What Language Does Europe Speak?

WHAT language does Europe speak? France has lost its battle for French. Europeans now overwhelmingly opt for English. The Eurovision song contest, won this month by an Austrian cross-dresser, is mostly English-speaking, even if the votes are translated into French. The European Union conducts ever more business in English. Interpreters sometimes feel they are speaking to themselves. Last year Germany’s president, Joachim Gauck, argued for an English-speaking Europe: national languages would be cherished for spirituality and poetry alongside “a workable English for all of life’s situations and all age groups”.

Some detect a European form of global English (globish): a patois with English physiognomy, cross-dressed with continental cadences and syntax, a train of EU institutional jargon and sequins of linguistic false friends (mostly French). In Brussels “to assist” means to be present, not to help; “to control” means to check, rather than to exercise power; “adequate” means appropriate or suitable, rather than (barely) sufficient; and mass nouns are countable, such as advices, informations and aids. “Anglo-Saxon” is not a historical term referring to Germanic tribes in Britain, but a political insult followed by “capitalism” or even “press”.

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