On 19 Jul 2003 16:52:22 GMT, "Emmanuel.Gustin"
wrote in Message-Id:
:

Larry Dighera wrote:

: The action of the French Culture Ministry would seem a bit moot given
: the fact that English is now the official language of the European
: Union.

There is no single official language of the EU. When it
comes to official publications, all EU languages are equal.
(Just imagine how people would react, with justification,
if official documents were only available in a language
many of them do not understand.) For everyday administrative
work, there are a number of preferred languages (five IIRC)
of which English is one, but French another.

Emmanuel



Indeed it appears that there are 11 official EU languages:

http://www.ibeurope.com/Issues/LAN.htm
There are currently eleven official languages of the European
Union - Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek,
Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. Following enlargement it
is likely that a further eight official languages may be added :
Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian
and Slovene.

Official EU documents are made available in all official languages
of the European Union. Internally the Commission works in three
procedural languages, English, French and German, and material
generated inside the Commission for internal use only is drafted
in one or more of these and translated only between those three if
needed. ...




http://www.delchn.cec.eu.int/en/eu_g...tm#eulanguages
What are the official languages of the European Union?

What are the official languages of the European Union? The very
first Regulation enacted by the Council of what is now the
European Union, was concerned with language. On 15 April 1958. The
Council laid down that the official languages of the Member States
should be both the official languages of the Community and the
working languages of the Community institution.

Every Member State's official language is an official language of
the EU. As several Member States share the same official language
this means there are 11 official languages. They are (in
alphabetical order): Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French,
German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish.


On the other hand:


http://www.absolutelyjokes.com/ethni...-language.html
European Union Decision On Official Language

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby
English will be the official language of the EU rather than German
which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her
Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room
for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would
be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this
will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be
dropped in favour of the"k". This should klear up konfusion and
keyboards kan have 1 less letter. There will be growing publik
enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be
replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20%
shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are
possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters,
which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil
agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is
disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze
unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar
changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil
be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to
understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen ve vil
tak over ze vorld!