In Switzerland, a citizen in Dietikon has launched the initiative to ban English at the University of Zurich. Despite no language ban in history has worked out well, the recent move made a lot of noise, says The Local Switzerland.
The social media in Switzerland got a new topic: the anti-English initiative that has been launched by the unnamed citizen of Dietikon. According to his/her proposal, the canton Zurich law of German being the official language be introduced at the university, thus, any exceptions to this law must be “well justified and approved by the government council.”
The pro-German initiator believes that English is not an official language of Switzerland, so, German should be the only one language for all students of the University of Zurich. “A professor who makes his remarks in English remains “possibly just a vassal of the United States of America”, says the unnamed voter.
In fact, such kinds of initiatives are forbidden because of multilingually of Switzerland itself. So far, it is unclear what this would mean for languages like French or Italian, other two official Swiss languages.
“According to the Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation, English is not a national language,” continues to explain his/her position the unknown Germanophile.
Swiss people have no objective argument to ban English
The recent poll by the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger proved that of 1056 people asked if only German should be allowed at the university, nearly 78% said “no”.
However, 20% said “yes” and that was a really surprising quantity. Only two percents of Swiss residents “do not care” the language issue. Meanwhile, the language experts believe such an initiative is preposterous. In a reality, English has become the language of science and of international relations.
