The fact that the languages are subtle ties between people doesn’t imply there have to be many languages. The common language, if chosen, becomes a subtle tie within one generation. I bet any romanian today has difficulties reading the written romanian a century ago, so I can’t see any serious, long-standing, reason to stick to our instance of language we use today (except our personal history which will get lost in a few decades); it’s not even possible to preserve it as we’re practicing it now.

The issue here is pragmatical: how many translators will we have to pay to get along with each other in E.U., that is, to get second-hand semantics of our neighbours’ utterances?

At least, it is a fair situation, as long as we don’t get it, we pay for it.

The only ridiculous thing seems to be the nation concept and anything it implies (like the translator expenses).

It’s a translation, not a wipe out. And this is already happening in a less systematic way.
I don’t think that Kant, Ende or Habermas will be forgotten if no german ‘native’ will be forced to learn deutsch in school. I’ve heard of them, and read some, without being even remotely familiar with german language.
Did you care enough to read Aristotle in clasical greek or latin?
A step back to look at the issues is necessary.

It’s not even obvious if we (E.U.) will end up mono-lingual. Some languages stick to your mind even if they are facultative: I still easily understand french after 23 years of not speaking it with anybody. Not being my mother tongue, or native language either, I guess I am emotionally attached to it, but that doesn’t make me feel uneasy to accept a common E.U. language, as the main language, different from french or romanian. Well, I’d have trouble with a german proposal but I’d get over it if I’d see the rational reasons supporting it.

I suspect that some professionals relying on the language splitting are too zealous. That’s where this instinctive reaction comes from, I suppose.

For example, if the german TV would let the original sound and subtitle the movies, say, in german, a lot more foreign people would be able to read/write or understand german, and a lot more germans would feel comfortable speaking english or french, or polish. Choosing not to subtitle but to double the voices is a choice similar to pushing the native language on the first stage, with the same consequences: cultural loneliness with only the official translators and diplomats as links to foreign cultures. Same goes with any nation larger than 30 mils.

One may still learn the ‘native’ language for the purpose of reading old poetry, but this should not be part of the mandatory educational programme, it should be facultative.

Letting the ‘national’ language (if different from the ‘common’ one) linger in the mandatory educational programme, will, practically, result in its effective use at national scale, so the ‘common’ one gets effectively ignored: practicing the common language in the everyday life is the crux of the matter.

You and I are writing these messages in english, although we’re ‘native’ romanians. We’re doing it because we hope an european neighbour (polish, french…) may read, understand the issue and think about it too.

If a top-down decision is not taken soon about this issue, we’ll end up speaking english, which is not such a bad thing in itself but the picture will become like this: I talk romanian to my fellow ‘natives’, speak english only in matters important at the Union level, but my everyday life is not peppered with Union issues, so I’ll mumble english, ignore the Union, and talk a ridiculous, defined ‘native’, language with my first neighbour.
This leaves us in many, little, rather isolated, groups; come the peak-oil issue, and I already see the tribes speaking romanian fighting with gearman speaking tribes over tomatoes and potatoes, a priest will translate to the tribe leaders the curses of their ‘enemies’.

The definition of a ‘native’ language loses sharpness as long as the communication channels with the second-order neighbours get to be used more effectively. The bad thing is that, if we insist in using our own native language, we tend to ignore the existence of these communication channels: essentially, we grow ignorant.

It’s the arrogance associated with our times (the time of chosing a common language), not with some past times, which should matter. We were all monkeys some time ago. The arrogance-based choice is not a punishment, but a protection from a bad start (wrong cultural premises).

As about French. The language sounds nice to me, I even understand it :), but again, a protection against arrogance is needed here too, I believe. I’m afraid that, given the chance, the french politicians will poeticize it to death.

Chosing Spanish as the main language for E.U. is, I think, the best compromise between minimizing the national prides issue and maximizing the world spread.

However the main suggestion of my article is to move aside the national language, and use the common E.U. language instead. Let the national language die or be learned only for historical reasons. I see the national languages as a hindrance to the U. in E.U. : if they are still taught as a first language in schools and still used in the administration, people from different E.U. countries will practically ignore and misunderstand each other, as they do now. As a consequence, E.U. will stay schizophrenic, that is, always vulnerable to any dividing model: “old” vs. “new”, “western” vs. “eastern”, “northern” vs. southern” etc.

Aw, come on… you’ll find these people everywhere! Spanish may have lost sympathies already, just think of Cortez, Pizarro, Franco, or Julio Iglesias…

Just wonder why you skipped French as an option so quickly, 190 million speaking it world wide, half of Africa included. Spanish would be nice, for sure, but within Europe (not speaking of the world) there are only only 44 million speakers….

So, math doesn’t help us here, I guess. I wouldn’t mind English as a compulsory second language for kids, it’s easy (but still enormously rich — it has about 900,000 words), already well spread within Europe and the world, used in commercial and non-commercial areas. As long as English as a European/global language doesn’t kill national languages, I only see advantages.