[lynx23]

There isn't even a english speaking country in the EU anymore, and you say english is the defacto langauge of Europe? Seriously? If someone comes to a foreign country, they better start learning the language there, or they will have a hard time integrating. I see this on a daily basis. Language barriers are the biggest issues. We have people from foreign countries working in restaurants now, and somehow the customer is now supposed to speak their language if they want to talk about the order? The future is sign language I suppose.

No, it is not as simple as you seem to put it. Egnlish is not german, period. If someone wants to prosper in germany, they better learn german.

[q-big]

> There isn't even a english speaking country in the EU anymore

Ireland and Malta have English as one of the official languages, and for Ireland English is in practice even the more important one of the official languages.

But that's it.

[pembrook]

> There isn't even a english speaking country in the EU anymore, and you say english is the defacto langauge of Europe?

Hrmmm. What language do you think people who work in the EU government use when communicating with each other? Here's a hint, it's not Portuguese, Finnish, Dutch, French or Italian.

It's definitely not German (a few historical reasons for that...).

The term lingua franca means "bridge language." That's what English is in the EU.

> ...The future is sign language I suppose.

Or, Europeans can continue doing what they already do when conducting business or dealing with tourists, which is...speak English when dealing with people from other countries.

[type0]

Yeah, Euro English is a thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English but doing bureaucracy in it on the local level isn't easy, mainly because legalese is often untranslatable