EU countries resist Spain on making Catalan official language

17 comments

1. It’s so dumb. Every country gets one language.

   Edit: in case it’s not clear, as an EU official language. There’s 200-300 languages spoken in Europe, it would be ridiculous to have them all as official EU languages. The whole ask from Junts is a ridiculous one, they’ve asked for something impossible for political power, and this tour lobbying for Catalan, Galician etc to be added as official EU languages is a charade.

2. I mean, if Spain can do this, others should also be able to do the same.

   Just Poland would add Kashubian, Rusyn, Silesian, Tatar and [Karaim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaim_language) to the mix. Let thousands of languages bloom. 🙂

   And in case of Karaim, it would be [Poland’s variant of Karaim](https://www.gov.pl/attachment/eb44b69e-3a26-49a7-addd-dc6cae0716a4), not the Crimean nor Lithuanian one. Lithuania can request their own Trakai-Karaim, I guess.

3. I supose catalans should be exempt from taxes then.
   Their votes are worth nothing. 
   Their elected jailed. 
   Their language is not official, not even in Madrid. 

   Why would they need to pay taxes? 
   Or do they need to have a terrorist organisation, be independent, and finally be respected, EU would accept their language as official, and then they can pay taxes. 

   Otherwise feels like a bit of modern slavery because they are not protesting hard enough. 

4. We should recognize all natives languages of Europe, and people will finally see how diverse we are.

5. Is this sill on the EU’s part. It’s core strength is it’s inclusivity. If it gives up that, everything is lost. Basque is a total unique inception of language and should be treasured in Europe, it is crazy that it would not be protected.

6. Time to use Latin again as lingua franca of Europe

7. I know I’m gonna piss off a lot of people, but I don’t think recognizing regional languages is a good idea. It’s one of the foundations for secessionist thought, which make everyone worse off. Culture is fine, but is it worth risking national unity? I don’t think so.

8. let me think about this

   Central gov is not interested in making catalan an official EU language, because votes

   Catalan politicians are interested because votes

   Central Gov needs separatists to approve laws

   They make a deal and Central gov promises to help with catalan

   Pedro pushes catalan as an official EU language

   Spain asks other EU countries to say no to their own proposal to mantain separatist support (they save face, they tried, it’s not their fault)

   Everybody earns votes even though nobody did anything. Catalan politicians get credit for ‘convincing’ the central gov, the central gov doesn’t accomplish something they don’t want while they save face

   This is my theory

9. Turkish is technically one of the two official languages of the Republic of Cyprus and holds the same status as Greek. It is official throughout the entire island, yet it is not recognized as an official EU language. Turkish should also be recognized as an official EU language.

10. Personally, I think the system of official EU languages need to be reformed. I think there should be more of an effort to trim down the number of official languages and hence number of copies in different languages that need to be maintained.

    Personally, I think the EU should switch to one official language OR something trimmed down. For example, I think it’s a waste of resources that EU documents have to be translated into Irish (my language), or a handful of balkan variations of serbo-croatian where one would suffice. 

11. Cost is not an issue:

    >Madrid has vowed to foot the bill for the potentially millions of euros to add the languages into the EU’s translation and interpretation framework.

    And hundreds of r/Europe redditors are so trigger happy to criticise France for its repressive linguistic policies, but when France and Italy (European countries that are hardly known for their wonderful treatment of linguistic minorities) oppose the officialisation of more European languages, *then* you guys are all on board?

    >Political factors are also a major consideration. France, for instance, has a national policy against the recognition of domestic minority languages like Basque, Breton and Corsican.

    That’s right, France doesn’t want Spain to do it because it doesn’t want to look “bad” for being one of the worst countries in Europe with regards to linguistic minority rights.

    And now we see how false the European motto is.

    “Unity in diversity”, what a joke. If you don’t believe it, change it.

12. When Andorra becomes part of the EU. Makes no sense to add languages that are not spoken nationwide. 

13. As someone from Spain, I have to admit I’m kind of conflicted on what my views on regional languages are. I’ve always been a supporter of having a linguistically-speaking diverse country, I think it’s great. But it’s undeniable that this diversity ends up translating in division, hatred, separatisms… it’s no surprise the separatist political parties are in Catalonia and Basque Country and not in Aragon or Castilla-La Mancha.

    Downvote me all you want but if this “linguistic diversity” comes at the cost of balkanizing my country, then I can’t support that.

14. Why would EU documents need to be translated in Catalan if Spain made it an official language? Turkish is an official language in Cyprus and yet documents aren’t translated to Turkish

15. Good to know that the really important problems are being taken care of /s 
    Jesus Christ who cares 

16. As much as I think that making Catalan official in the EU would be a waste of resources as all Catalans speak Spanish anyways, it’s funny how people in the comments start talking about making any single minority language official making fun of Catalan as if it were a small minority language and not one with more speakers than a great chunk of the actual official languages.
    For example, Catalan has more of a place being official than Irish. It may not be the official language of any member state, but not only does it have a much greater amount of speakers but its use is actually widespread and not just limited to isolated rural communities.

17. Can’t we just drop all languages except for English and Portuguese?

Comments are closed.