Euroblogs facing Babel: Inclusive and exclusive approaches

If the European Union is the common theme, even our shared destiny, should discussions be confined to separate national or linguistic forums?



A short while ago I decided to experiment with a multilingual comment policy on Grahnlaw. After a few days, comments in four languages and minor adjustments it reads like this:

In order to facilitate interaction in the Euroblogosphere, I do my best to read comments in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish or Swedish, even if the Grahnlaw blog and my possible replies are in English.

Inclusive approaches

Babel is a fact of life in Europe. The European Union has 23 official languages, as well as a host of regional and minority languages. Wider Europe offers even more linguistic diversity.

Each blog has to make a basic choice: the language it is written in.



Further, every Euroblogger among the 635 aggregated on multilingual Bloggingportal.eu (and beyond) can reflect on how inclusive or exclusive it wants to be in relation to other languages and public spheres.




Mathew Lowry has blogged about building bridges to create a European online public space.



Inspired by Mathew Lowry and Grahnlaw, The European Citizen decided to open up his Euroblogging and to try to reach out a bit more across the blogosphere(s). He is opening up his blog to comments in different languages, and he will use machine translation to help with responding. He will also reach out by commenting [in English] on blogs in other languages, although he is not sure how this will be received.



In fact, reception for comments in other languages can vary. I experimented by posting a comment in English on an Arte blog (French), but the moderation team quickly banished it on boilerplate grounds that the comment was outside the subject of the blog entry or against editorial policy. As we see, exclusionary policies are still de rigeur in some places.



I have tried to run separate, but related blogs in Finnish and Swedish, such as Eurooppaoikeus and Grahnblawg. However, they have offered little in the way of informed readers and interaction. At the same time, it is hard work to present even a fraction of EU politics and events in a few policy areas in a single language, English, the closest thing we have to a lingua franca.

I respect the valiant individual Eurobloggers who run bilingual blogs. Here are a few examples:



Vihar Georgiev writes the European Union Law blog in English and in Bulgarian, with frequent short updates in parallel.



Another parallel blogger is Europasionaria, in English and in French. She has also added a Google Translate gadget to her pages in order to facilitate communication.



Greg Henning’s EU Weekly contains blog entries in both English and/or French.



Martin on Europaeum alternates between entries in German and English.



Pirate MEP Christian Engström blogs mainly in Swedish, but occasionally in English.



Spanish is the main language of Eva Peña’s Eva en Europa, but she has posted in Catalan as well, and her latest entry was in English.


Including nationals - excluding others



Cédric Puisney aka Un Européen jamais content offers a contrary view to the inclusionary efforts, at least if English is used as a bridging language. He deplores bloggers abandoning their mother tongue to blog in English. He sees linguistic poverty, the threat of impoverished debate and the abandonment of the average EU citizen (citoyen lambda européen).



According to Wikipedia, 51 per cent of the EU population speaks English, followed by German (32%) and French (26%). English is more widely spoken and understood worldwide than the other European languages. (About 20 per cent of Grahnlaw’s readers come from North America.)

We have seen a few examples of bridging policies of inclusion, as well as exclusionary reactions and arguments (Blogs Arte, Cédric Puisney).

Should we confine our Euroblogs and blog discussions to separate national or linguistic forums for Citizen Lambda, or should we do our best to lower barriers between Eurobloggers and to promote pan-European interaction?




Ralf Grahn

My Europe Week: EU lingua franca?

If we applied the first past the post system, German would be the sole language of the European Union, being the mother tongue of the greatest proportion of the EU population (18 per cent), although far from an absolute majority (source: Wikipedia).



However, the European Union has wisely opted for both language rights for citizens and supporting actions to promote language learning (multilingualism). These questions, as well as the missed opportunities through dumbing down TV and film soundtracks by dubbing, have been discussed in three previous Grahnlaw My Europe Week blog posts.

Now is the time to look at linguistic matters from a different angle: Is there and should there be a lingua franca in the European Union?



Lingua franca



The Wikipedia article Lingua franca offers us a starting point for discussing a bridge language or a working language for speakers or readers with different mother tongues.

Here is my rough summary based on European political and cultural history:

Having been the language of the Roman Empire, Latin became the language of the Catholic Church, of learning, Courts and diplomacy. It survived as the first language of Western European diplomacy until the 17th century, and beyond that as part of a classical education well as the language of science.

With France at the height of its power, French became the first language of diplomacy, the preferred language of European Courts and of the nobility. (French was probably understood as well at the Court in Saint Petersburg as in France outside the Parisian region.)

Through the British Empire and the later rise of the USA, English has risen to prominence far beyond the confines of Europe. For the first time there is something approaching a world (second) language, if we take all speakers and readers into account.



Wikipedia describes English as the required international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy – crucial areas for global interaction and human progress.

Even if we embrace the EU’s aim to learn at least two foreign languages, should we universally opt for English as one of them?



Two additional questions:

Why do we start teaching children foreign languages so late, long after they have lost most of their ability to learn multiple languages almost effortlessly?

Why do our schools not generally use native speakers as teachers of foreign languages?




My Europe Week



Bloggingportal.eu and My Europe Week are but two small examples of an emerging European public sphere you can join.



Ahead of Europe Day 9 May 2010: Share your Europe.




Ralf Grahn