain names

Comments

Is English going to remain being an official language of the EU?

Apart from the practical advantages of keeping English, it’s an official language of Ireland and Malta, and de facto official in Cyprus. All three are member states of the European Union.

Interestingly enough, there is no official language in either England or the UK — although other languages do have official status in other parts of the UK.

I think it will always remain an unofficial language in the EU and removing it as an official language is likely too much of a hassle.

I do hope the withdrawal of the UK will lead to respective citizens of Ireland and Malta enjoying and practicing their own language more, with English being promoted to the language for international cooperation, but nowhere really spoken at home in the EU, because, well, cosmic irony I guess.

Unknown. There's still Ireland. But Ireland is a much smaller influence than the UK is.

There are 24 official EU languages, many of them from countries with less influence than Ireland, so I find it hard to believe English won't be official.

That said, it might not longer be a "procedural" language (status currently only held by English, French and German). But even then, I wouldn't bet on it. English is too ingrained at this point.

Fair enough, I was confused with the procedural vs official language.

Languages are such a political thing. The whole recent (century) history of Gaeilge is a reaction to UK influence.

Ireland and Malta also have English as their official language, so I assume so.

Maybe the question was meant to be if English is going to remain as a "procedural language", that is one of those few languages used for the internal business of the Commission. Currently they are English, German, French. More about that at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...

My bet is yes, even if Ireland and Malta were leaving the EU: everybody knows English, only a few know any other language.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.