Thread by @SamJamesMorgan

🇮🇪 News for language nerds (the best kind of people)

Big case this week at European Court of Justice. 🧵:

The court will on Thursday hear its first case ever filed in the Irish language. It’s to do with labelling of veterinary medicines, but could signal a bigger shift in proceedings than that suggests /.

Cases can be filed in any of the EU’s 24 official languages. Irish has had that status since Ireland joined in 1973, but no plaintiffs have availed themselves of that option. Until now.../

As is so often the case, this one has been filed by a language activist, who disagrees with how Irish law has interpreted EU labelling rules. Irish firms must label in either English *or* Irish. Inevitably, no one has chosen the latter /.

Ireland’s high court agrees that this is not in keeping with EU rules but warns that a new law due to enter force in 2022 will render the point moot. But still asks ECJ advice on how to proceed /.

On Irish in general in the EU: there’s been a derogation in place up until now meaning only the most important docs need translating. That expires in 2022 when Irish becomes a full working language of the Union /.

Recruitment has ramped up to get more Irish speakers in the Commission translation division. This comes against a background of English potentially diminishing in importance in Brussels /.

English is a working language alongside French and German. Despite Brexit it will retain that status due to simple practicalities. Are Finnish officials going to communicate with Portuguese counterparts in FR or DE? Unlikely /.

But Irish’s ascendancy to full linguistic parity with 23 other tongues, plus this practical recognition at the ECJ, is a big milestone, and should be celebrated /.

The daydreamer in me wonders how other languages will be treated in hypothetical (atm unlikely) EU expansion /.

Montenegrin and Serbian *are* different to Croatian, but very very similar. How would that be handled? It’s potentially enough of a headache to delay enlargement all by itself (!)/.

What about Gaelic? Scottish independence and “keep a light on”, means it must factor into the debate. Insisting on Gaelic’s recognition would not be popular but be a powerful political point (we are not England, or the U.K.) /.

There’s always the Luxembourg option of course, which does not insist on official status for Luxembourgish (helpful that everyone speaks FR, DE, EN, PT etc)... /.

Don’t underestimate language’s political power eh. There was recently a push to get Turkish on the books, in order to facilitate Cypriot reunification efforts. That’s since dissipated unfortunately euractiv.com/section/langua…

(This is all very hypothetical, I reiterate, but cannot be discounted I would argue) /.

So there we go. Irish’s status was actually one my first articles so it holds a special place in my heart euractiv.com/section/langua…

NB by 'full working language', I mean same status as all the others, not same level as EN/FR/DE

By 'not popular', I mean not popular in these theoretical EU accession talks. Extra language combination means extra funding needed. Would also be difficult for Scotland to insist on it given the status of the language at home

EU members DO have the right to nominate whatever official languages they want though, so in an independent Scotland, anything is possible...