HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Euro English or European English, less commonly known as EU English, Continental English and EU Speak, is an alleged group of pidgin dialects of the English language as used in Europe, based on common mistranslations and the technical
jargon Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a partic ...
of the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...
(EU) and the native languages of its non-native, English-speaking population. It is mostly used among EU staff,
expatriate An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person who resides outside their native country. In common usage, the term often refers to educated professionals, skilled workers, or artists taking positions outside their home country, either ...
s and migrants from EU countries, young international travellers (such as exchange students in the EU's Erasmus programme) and European diplomats with a lower proficiency in the language.


History

The usage of the English language in Europe progressed through the 19th century, when the
British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts ...
inherited colonies in mainland Europe such as
Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It li ...
,
Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ge ...
,
Gibraltar ) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song = "Gibraltar Anthem" , image_map = Gibraltar location in Europe.svg , map_alt = Location of Gibraltar in Europe , map_caption = United Kingdom shown in pale green , mapsize = , image_map2 = Gibr ...
,
Menorca Menorca or Minorca (from la, Insula Minor, , smaller island, later ''Minorica'') is one of the Balearic Islands located in the Mediterranean Sea belonging to Spain. Its name derives from its size, contrasting it with nearby Majorca. Its capi ...
,
Heligoland Heligoland (; german: Helgoland, ; Heligolandic Frisian: , , Mooring Frisian: , da, Helgoland) is a small archipelago in the North Sea. A part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein since 1890, the islands were historically possession ...
, and the Ionian Islands, the latter three in modern-day
Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...
, Germany, and
Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...
respectively. The term "Euro English" was first used by Carstensen in 1986 to denote the adoption of
anglicism An anglicism is a word or construction borrowed from English by another language. With the rise in Anglophone media and the global spread of British and US cultures in the 20th and 21st centuries, many English terms have become widespread in o ...
s in Europe. The
enlargement of the European Union The European Union (EU) has expanded a number of times throughout its history by way of the accession of new member states to the Union. To join the EU, a state needs to fulfil economic and political conditions called the Copenhagen criteria ...
over several decades gradually diminished the influence of two of the EU's working languages ( German and French). The development of the Erasmus Programme created a new class of mobile Europeans who needed a
lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
to communicate across Europe. The question whether the appropriation of English by non-native speakers in Continental Europe is giving rise to a potential European variety of English has not yet been resolved. Mollin rejected Euro-English as a variety of English. According to Forche, many of the features suggested to be characteristic of Euro-English could be identified as learners' mistakes, although there are some nativisation tendencies. Euro-English was heavily influenced and dominated by
British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, " English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadl ...
, due to the United Kingdom having been an EU member state between 1973 and 2020. However, the UK's withdrawal in early 2020 means that the EU's scope of native English dialects has been mostly reduced to the varieties of
Hiberno-English Hiberno-English (from Latin '' Hibernia'': "Ireland"), and in ga, Béarla na hÉireann. or Irish English, also formerly Anglo-Irish, is the set of English dialects native to the island of Ireland (including both the Republic of Ireland ...
spoken in the
Republic of Ireland Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. ...
; one source believes that this will allow room for
Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
to have more of an influence on Euro-English. There is also a possibility of a Romance language replacing English. Since the Exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union in 2020, the
Government of France The Government of France ( French: ''Gouvernement français''), officially the Government of the French Republic (''Gouvernement de la République française'' ), exercises executive power in France. It is composed of the Prime Minister, who ...
wants to encourage greater use of French as a working language.


Euro English in computers

The Unicode
Common Locale Data Repository The Common Locale Data Repository Project, often abbreviated as CLDR, is a project of the Unicode Consortium to provide locale data in XML format for use in computer applications. CLDR contains locale-specific information that an operating syst ...
Project had drafted/defined "en-150" for English in Europe.


EU DGT style guide

The Directorate-General for Translation of the EU has a style guide for the English language to help write clear and readable, regular English. This guide is based on British English. It does not consider itself a guide for a distinct ''EU English'' that is different from ''real English'', and merely mentions EU-specific terminology as a distinguishing feature. It prefers British English to American English, but recommends avoiding very colloquial British terms. This style guide defines the thousand separator as space or as a comma, and the plural of euro as euro.


EU glossary

The many years of the EU's existence have led to the appearance of EU-specific vocabulary.


Grammar


Conjugation

Non-native English speakers frequently drop the third person singular suffix (-s). For example: ''he often call meetings''. Speakers of Euro English, in particular those from
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, wh ...
, may use the progressive aspect with stative predicates, such as saying ''I'm coming from Spain'' instead of ''I come from Spain''. This is typically not allowed in Standard English, but it is permissible in Euro English.


Deixis

A construction that appears with very high frequency in European speakers of English is, for example, Euro English ''we were five people at the party'', as opposed to Standard English ''there were five people at the party''. Such constructions introduce a type of mandatory "
clusivity In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addresse ...
" to the English language, in which the speaker always signifies whether they are a part of some bigger group. Euro English also features slightly more frequent usage of the indefinite personal pronoun ''one'', such as in ''one can protect one's country''. This mirrors the more frequent usage of such pronouns in European languages, but is also sometimes used as third-person reflexive pronouns, such as with French and , Scandinavian ''sig'' and ''sin'', German , etc.


Inflection

Some words are given a plural with a final "s" in Euro-English, such as "informations" and "competences", to match similar words in European languages (such as and in French), while this pluralisation is incorrect in
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...
or
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...
.


Register

It is extremely frequent among European speakers of English to prefer the
singular they Singular ''they'', along with its inflected or derivative forms, ''them'', ''their'', ''theirs'' and ''themselves'' (or ''themself''), is a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. It typically occurs with an unspecified antecedent, in sente ...
in formal contexts, whereas native English speakers in the US and UK have historically considered it an informal
colloquialism Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in convers ...
. This mirrors the usage of "singular plurals", in terms of levels of formality, in European languages, such as French , German , older Spanish , Danish and Norwegian , even though all of these examples are strictly used in the second person.


Vocabulary

The English plural of the word euro was first defined as ''euro'' without a final ''s'', before becoming ''euros'' with a final ''s''.


See also

* English language *
International English International English is the concept of using the English language as a global means of communication similar to an international auxiliary language, and often refers to the movement towards an international standard for the language. Rela ...
*
African English Dialects are linguistic varieties that may differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling and grammar. For the classification of varieties of English only in terms of pronunciation, see regional accents of English. Overview Dialects can be de ...
*
English as a lingua franca English as a lingua franca (ELF) is the use of the English language "as a global means of inter-community communication" and can be understood as "''any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communica ...


References


Bibliography

* *


Further reading


English in the European Union – Worlds of English (2/4)
Open University The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study of ...
* *


External links


Euro-English
English in the European Union. Teti Musmeci, Marina Foti
The Allusionist podcast
with
Helen Zaltzman Helen Zaltzman is an English podcaster, broadcaster and writer. She produces the linguistics podcast ''The Allusionist'', the entertainment podcast '' Answer Me This!'', and the ''Veronica Mars'' recap podcast ''Veronica Mars Investigations''. ...
{{English dialects by continent 1986 neologisms Languages of Europe Dialects of English British English