Here's another little mess that Prescott and the EU have cooked up

Romanish is spoken by about 1% of the Swiss population, but it's still a distinct and living language

Anyway, even if you ignore it, that's three - French, German (FSVO) and Italian - all of which are spoken by sizeable percentages of the population

Reply to
raden
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In message , snipped-for-privacy@isbd.co.uk writes

No, it's a distinct language almost exclusively spoken in that area

Widely might not be strictly correct here, but you're splitting hairs

Reply to
raden

In England, it's probably English, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati...

Reply to
Bob Eager

Thank you Maxie. I knew common sense would prevail.

Reply to
IMM

Last time I looked at the new regs, extending a ring main (except for in a kitchen) came under "minor works", so is exempt. If you think it would be better to put in a new ring rather than extending the existing, then that brings in the notification and fees or niceic. Now might be a good idea to put circuit breakers in those spare ways in your consumer units with a loop of t+e connected :-)

Reply to
John Armstrong

All of them have one primary language. The remaining languages are mostly also rans and on their way to becoming dead, apart from for the traditionalists who insist on keeping languages with no users and no future. Belgium-french, India-english/Hindi, Indonesia-don't know, UK-english, Canada-english. Where they don't have a dominant common culture/religion/legal system, they have civil wars!

Yugoslavia, Kashmir, Indonesia, Chechnya etc.

Europe as a nation state is a politicians pipe dream and a British nightmare.

Anyway don't let the EU facts stand in the way of uninformed prejudice! If the British wish to lose their way of life, at the end of the day, they only have themselves to blame.

Regards Capitol

Reply to
Capitol

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

And its powers, apart from the well-known one of being able to sack the entire Commission in one go, are?

Reply to
Joe

Actually voter turnout in Switzerland is very low for a Western democracy (possibly because they are called on to vote so often) and is a recognised problem.

And while Swiss people say they don't want to be told what to do by Brussels, economic reality means they have to go along with what Brussels wants anyway.

Reply to
Jo Lonergan

Five distinct dialects and an artificial common version, actually. It is used on a day-to-day basis in some areas.

High German is a second language even for the German-speaking Swiss, who learn it at school. An amazing number of people also speak English very competently, as their second, third or even fourth language.

Reply to
Jo Lonergan

I found in Switzerland that many people speak English to each other at work. It appears the business language of all Europe, even in parts of Paris.

Reply to
IMM

That very much depends on the people with whom you are doing business and the level. It's a dangerous assumption to imagine that English is the preferred business language in quite a number of places.

Reply to
Andy Hall

Actually it's compulsory in many companies now, even French ones like Thomson. All company documentation must be in English - which includes minutes of meetings - and if there is a non speaker in the room, everybody must revert to English for all discussions.

That's not to say it's 'preferred' of course :-)

Reply to
G&M

That was my point. It depends on the circumstances. Within multinational corporations, what you describe is quite typical. It's a different situation in a supplier/customer relationship.

Reply to
Andy Hall

Don't you believe it, the EU Human Rights act has more opt out's than Maggie could ever have dreamed about...

Reply to
:::Jerry::::

Just that none of them seem to apply to anyone in the uk, other than the ones about not giving taxpayers money out as legal aid unless the need is clearly evident.

I sympathise with the poster about Welsh speaking requirements. I believe that this is one of the reasons for the economic decline of Wales over the past half century. Many of their best people had no real alternative but to leave the area. It was said that French is required for Government jobs in Canada. Maybe so, but Quebec which virtually only speaks French, has been in economic decline for as long as I can remember, with no US company being prepared to invest long term in the province. One of my previous US employers shut down the plant there and one of the reasons quoted was communications were too difficult. Unless things have changed recently, it was said that 80% of Canadians lived within 20 miles of the border with the US, I don't hear much French spoken there! English is the Canadian dominant language, French is the PC effect!

Regards Capitol

Reply to
Capitol

The collapse of the mining and manufacturing sectors might have had something to do with it. They were located in the South, which isn't the Welsh-speaking area. In any case, Welsh is learned in school, so the "best people" had every opportunity to learn it, if they really wanted one of the few jobs for which it's necessary. The Irish language is more protected than Welsh, and the Irish economy hasn't actually been languishing since 1974.

Pity they didn't look into the situation in Quebec, which is well-known, before they set up the plant. Bad planning and cultural insensitivity are nothing new, unfortunately. How would US workers feel if one of the Japanese firms that own such a lot of their country insisted on working in Japanese?

Reply to
Jo Lonergan

Welsh is the most subsided (is that is the right word) language in the world. Minority languages are all fine, but common sense has to prevail. Having Welsh dual language road signs and all documents in duel language, in a country in which most can't speak it, is downright silly.

PR gone mad.

Japanese is not the main language of the USA, English is, it is also the main language of Canada. In the past 35 years the French in Quebec have attempted to push English out totally. Very foolish when English is on three sides.

English is the world's No. 1 language. Any country that has it as their main language and attempts to get rid of it will decline. Smart countries adopt it, or have it as their business or , No. 2 language. Eastern Europeans are clambering to learn it. It will be the business language there inside a generation.

Reply to
IMM

Don't you mean 'PC' gone made ?

English in the No. 1 international / business language in the world, the most widely spoken language IIRC is Spanish (in one version or another).

Reply to
:::Jerry::::

If South Wales isn't a Welsh speaking area, why should some public sector job opportuinities be limited to Welsh speakers only? And is Welsh taught sufficiently well in every secondary school that anyone could learn the language?

Reply to
Paper2002AD

Not so. Less than half the population of South America speak it. Brazil has over half the population and speak Portuguese. They speak it in Central America and in Mexico, except in one country, which is English. In south America English is in one country (Guiana) and spoken widely in another (Surinam). Equatorial Guinea I think speak Spanish in Africa. And of course spoken in Spain and in some areas not even the first language.

English is the UK, north America, Australasia (a whole continent), Much of Africa, India (the No. 1 language, the only language all the regions can communicate in), Pakistan as No. 2, as in Malaysia, Cyprus, etc. And in many Caribbean and Pacific Islands. In the Middle East road signs are in Arabic and English. English is also the second language of countless countries. In Scandinavia it is almost spoken as much as the native languages. English has replaced Spanish in the Philippines.

English is far more widely spoken than Spanish, and by far more people.

Reply to
IMM

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