Language desk
< May 26	<< Apr \| May \| Jun >>	May 28 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

May 27[edit]

Post-Brexit EU languages[edit]

Judging by Languages of the European Union, English is one of the EU's three "procedural languages", a higher status than that of most official languages. With Brexit approaching, a large number of native English speakers (the large majority, I suppose) will be leaving the EU. Is Brussels planning to downgrade English, or planning to keep its current status? Or have they not conclusively announced any plans? Nyttend (talk) 00:52, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Jean Claude Juncker made remarks to that effect three weeks ago,[1] but I doubt any official decision has been announced. AnonMoos (talk) 04:46, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The last paragraph of the Guardian article AnonMoos is quite telling: "English is also highly unlikely to disappear as a dominant language in the EU any time soon. Not only is it an official language for the Irish and Maltese governments, but many diplomats prefer to use English as a common second language rather than French." —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 07:04, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See also EU languages: Statement on behalf of the European Commission Representation in Ireland (27 June 2016) states: "We note the media reports stating that in the event of a UK withdrawal from the EU, English would cease to be an official language of the EU. This is incorrect. The Council of Ministers, acting unanimously, decide on the rules governing the use of languages by the European institutions. In other words, any change to the EU Institutions' language regime is subject to a unanimous vote of the Council, including Ireland... These provisions are contained in Article 342 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union". In other words, Ireland would veto any attempt to drop English as an official language. Alansplodge (talk) 09:50, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

However, there's the possibility that it could be on a par with Greek, Estonian, and Slovak, but not any longer on a par with French or German... AnonMoos (talk) 11:16, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly but I find this unlikely. For starters, I'm not sure how this will change, I think [2] explains it but it was too complicated for me to be willing to read through, but if it's a change that will come under Article 342 [3], it seems to me Ireland and probably other countries would be reluctant to agree. More to the point, there are already plenty of German grumblings about German not getting enough [4] [5] [6] [7]. I can't imagine that the many native French speakers are happy about the way English is taking over from French at the EU (see earlier sources and [8]) [9] [10] [11]) in many parts of the EU. But I suspect they'd been even more unhappy if it were replaced with German, even more so when the UK is gone (despite annoyance over Brexit). Likewise I'd suspect many native German speakers would prefer English dominates over French if they can't get German instead. Sure they'd be happier if both German and French took over, but the likelihood of the wrong one dominating makes it seem unlikely. [12] Nil Einne (talk) 08:50, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's Jean-Claude Juncker's opinion, which may or may not be biased. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:12, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ireland's official EU language is Irish Gaelic. As "just over 72,000 use Irish as a daily language outside the education system" (ie: excluding Gaelic teachers in schools) out of a population of 4.6 million, I think it's rather more symbolic than practical. Almost everyone in Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia seems to speak English fluently too. Alansplodge (talk) 13:19, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's why I assumed they'd be keeping it as some sort of official language (I didn't think of Malta, but I assumed the large majority of Irishmen would prefer that communications from Brussels be in English, not Irish), and why I guessed that it will get downgraded only to the status of Greek, Estonian, and Slovak if they choose not to retain its current status. Thanks for the help; it's so hard to run a Google keyword search for this kind of thing if you're not already familiar with the sources. Nyttend (talk) 18:20, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The "knowledge of languages" table is revealing. Of the other two procedural languages, only the obvious candidates, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, have one of these as being more widely known than English. Only Luxembourg has both more widely known than English. Even if you include the other languages, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Polish; only Spain, Poland, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia have one and only one of these more widely known than English. The later 3 of course Russian.

The text confirms similar

95% of students in the EU study English at secondary level[63] and 38% of EU citizens state that they have sufficient skills in English to have a conversation (excluding citizens of the United Kingdom and Ireland, the two English-speaking countries). 28% of Europeans indicate that they know either French (14%) or German (14%), along with their native language.

{it also confirms the earlier "In 19 out of 29 countries polled, English is the most widely known language apart from the native language")

It seems unlikely Brexit or Trump is going to change the status of English as the international language which would seem likely to make at least some countries reluctant to change its status. Especially when it's the primary language it at least one (small but but not tiny) member the fews of politicians regardless.

Nil Einne (talk) 08:18, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

From what I remember, though I could be wrong, each EU-member state may declare one language (which must be official in the state) to be an official EU-language. So the issue is that under the current rules, Ireland or Malta could nominate English, but would then have to give up Irish or Maltese as official EU-languages. --Terfili (talk) 19:42, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's true, but English is currently a "procedural language" (together with French and German), which is separate to its status as the UK's nominated language. The "European Commission Representation in Ireland" link above states that "any change to the EU Institutions' language regime is subject to a unanimous vote of the Council" and Ireland will use its veto to prevent such a change. Alansplodge (talk) 23:06, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Does that mean that in the event of Norway joining the EU, Bokmål and Nynorsk can't both be made official in the EU?

No, they have to choose one only. Alansplodge (talk) 17:39, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As for Irish, I'll add that although Ireland has been in the EU since 1973, Irish became an official EU language only in 2007. --Theurgist (talk) 15:36, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Theory that chi does not derive from samekh[edit]

Talk:Samekh claims that chi does not derive from samekh, but is just an alteration of kappa. What arguments support this?? Georgia guy (talk) 01:15, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You're confusing a couple of letters; the suggestion is that ס is related to Ξξ ("xi"), not Χ ("chi"). The citation for this statement is

Muss-Arnolt, W. (1892). On Semitic Words in Greek and Latin. Transactions of the American Philological Association v. 23, p. 35-156. The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Is that all you needed, or do you need more? I just want to avoid you thinking that I'm trying to brush you off. Nyttend (talk) 03:50, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Georgia guy -- it seems reasonably clear that the original Greek alphabet (as first adapted from Phoenician) would have ended with Ypsilon, and contained a few letters not included in the familiar later 24-letter classical Greek alphabet (Digamma, Qoppa, and San). The letter between zeta and theta had the phonetic value [h]. The situation with the sibilant letters is a little confusing. The letter Xi Ξ certainly took its shape from the shape of the Phoenician letter Samek ס, but the name Samek seems to be used for the Greek letter Sigma Σ, while the sound value of Xi Ξ seems to be most influenced by the sound value of the Phoenician letter Tsade צ (which was probably an affricate at that time). The Greek letter Chi Χ comes after the original final Ypsilon, so was an addition to accommodate the alphabet more closely to the Greek language. These added letters generally don't seem to derive from Phoenician (though Omega was a later alteration of Omicron). There was variability in these added letters in early Greek alphabets. (The Latin alphabet derives from a version of the early Greek alphabet in which the letter shape "X" denoted [ks] instead of [kh].) Hope you're not more confused now than before you read my comment...

-- AnonMoos (talk) 04:27, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. The comment on Talk:Samekh claims that the Greek letter Chi Χ is an alteration of the Greek letter Kappa Κ. This is somewhat dubious, but has no relation to the Samekh article... AnonMoos (talk) 04:32, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is the so-called affricate theory that claims the sibilants in Proto-Semitic and hence in Phoenician were affricates (see Phoenician language#Sibilants, Proto-Semitic language#Fricatives). Thus the diphthongal pronunciation of Samekh in Ancient Greek is justified. Also Sigma in Modern Greek is a "hushing" sound and it might have sounded the same in the older periods, so even without the affricate theory Shin for Greek /s/ may be justified as well.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:26, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Любослов Езыкин -- according to such theories, Tsade צ would have been affricated (not "diphthongal") wherever the Semitic "emphatic" consonants (in the Phoenician/Hebrew alphabet ט צ ק, in Arabic ص ض ط ظ ق ) were phonetically ejectives, while the sounds corresponding to the letters ז ס in the Phoenician/Hebrew alphabet would have been affricated in the original Proto-Semitic pronunciation, but probably not in the Canaanite languages in the 1st millennium B.C., while the sounds corresponding to the Phoenician/Hebrew letter ש were never affricated. I think there are few or no plausible reconstructions according to which Phoenician ס would be affricated but Phoenician צ wouldn't be, at times relevant to the Greek borrowing of the alphabet (which is more or less required to explain the Samek ס - Xi Ξ correspondence and the Tsade צ - San correspondence in pure phonetic terms). And saying that Phoenician ש had a palatal sound when the Greek alphabet was adapted actually contradicts the hypothesis that Phoenician ז ס were affricated at the same time. In any case, the name of ס seems to have ended up influencing the name of Σ... AnonMoos (talk) 11:51, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have no strong opinion on this matter, so I can only give you a link to their argumentation [13], where you can evaluate it yourself whether it is correct or not. P.S. Nothing wrong with calling affricates diphthongs as it was the original wider meaning of the word diphthong ("two-sound") and very often was applied to consonants as much as to vowels; though, I agree it may sound a little old-fashioned now, and while I've read quite a lot of books with such a usage, not many would know and understand.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 05:29, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Любослов Езыкин -- The סז affricate theory is highly interesting for internal Semitic reconstruction, but I don't think that the chronology is right for it to affect the adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet into Greek (the versions of the theory that I've seen, anyway), and there would still be anomalies in the treatment of the Phoenician sibilant letters in Greek regardless of whether or not it applied... AnonMoos (talk) 13:21, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

AnonMoos, do you think the chi in Western Greek is actually chi or is it just the form of xi used in Western Greek that merely looked like chi?? Georgia guy (talk) 12:26, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that the letter shape "X" was derived from the letter shape which gave rise to classical Greek Ξ. As for whether the "X" shape pronounced [kh] in some early Greek alphabets was the same symbol as the "X" shape pronounced [ks] in other early Greek alphabets, who knows? It's not like a diagonal cross shape (saltire) is hard to invent... AnonMoos (talk) 12:37, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]