European politicians and public servants gathered in the Swiss capital earlier this month to discuss the increasing dominance of the English language in the continent.

With four official languages - French, German, Italian and Romansh - Switzerland is acutely aware of linguistic divides, and so may be naturally sympathetic to European worries about an "invasion" of English words.

This month's conference in Bern was organized by the Swiss Federal Chancellery. It featured speakers from across Europe, including France, where the official language has traditionally been the subject of strict government regulation.

French representative Alfred Gilder warned against incorporating too many English terms into other European languages, saying that "if a language is not capable of creating new words to describe new advances, it will die."

The prevalence of English on the internet and in the academic fields of science and finance were cited as reasons for the language's growing power.

Although absorbing foreign terms has always been a part of English language development, the difference now is that English is "the first truly global language and it is spewing out words at a pace that other languages have no chance to compete with," journalist Clare O'Dea observed.

Bénédicte Madinier, representing the French Ministry of Culture, told the 200-strong conference that a common language of communication was necessary, but the "lingua franca" must not become the "lingua unica."

Conference speakers promoted the teaching of second national languages before English and the need for European languages to coin their own terms as solutions to the perceived problem of English colonization of language.

13 December 2009