The European language revolution everyone's ignoring (#5)

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As I explore my own curiosity and delve deeper into Europe and the dynamics at play here I’ve come across some fascinating insights into the development of language that no one seems to be talking about…the implications of which are pretty far reaching.

Language isn’t just about communication.
It’s not just about culture, or convenience, or even connection.
It’s political. It’s strategic. And in many cases, it’s a tool of power.

That might sound dramatic—but when you start looking closely at how languages have been shaped, spread, and sometimes imposed, a pattern emerges. One that tells us a lot about how nations are built—and what holds them together.

European language Data:

#europeanunion #languagelearning #culturaldifferences

[britingermany]

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[rosshart]

"The official language of the EU is Bad English."
Herman Van Rompuy

[m.a.]

I'm from Switzerland and a Dane once mocked me for my English accent for being almost as bad as if I was Danish. The bad thing is, I speak every language with an accent, German, French, English, eccept for Swiss German. There we call it a dialect ;-)

[quinob]

"A common language is necessary for a country to function effectively" Switzerland: "hold my beer".

From Polish perspective: My parents (grown in 60-70) were taught Russian, but they never learnt it and there was no real benefit from knowing it for normal people. Travelling abroad was heavily limited in Soviet Block, Russian was never close to becoming lingua franca outside USSR.
In 90, after block collapsed it appeared that knowing English itself was enough to get decent job (in dire economic conditions), so for many parents it was very important to make sure that their children will know it.

[ColaSpandex]

The French won't let English infiltrate their language. Except for 45% of English vocabulary, which is French. Bless em.

[mullergyula]

My daughter (15) learnt English (B2-C1 level) on her own, just by using the internet (Tik-Tok and youtube mainly), while she learned German at school. We were shocked to find this out. This is how much influence the internet has on kids.

[mozejestinaczej]

In Poland, the Russian language in schools was replaced by English and young people no longer know this language. However, history likes to "play various tricks" and the Russian language returned to Poland due to refugees from Eastern Ukraine.
Now I can always surprise young people because I can read announcements and advertisements written in Cyrillic. For them it is like some "cosmic" task. I would never have thought that learning Russian at school would still be useful to me? And yet!

[wantokamerica]

In Iberia we have the interesting situation where we have two languages, Portuguese and Spanish, that are important world languages, but much more outside Europe. In Europe they are not important and spoken only in one relatively small country each.

[Phiyedough]

I don't think Brexit had any significance in the spread of English as a common language. USA is far more influential than UK and is hugely dominant on the internet, social media etc. Here in Croatia a lot of people pick up English through watching American TV programmes with subtitles. In Hungary the programmes are dubbed rather than subtitled and far fewer people understand English.

[kauemoura]

I'm a Brazilian living in Belgium, I work on the trains with all kinds of people, and I can say with certainty that your impression in the video is only due to the bubble in which you are inserted. I'll use Dutch and French seamlessly every day interacting with the local population. German may be one of the official languages of the country, but nobody really cares about the 2% of native speakers living in the woods by the border. English will eventually be used with a few tourists and was mostly used once I lived in an international environment for my MSc. Back then I really thought that English could supplant other languages, especially when I saw the Eurobubble. These days that I actually have contact with the local population I realize that indeed, it was really that, the bubble, a specific group of people who are temporarily in Brussels and that didn't really mingle with the local Belgian population in any real context. People will keep on speaking their local languages no matter what, or else French would have fully exterminated Luxemburgish in Luxembourg, especially considering how small the country is.

I really think you're reading too much into this because you are British.

[GugelHupf]

As a German, I have lived in Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg and I'm happy that multilingual countries exist. It is a complete privilege for me to speak 5 languages.

[planeurs]

Very disappointing video. Announced as a phenomenon “everyone’s ignoring” it actually states the blatantly obvious. No one’s ignoring it, it’s in our face and it has been for many years.

[palantir]

In the Netherlands, we speak English (or French or German) with people who just moved into the country. If they stay just for a limited period, we don’t expect them to learn Dutch but like it if they try to learn it a bit. Things change as those people decide to stay in the Netherlands and build up their lives here. We then more or less demand them to learn dutch. If they learn the Dutch language then they become part of the Dutch community. If they refuse to learn dutch, we will speak English with them but they won’t become part of society and will be more and more ignored. I mean, they won’t be invited for a party, feast etc.

Learning English is mandatory for more than five decades already.

[Alan-lvrw]

In the U.S., the second language taught in schools was roughly evenly split between French and Spanish when I started school in 1967 (there was also a very small percentage that learned German). But now I’d say Spanish is by far the most common second language taught in the U.S.

[neiss]

I'm half German, half Spanish. My mother is from Berlin, my father from Madrid, my brother and I are the product of 1970s tourism (people like us are by the thousands in Spain 😁). I was raised bilingual Spanish-German, plus Catalan, as I live in Barcelona. I speak 8 languages: Spanish, German, Catalan, French, Italian, English, Portuguese, and Russian. Actually if you speak Spanish, then Italian, Portuguese, and Catalan come as a bonus, as they are practically the same language. So, monolingual people don't understand that each language that you speak fluently is a door to that language's universe and in that moment, you are privileged to understand that language's culture and its people. Suddenly, you can speak their language, meet the people's sphere and be one of them, with the infinite richness in friendship, work opportunities, and cross-border mindset that this means.

[MrFahrenheit]

12:07 you are in fact spot on! I’m Ukrainian who grew up speaking Russian as a first language. I learned English second, Ukrainian third and and it was mainly university that taught me to double-check my sources of information and make sure not to only consume them in Russian and coming from Russia, but also from the English-speaking side. Needless to say that I have switched completely to Ukrainian since 2022, I moved to Germany, learned German till C1 and now work in English-German speaking environment. Let me tell you, the divide between my generation that speaks English and our parents that don’t is enormous. The ability to check the false facts spun by propaganda cannot be underestimated

[meestanaef]

It is absolutely wild that you use the words “complete cultural takeover” 11:42 to describe the process by which post-Soviet nations dropped the language of their former occupiers.

You got that completely back to front!

[lara-wag]

Funny, you are presenting Bamberg...
BTW: Italy was unified in 1861, but only got a unifying language after the Second World War, since when television has been available to the people.

[laurentschmidt]

12:30 "History has shown that a common language is necessary for a country to function effectively..." Now I know why Swiss trains aren't ever on time and the country is so poor!