Brexit Could Create a New Language – Euro-English

• 09.20.2017, 18:08
•  Europe,  World

The independent

Brexit could lead to the development of a new form of the English language, according to a new academic paper, The independent reports.

Dr Marko Modiano, of Gavle University in Sweden, said there were already signs that “Euro-English” was developing its own distinct way of speaking.

And this could eventually be codified in a dictionary and taught in schools in much the same way that American or Australian English is today if English is retained as the lingua franca of the European Union after the UK leaves.

The Europeans might also decide to adopt American spellings, Dr Modiano said, which would add about 443 million to the total population using that system.

For example, “eventual” is now used as “a synonym for possible or possibly”, Dr Modiano wrote in the journal World Englishes.

“Subsidiarity” has come to mean “the principle that legal decrees should be enacted as close to people as possible”; “Berlaymont” means “bureaucracy”, “conditionality” means “conditions”; and “semester” is “used to mean six months”.

The EU would have only about five million native speakers of English after Brexit, representing about 1 per cent of population.