Euroexitになれば英語はEsperantoに

英語がEU関連機関で共通語になっていることを取り上げたエッセイがEconomistにありました。英国がEUを脱退すれば英語が中立のEsperantoの役割をEU内で果たすことができるという本気か皮肉かわからないことを伝えています。上の動画によればスカンジナビアや東欧がEUに加盟してから英語の使用が増えていったようですね。

英語学習者として面白いと感じたのはEU関連機関ではフランス語などの影響を受けたEuro-Englishと呼ばれる英語が使われているということ。

Johnson
English becomes Esperanto
The institutions of the European Union will still speak (a kind of) English if Britain leaves
Apr 23rd 2016 | From the print edition

A sort of Euro-English, influenced by foreign languages, is already in use. Many Europeans use “control” to mean “monitor” because contrôler has that meaning in French. The same goes for “assist”, meaning to attend (assister in French, asistir in Spanish). In other cases, Euro-English is just a naive but incorrect extension of English grammatical rules: many nouns in English that don’t properly pluralise with a final “s” are merrily used in Euro-English, such as “informations” and “competences”. Euro-English also uses words like “actor”, “axis” or “agent” well beyond their narrow range in native English.
Jeremy Gardner, an official at the European Court of Auditors, has written a guide to “Misused English Words and Expressions in EU Publications”, which attempts to correct many of these quirks of Euro-English. It could be that whatever native-speakers might consider correct, Euro-English, second language or no, is becoming a dialect fluently spoken by a large group of people who understand each other perfectly well. Such is the case of English in India or South Africa, where a small group of native speakers is dwarfed by a far larger number of second-language speakers. One effect may be that this dialect would lose some of the tricky bits of English, such as the future perfect progressive (“We will have been working”) that aren’t strictly necessary.

面白いのは英語ネイティブにとって誤った使い方であってもお互い通じるのでそちらの使い方が優勢になっているという現象ですが、ここで紹介されていたガイドブックは一語一語誤って使われやすい語を紹介してくれていました。例えばTOEICでもおなじみのdelayの使われ方は以下のとおり。

Misused English Words and Expressions in EU Publications

DELAY
Explanation
‘Delay’ is often used in the EU to mean ‘deadline’ or ‘time limit’. In English ‘delay’ always refers to something being late or taking longer than is necessary. You cannot, therefore comply with (or ‘respect’) a delay.
Example
‘In order to respect the delay for transmission, the Commission can make small changes to the notification provided that they are agreed with the notifying member prior to transmission.
Alternatives
time limit, deadline, time allowed.

ウィキペディアにも見出語が立っていて、使用例なども少し紹介してくれています。

（ウィキペディア）
Euro English is a set of varieties of English used in Continental Europe and especially in the institutions of the European Union or among young mobile Europeans (such as in the Erasmus programme).

ネイティブからみれば「正しくない英語」でもそちらが多数派になれば定着してしまう。言語の面白いところではあります。2008年の動画は英語の影響力が大きくなっているドイツでの状況を描いています。別に日本だけの状況ではないんですよね。