Tag Archives: language

Öttinger vs. English as a working language

By Kosmopolit | Published: January 25, 2010
Günther Öttinger famously declared a few years ago that English will become the global working language (“Englisch wird die Arbeitssprache”).So, his job as the EU commissioner for energy is certainly a great opportunity for him to use his English skills… But just watch for yourself:
Posted in Brussels, humour | Also tagged , , | 4 Comments

EU Terminology for Dummies

By Kosmopolit | Published: July 25, 2009
A short guide for bloggers and journalists that write about EU affairs and are exposed to “Eurojargon“. Not only acronyms are an art form but also normal EU terminology can be tricky. Language plays an important role in constructing a certain image of the EU and journalists and bloggers should be aware of that.  The [...]
Posted in Brussels, European Debate | Also tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

One cannot not communicate

By Kosmopolit | Published: April 3, 2007
Paul Watzlawick has died at the age of 85. I must say Invented Reality: How Do We Know What We Believe We Know? was one of the books that really influenced my scientific (constructivist) thinking. The book basically examines how individual, social, scientific, and ideological “realities” are constructed and suggests that reality is invented rather [...]
Posted in Humanities & Social Sciences | Also tagged | Leave a comment

Tower of Babel

By Kosmopolit | Published: February 8, 2007
Every now and then a little language war breaks out in the EU institutions. Spain lobbies for Spanish to become one of the official working languages (at the moment: English, French and German) because it is one of most spoken languages worldwide. Germany (sometimes together with Austria) claims that German became more popular after the [...]
Posted in Brussels, European Debate, European Union | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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