Mehrsprachigkeit für Europa – öffentliches Schweigen, linguistische Distanzen

The paper discusses one of the most outstanding paradoxes of the linguistic situation of the European Union: Notwithstanding numerous official declarations proclaiming multilingualism as the linguistic objective of the Union, there is a continuous decline of foreign language knowledge throughout the Union. The paper characterises the European language situation (§ 2), discusses the various phases of European unification and scenarios of the future "euroglossy" (§ 3), and it analyses the reluctant position of European linguists with regard to nearly all issues of language policy (§ 4). It ends with an open question and a proposal regarding Europe’s linguistic future.