How Young People See EU and Enlargement
Fifth Question Interpretation - Languages and EU - Group work: Guzzon, Fabris, Pastoricchio and Soyer
We analysed the fifth question: “How many and which language/s should be used in the European Union?” and we generated two tables trying to process the information acquired thanks to the interviews.
In the first table, we arranged the information into four fields and precisely according the total number of interviewers, their gender and average age.
After that the analysis went into detail and therefere we needed a second table where information was to be classified into eight records and four fields. In the former the number of male and female interviewers as well as their average age were entered, in the latter the languages considered the ones suitable to favour communication in Eu were used as a reference to process data.
The objective of our group work was to gather data about young people's ideas of the European Union’s programs and what they think of the languages the European Union was meant to gather young people response and feedback more than detailed knowledge of the Union’s programs.
Hence lots of the interviewed expressed personal opinions rather than detailed knowledge about the subject.
However the 86% of the interviewers considered the English language the one suitable for communication in the European Union, while the 2,8% of the interviewers considered minority languages as important as any other language. In addition, the 75% of the interviewers answered that people should know two or more languages in order to successfully communicate in the European Union.
Considering the different language chosen by the interviewers and their average age, our survey came to the conclusion that the youngest among the interviewed are they who chose two or more languages besides English, while the oldest people are they who chose minority languages.
The different options seem to implies that the majority of the people, the youngest included, would like a common knowledge of some languages to be adopted as suitable vehicle as working languages; on the other hand the oldest people are worried about protecting minority languages, even if they are spoken only only on a local or regional level.
If our interviews may be seen as representative of young people's perception of the issue discussed, the information considered brings to the conclusion that most people are in line with the European Union’s multilingualism policy according to which every European citizen had to knowat least three languages .