Talk:European symbols

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An event mentioned in this article is a May 9 selected anniversary (may be in HTML comment)

"Galician - Unidos en la diversidade" - shouldn't this sentence be written in galician?!

Contents

[edit] Motto

Did it occur to anyone that it parrots the "E Pluribus Unum"? Mikkalai 00:04, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that it parrots the E pluribus unum. From many, one, means that from many colonies and many ethnic backgrounds, single American nation emerged. European United in diversity, rather refers to many diverse European nations being (finally) united, without creating single European nation, as is the case in the US example. Przepla 00:21, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Not big difference. Common currency, transparent borders, coordinated military and police, converging laws... What else do you want from "single nation"? Language is the only barrier (insignificant) against the United States of Europe. Mikkalai 01:20, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
the ONLY barrier?? I'm not against the idea of a single European nation (as long as the germans/french/british aren't running the show), but the EU is nowhere -near- being a single country. You seem to think that language is a small barrier? Try talking to someone who doesn't understand a word you say =D. And that's just part of the underlying problem, not only the languages are different, -cultures- are different. A truely united Europe? In the future maybe. But'll take a couple of generations and a -need- to cooperate that closely =). OR I'm totally wrong about this, you never know ;) --Kraftwerk--
You should have borrowed a time machine and peeked into the North American United States some 200 years ago to listen to the languages. Canada still has two of them; keine Probleme. Ciao, Mikkalai 06:40, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] May 9

There seems to be inconsistent reference to May 5 and May 9 (jcm).

The picture of the celebrations clearly occurs in front of the Brandenburg Gate so it must be in Berlin. I have changed the description of the picture from Brussels to Berlin, —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.10.87.34 (talk) 08:32, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Not similar, totally opposite!

>It is also similar to e pluribus unum (Latin for "out of many, one"), one of the mottos of the United States of America.

It is exactly opposite to the US motto! Europe refuses the american e pluribus unum "melting pot", the loss of national habits to the points where us scots have nothing but the bagpipe and US digo have nothing but the pasta to differentiate them. Europe thinks "e uno plures" as the motto, the preservation of diversity forever. If you noticed the EU has been entirely unable to agree on a single or few common official languages, if you speak english at least the french representatives will storm out in protest! All docs still must be translates to the 25 or more members languages, huge cost and burden. It may be silly, but Europe hates and fears US melting pot principle more than anything else! 195.70.32.136 10:56, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't consider it silly, but yes, it is diametrically opposed -- the U.S. are a melting pot, the EU (like Canada) prefers to be a mosaic. ;) —Nightstallion (?) Seen this already? 08:45, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Europa

What about Europa from the Greek mythology ? Frigo 06:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Motto in languages

I think the the motto tables need changing because those languages which it says are used in candidate countries and possible candidate countries are already spoken in EU member states (see Serbs of Romania, Albanians of Romania, Turks in Bulgaria, and there is a Croat minority in Hungary). In the case of "Macedonian", it is allegedly spoken in Bulgaria and Greece due to alleged minorities, but there are also confirmed minorities in Slovenia [1] and Romania [2] (both EU members). That's why I thought it would be better to include them all under a heading like in other languages used in EU countries, EU candidates and possible EU candidates. //Dirak 22:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] In varietate concordia in Turkish

Turkish equivalent of "in varietate concordia" is listed under "in languages used in the candidate countries". I think it should rather be listed under "in the official languages of member-states of the EU", because one of the two official languages of the Republic of Cyprus, which is an EU member, is Turkish (the other one is Greek). I don't know if Turkish is an official language of the EU or not, but even if it is not, it doesn't matter again, because the title reads "official languages of member-states of the EU", not "official languages of the EU". (you may say Turkish should be excluded from this list, 'coz people reading this article who have little knowledge of EU or Europe in general may assume Turkey, whose official language is Turkish, is already an EU member; then I'd say, why don't we exclude English, or French for example, 'coz people may assume New Zealand, one of whose official languages is English, or Congo-Brazzaville, whose sole official language is French, is an EU member; the list of the languages to be excluded goes on until only one of the official languages of the EU-members situated in the western half of the continent remains in the list: Irish... To avoid such a confusion Turkish may be listed under both "official languages of member states" and "languages used in candidate countries")

If the title is a mistake and will be replaced by "official languages of the EU", then I think Turkish should be listed under "in other languages used by EU citizens", because there are native minority groups in Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania whose mother tongue is Turkish, as well as a large number of immigrants from Turkey (and their descendants) who are naturalized, thus gained EU citizenship, especially in Germany, also in France, Belgium, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden as well (the number of EU citizens whose mother tongue is Turkish should be around a few millions). I don't know whether Turkish is recognized as a national/regional/subnational official/minority language in any of these countries or not (as far as I know, Bulgaria at least used to have a definition like that, I don't know if they still do), it doesn't matter, too, because the title reads "other languages used by EU citizens", not "other languages recognized as you-name-what by/in the EU". --85.97.117.160 19:41, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Two different Latin mottos?

The "original" motto is given as In varietate concordia. Why do we have, under the In other languages used by EU citizens caption, Latin listed as one of the languages and a different Latin version, In diversitate iuncti, of the motto? --SLi 00:10, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The motto in Finnish

The motto in the translated constitution is "Moninaisuudessaan yhtenäinen". I don't know where "Erilaisuudessaan yhdistynyt" comes from, but it sounds stupid. --Ztn 15:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that was an old, unofficial translation. I've removed it. Jpatokal (talk) 11:24, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Split article suggestion

I think Europe Day and In varietate concordia should be made into seperate articles. --WoodElf 09:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Too little information on Europe Day, not worth it unless there is more data put in. The information on the motto may be larger but it is just a list of translations, it would be best to stick it into columns to tidy the page up rather than create another page. What I think ought to be changed though is the agency logos, you have a huge block of these and personally I wouldn't count railways agency logo as a major symbol of the EU. But rather than create another page consisting solely of agency pictures we could just move them to the Agencies of the European Union page instead. -JLogan 09:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with WoodElf—they constitute different topics, rather than subtopics. - Lasse Havelund (p) (t) 10:05, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I agree with JLogan - there's just not enough information to have anything more than a stub article on these things. Might as well keep them in the current article. --Deadly∀ssassin 01:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Flag picture

Flag of Europe

The flag of Europe is twelve golden stars ( pointing upwards) in a circle on a blue background.

^^ In the picture the flag is upside down, isnt it? --62.165.188.88 21:39, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

No, it's not. - Ssolbergj 01:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use criteria

The use of images not in compliance with our fair-use criteria or our policy on nonfree content is not appropriate, and the images have been removed. I have reformatted it so that it reflected this, but I did find that some images were free content, so you may readd gallery format to those images only. — Moe ε 18:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] how about proposals

just found this page http://www.enoughroomforspace.org/europe2008/europe2008.html as well http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/eu!art.html#maa ... seems like there are some quite interesting proposals. worth mentioning? --91.5.201.3 16:12, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 16:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)