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If EU has to adopt an official language in the futur, which?
I desagree,
this:
<<Proportion of EU population speaking each language as a mother tongue -
German - 18%
English - 13%
Italian - 13%
French - 12%
Spanish - 9%
Polish - 9%
Dutch - 5%
Greek - 3%
Czech - 2%
Portuguese - 2%
Hungarian - 2%
Slovakian - 1%
Catalan - 1% >>
For me french native speakers are most populous than Italian native speakers or native english speakers, because the french native speakers are in Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, France, Aoste Italian country...
Could somebody explain me why that?
Those figures are wrong! French native speakers are more than italian. Just France population itself is bigger than the italian one.
"For me french native speakers are most populous than Italian native speakers or native english speakers, because the french native speakers are in Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, France, Aoste Italian country...
Could somebody explain me why that? "
Not everyone in France speaks French, do they? France has the largest Muslim population in the Western Europe and also one of the largest number of foreigners living in that country. Out of all those Muslims and foreigners many of them wouldn't be able to speak French.
Also, not everyone in belgium speaks French. Of Belgium's 10 million people 59%, which is 6.18 million of them, speak Dutch and only 40% og Belgians, 3.29 million people, speak French.
Switzerland has a population of just 7 million, but German is spoken by far more people than French. 17 of the 26 cantons of Switzerland are monolingual in German and only 4 of them are monolingual in French.
Also, I got the information from an EU website.
Language skills of European citizens
The following tables (posted above) are based on "Special Eurobarometer 243" of the European Commission with the title "Europeans and their Languages" (summary full text), published on February 2006 with research carried out on November and December 2005. This is a poll, not a census. 28,694 citizens with a minimum age of 15 were asked in the 25 member-states as well as in the then future member-states (Bulgaria, Romania) and the candidate countries (Croatia, Turkey) at the time of the survey. Only citizens, not immigrants, were asked.
The first table shows what proportion of citizens said that they could have a conversation in each language as their mother tongue and as a second language or foreign language (only the languages with at least 2% of the speakers are listed).
German is, then, the most widely spoken mother tongue with 18% of the speakers, while English is the most widely spoken language in the EU with 51%. One should also note that 100% of the Hungarians, 100% of the Portuguese, and 99% of the Greeks speak the state language as their mother tongue.
The knowledge of foreign languages varies considerably in the specific countries, as the table below shows. The three most spoken second or foreign languages in the EU are English, German and French. When no rate is noted, the language is not one of the three most spoken second or foreign languages in this country.
56% of citizens in the EU Member States are able to hold a conversation in one language apart from their mother tongue. This is 9 points more than was perceived in 2001 among the 15 Member States at the time [8]. 28% of the respondents state that they speak two foreign languages well enough to have a conversation. Still, almost half of the respondents, 44%, admit not knowing any other language than their mother tongue. Approximately 1 in 5 Europeans can be described as an active language learner, i.e. someone who has recently improved his/her language skills or intends to do so over the following 12 months.
English remains the most widely spoken foreign language throughout Europe. 38% of EU citizens state that they have sufficient skills in English to have a conversation (apart from the citizens of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, the two English-speaking countries [[and Malta]]). 14% of Europeans indicate that they know either French or German along with their mother tongue. In 19 out of 29 countries polled, English is the most widely known language apart from the mother tongue, this being particularly the case in Sweden (89%), Malta (an ex-British colony) (88%) and the Netherlands (87%), while German and French is so in three countries. Moreover, the citizens of the EU think they speak English at a better level than any other second or foreign language. 77% of EU citizens believe that children should learn English and Englsh is considered number one language to learn in all countries where the research conducted but the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Luxembourg.
All in all, English either as a mother tongue or as a second/foreign language is spoken by 51% of EU citizens, followed by German with 32% and French with 28% of those asked.
With the enlargement of the European Union, the balance between French and German is slowly changing. Clearly more citizens in the new Member States master German (23% compared with 12% in the EU15) while their skills in French and Spanish are scarce (3% and 1% respectively compared with 16% and 7% among the EU15 group). A notable exception is Romania, where 24% of the population speaks French as a foreign language compared to 6% who speaks German as a foreign language (also 4% of the population speaks Italian as a foreign language, while 3% of the population speaks Spanish as a foreign language).[1] Another source gives 18-23% of the total population as speakers of French, 9% as speakers of Italian, 7% as speakers of German and 5% as speakers of Spanish for Romania.[2]
It is worth pointing out that language skills are unevenly distributed both over the geographical area of Europe and over sociodemographic groups. Reasonably good language competences are perceived in relatively small Member States with several state languages, lesser used native languages or "language exchange” with neighbouring countries. This is the case for example in Luxembourg where 92% speak at least two languages. Those who live in Southern European countries or countries where one of the major European languages is a state language appear to have moderate language skills. Only 5% of Turkish, 13% of Irish and 16% Italians master at least two languages apart from their mother tongue. A "multilingual" European is likely to be young, well-educated or still studying, born in a country other than the country of residence, who uses foreign languages for professional reasons and is motivated to learn. Consequently, it seems that a large part of European society is not enjoying the advantages of multilingualism.
Free language lessons (26%), flexible language courses that suit one’s schedule (18%) and opportunities to learn languages in a country where it is spoken natively (17%) are considered to be the main incentives encouraging language learning. Group lessons with a teacher (20%), language lessons at school (18%), “one-to-one” lessons with a teacher and long or frequent visits to a country where the language is spoken are considered to be the most suitable ways to learn languages.
wikipedia.org
<< "For me french native speakers are most populous than Italian native speakers or native english speakers, because the french native speakers are in Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, France, Aoste Italian country...
Could somebody explain me why that? "
Not everyone in France speaks French, do they? France has the largest Muslim population in the Western Europe and also one of the largest number of foreigners living in that country. Out of all those Muslims and foreigners many of them wouldn't be able to speak French.
Also, not everyone in belgium speaks French. Of Belgium's 10 million people 59%, which is 6.18 million of them, speak Dutch and only 40% og Belgians, 3.29 million people, speak French.
Switzerland has a population of just 7 million, but German is spoken by far more people than French. 17 of the 26 cantons of Switzerland are monolingual in German and only 4 of them are monolingual in French.
Also, I got the information from an EU website. >>
France has different cultures already only in its historic territory 600 languages and dialects, not amazing while there are more Italian and English natives than French there! For me this figure means nothing.
The capital de facto is Brusells (the lingua franca of this city is French), other european economic center is Strasbourg (French speakers, the parliament), Luxembourg (French, German speakers), and Frankfurt (German speakers, Banks), the fondators of the EU were french.
It's normal french become the lingua franca of europe, than english...
The point is, French is not the lingua franca of Europe. English is. It doesn't matter much what language is mostly used in the EU institutions either; most Europeans don't work in or visit the European Parliament, for instance, on a daily basis.
Not to mention that, in the EU, all languages are considered as official and equal - documents being translated in all languages, interpreters used for all languages etc. But yes, within the institutions, some languages are easier to go around with than others.
If EU has to adopt an official language in the futur, which?.....................
In the future Russia will be in EU,so r u s s i a n will be the Number One Euro-language.
more than 280 million speakers.
I think arabic or turkish in the future, EURABIA rules!
"I think arabic or turkish in the future, EURABIA rules!"
Turkey will never join the EU.
Adam : « France has the largest Muslim population in the Western Europe (...) ».
Tu es très mal renseigné, comme d'habitude. La France a probablement la population musulmane la plus faible des grands pays d'Europe occidentale puisqu'environ 70 % des Français d'origine maghrébine (ou des Maghrébins vivant en France) sont désislamisés.
"Tu es très mal renseigné, comme d'habitude. La France a probablement la population musulmane la plus faible des grands pays d'Europe occidentale puisqu'environ 70 % des Français d'origine maghrébine (ou des Maghrébins vivant en France) sont désislamisés. "
What planet are you living on? It certainly isn't the same as the rest of us. France has, by a HUGE distance, the largest Muslim population in Western Europe whereas Britain, thankfully, has one of the SMALLEST Muslim populations in Western Europe.
Western European countries and the size of their Muslim populations
France - 8 to 9.6%
Holland - 5.8%
Denmark - 5%
Switzerland - 4.2%
Austria - 4.1%
Belgium - 4%
Germany - 3.6%
Britain - 2.8%
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4385768.stm
"Britain, thankfully, has one of the SMALLEST Muslim populations in Western Europe. "
Leaving aside and without comment the "thankfully" part, let's just say that Britain certainly could have fooled me.
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