this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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EU countries resist Spain on making Catalan official language (www.politico.eu)
submitted 1 day ago by CAVOK@lemmy.world to c/europe@feddit.org
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[–] Saleh@feddit.org 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, Belgium has three official languages, it just happens to share them with its neighbors. Ireland also has two, Luxembourg three, Malta two...

Also Catalan is spoken as a first language by about 4 million people. That is more than the population of the smallest 8 EU countries.

If costs are a concern one could argue that all these countries shouldn't have things translated into their national languages either. Especially when another official language could do the job. While we are at it, might as well tell the Scandinavian EU members to just learn German. The Baltic countries could just agree on one language. What is up with Slovakia, Slovenia and Czech Republic anyways. Just merge and agree on one language duuh...

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.

I think this is more of the real concern here.

While Belgium, Cyprus, Portugal, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia supported granting EU recognition to the Spain’s additional official languages, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany and Sweden backed Italy’s demands for “further clarity on the costs and legal implications of the move.”

Belgium needs to balance Flanders and Wallonia. Cyprus has its Greek-Turkish situation with Armenians and Maronites in the mix. I think there is some Slovakia vs. Czech Republic beef from the separation of Czechoslovakia involved...

[–] geissi@feddit.org 6 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Also Catalan is spoken as a first language by about 4 million people.

That alone does not make a good reason. There are 12 million speakers of Bavarian. Should that also become an official EU language?

Ned dass i do wos dagegn häd.

[–] Blaze@piefed.social 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Is Bavarian an official language of Bavaria? Are children taught in Bavarian most of their classes, are laws published in Bavarian, are movies released in Bavarian?

All of these are true for Catalan.

[–] geissi@feddit.org 1 points 11 hours ago

So, you're saying the number of speakers alone is not a good reason?

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago

Catalan is recognized as a language. For Bavarian it is contested and the majority of scholars consider it a dialect rather than language

Bavarian is commonly considered to be a dialect of German,[6][7][8] but some sources classify it as a separate language: the International Organization for Standardization has assigned a unique ISO 639-3 language code (bar),[9] and the UNESCO lists Bavarian in the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger since 2009; however, the classification of Bavarian as an individual language has been criticized by some scholars of Bavarian.[10][11]

Reasons why Bavarian can be viewed as a dialect of German include the perception of its speakers, the lack of standardization, the traditional use of Standard German as a roofing language, the relative closeness to German which does not justify Bavarian to be viewed as an abstand language, or the fact that no country applied for Bavarian to be entered into the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[12][13]

However if Bavaria would pay for it, i wouldn't mind them having EU documents translated too. However i doubt that they would want that, as their own laws are written in standards German and they would have to teach their entire legal system to also be able to read and write in Bavarian. This would be quite hilarious as the Bavarians would fail in their own supposed language, showing that the 12 million speakers are more casual dialect speakers instead of actually proficient in what is supposed to bei "their" language.