Brexit need not lead to an Englixit too

Aspiring EUrocrats have had to speak at least one of the three major official languages —English, French and German —and have an excellent working knowledge of at least one of the other 24 official EU languages. Little wonder then that English has become the lingua franca, given that it is also the common language of business. However, the post-Brexit call by some peeved EUrocrats for Englixit — to be replaced by French or German as EU’s official language —may cause more problems. English’s diminished status as the language of only 1% of EU (Ireland and Malta) has predictably led to this call for its ouster, but would France and Germany willingly settle for the other’s language? EU only has to look at India —where not sovereign nations but many linguistically distinct states prefer a ‘foreign’ language like English as the lingua franca rather than allow the ‘imposition’ of indigenous Hindi — to realise the pitfalls of the gambit.

Besides, would job-hungry Poles, Romanians or Greeks want to be proficient in a language that gives them access to the Anglosphere — and, therefore, to EU’s largest trading partner, the US — or just haggling prowess within the European market? Of course they could be better off opting, instead, for the languages of their second- or third-largest business partners: Chinese and Russian.