TEDx pushes us to be ambitious.
So this evening I would like to propose a very ambitious project
since it aims at revitalising Europe.
That’s right, nothing less!
You have to aim high!
Because Europe is an extraordinary civilizational project.
Think about it: this is the first time
a geographical union the size of an empire
has been built by adhesion and not by invasion.
Because beyond the common values,
since ancient times,
over the centuries a real convergence of civilization has been established.
Despite the separations, despite the borders, despite the differences,
both leisure and business travelers feel right at home
in Rome as much as in Dublin, Copenhagen, Seville or Athens.
The artistic and architectural foundations,
the cultural values,
the human rights, the defense of the liberties,
the rules of life, love and death
are the same everywhere.
And yet,
after a very enthusiastic beginning, political Europe is getting nowhere.
It seems that we are stuck,
something keeps us from advancing, moving forward together.
Well, some say
that it’s because Europe is too bureaucratic, too economic,
too centralized, not political enough …
Maybe.
I for one believe that what’s missing in Europe is something fundamental.
Something that all burgeoning nations have imposed,
sometimes by force,
on their population in order to obtain unity.
Something that is so important
that the countries lacking it are at constant risk of insurrection.
This something is a common language.
A people cannot be unified without a common language.
The Roman empire had Latin,
the British empire had English,
the Chinese have united through their ideograms,
the Muslim world with Koranic Arabic,
Latin America with Spanish,
while in contrast Catalonia, Belgium and Quebec
suffer great difficulties
related mainly to the absence of a common language.
Until the late 18th century,
Europe maintained some cohesion through its elites thanks to Latin.
And then, the emergence of the nation-states
was established by imposing national languages
and progressively eliminating Latin as a common language.
The emergence of nationalism and the breakdown of understanding
lead, as everyone knows, to the horrible wars of the 20th century,
which ultimately had only one virtue:
convincing us of doing everything we could to achieve peace,
to find peace …
And the best solution we have found for that
was the invention of political Europe.
But since then, we have found it difficult to understand each other.
24 official languages!
No less!
Well, in this picture from the European Union website,
everybody looks happy,
but I can assure you it is Photoshopped!
Because in reality,
having 24 languages is very difficult, very expensive, and it creates tensions.
So, of these 24 languages, three are considered working languages:
German, French and, above all, English,
which seems to be everywhere nowadays.
But the problem is that English is not everybody’s language,
English is not the Europeans’ language.
English is at most the language of some of the European states,
and what’s more, the most important of those,
unfortunately,
has just slammed the door on our common house.
In addition, contrary to popular belief,
English is a very difficult language to master,
which leads to a lot of misunderstandings and a lot of suffering.
And it also leads lots of Europeans
to be very reticent to use it
because they feel it as a symbol of injustice
and of submission to a foreign power.
Now then, if we want to unite Europe,
we need a common language that is not English!
It can’t be any of the European languages either
for we’d only be replacing one injustice with another.
It won’t be Latin, I can assure you right now,
we need to know when to turn the page.
Esperanto could have been a good candidate,
but unfortunately, it has many faults,
such as being too theoretical
and not natural enough,
which in my opinion stops it from taking hold.
So, the European language doesn’t exist.
Then what can we do?
How about being ambitious?
How about we create it?
Ridiculous?
Maybe …
So what? All the better!
It seems that all good ideas are considered ridiculous at the beginning,
then dangerous, and eventually obvious.
Because creating a language, building a language,
is possible, as history has proved.
Literary Arabic is a created language,
Swahili, the official language of Kenya and Tanzania,
is a created language,
modern Hebrew is also a created language
and the least we can say is that they work!
So why not us, in Europe?
Well then,
what characteristics should it have?
Well, we need to build a language
that is the synthesis of the European languages,
without favouring any of them;
a language that is common, but not unique –
if I am French, I keep the French but I also speak this common language –
a language that is egalitarian between men and women,
to avoid inclusion issues,
a language that is a reflection of our history,
meaning it has its roots in Greek and Latin,
and then, above all, a language that is easy,
easy to read, to learn, to understand.
As an example, a classic language like German or French
requires 1500 hours to achieve a correct level.
On the other hand, a created language requires 150 hours, 10 times less!
Enough to tell you that it is interesting to go there.
Since we’ve established
that no current language corresponds to these characteristics,
and since I had some time to waste –
it is important to waste time every now and again –
well, I have built such a language, and I’ve called it Europeo,
naturally.
So, how did I proceed?
It turns out that apart from being passionate about languages,
I am also an IT engineer, I work with software,
and so, like every other IT guy, like everyone nowadays,
I have access, we have access, to extraordinary tools.
And the first one when we talk about languages is Google Translate.
I have created a program called europeo.li,
which everyone can use –
I invite you to try it out when you have a few minutes.
It is a program in which you enter a word,
it doesn’t matter in which European language,
whichever word,
and the program will translate it thanks to Google Translate
into the 24 languages of the European Union.
It also works out the average
and subsequently calculates the mean,
taking into account the populations that speak each of these languages.
That way we obtain the most consensual word
and, in an almost democratic way, the most European word.
So you can see what it looks like,
here are some examples.
The chosen word is “ambitious”.
So if I enter it into the program,
we’ll have the 24 translations and the European word will be “ambitios”.
Another example, the word “beer” will be translated as “bier”.
Another word, the word “want” will become “voler”.
And the last example,
the word “please” will be translated as “prose”.
This will give us the most indispensable sentence
wherever we are in Europe:
“Lo vole un bier prose”.
(Applause)
Well, some other examples, if you don’t like beer,
I can propose un cidre, un vin rod, or un vin bianc,
un aqua mineral, un orange suc,
un te, or un cafe.
Well, that is me saying all these,
but for you to get a realistic idea,
so that you understand what its music and phonetics are like,
I have asked some friends from all over Europe
to make a little demonstration for you.
[Sofie, Belgia: Civilization european es extraordinar…]
[Veronica, Spania: ma necessita un lingua.]
[Maria, Irland: It es possible!]
[Romania: L’union european deve far li maximum…]
[Sofie, Belgia: … por crear e adoptar un lingua comun…]
[Maria, Irland: e por que alle citizens parla este lingua.]
[Romania: Por li futuro de Europa…]
[Sofie, Belgia: … un lingua comun es l’ultima ambition !]
Necessita une traduction?
The magic of this story
is that technology allows us to dig up a language
that is buried within us and that we all understand.
It’s not our language
and yet, without being really able to explain why,
it is our language a bit
because, in fact, it’s more than a language,
it’s our common heritage coming out,
and that’s what should lead the European language.
As you will have understood,
whether it’s Europeo or any other created language –
I’m thinking specifically about interlingue, o interlingua,
which I also invite you to discover –
to have ambition for Europe today
is to dare to state that it is possible to imagine a common language,
to put it in place, obviously with the help of linguists,
and that only thanks to it
we will be able to build a real unity in Europe.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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