Two points:
* EN standards are not 'European Norms', which were/are a very old
set of standards to do with the Coal and Steel Community, a
forerunner of the EU. ENs are 'European Standards'.
* Nominally, 'British English' is used, but since no-one knows exactly
what that is, few people bother. There is also 'Euro-English', which
has a few word-forms that are not used by British English native
speakers (e.g. 'within the next days', different meanings of
'respectively' and 'eventually').
Best wishes
John Woodgate OOO-Own Opinions Only
J M Woodgate and Associates www.woodjohn.uk
Rayleigh, Essex UK
On 2019-08-23 08:01, Doug Powell wrote:
All,
I haven't written a Friday Question in some time, so here is a new
installment.
With the exit of Britain for the European Union (Brexit), I find it
interesting but not surprising that English remains one of the
official languages, at least for now. For many years there has been a
large body of documentation provided in English and indeed, many of
the European Norms are based on IEC standards originating in French &
English. I wonder, will this policy change in the foreseeable future?
It has been my practice to tell clients that the minimum requirement
for translation of user document(s) and product markings is they must
first be in one of the official languages and upon request by the end
user, the local language becomes a requirement as well. I haven't
checked in some time, but the Machinery Directive may require this
without end user involvement. In some cases, local regulatory
requirements may dictate which languages must be used for specific
information especially involving EHS. Incidentally, a good friend who
is in Planetary Aeronomy and Astro-geophysics has told me, if you know
just one of a handful of languages, you can just about go anywhere in
the scientific world community; these being English, French, German,
Japanese and possibly Russian.
So now there is the question of which "English" is the official
language of the EU, British (Cambridge) English? I suspect that
Brits, Aussies and Americans will all have no trouble understanding
one another, even with differences in spelling, grammar and possibly
idioms. Or as Wikipedia puts it, these are "mutually comprehensible"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_English). I noticed
one form of English not mentioned in the Wikipedia article, Texas.
All the best, Doug
PS - The bottom line, every Tom, Dick and Harry should avoid cliché at
all costs.
--
Douglas E Powell
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dougp01
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