VUB-Advanced Masters in Linguistics 2013-2014

Prof. Piet Van der Craen

Carmen Pnu

Internship report
Research regarding the use of Romanian language in the European Commission
institutions and in the Brussels area

1.
2.
3.
4.

Introduction
Questionnaire analysis
Conclusions
Annexes

Introduction
The following report represents the conclusions of the analysis of the questionnaire found
in annex. The above-mentioned questionnaire represents a series of forty-four questions
regarding the language of choice used in the European institutions and in the region of
Brussels (since all of the persons that filled out the questionnaire are Brussels residents
and have been for at least a number of years) by employees from Romania.
The questions were developed taking into account information about the European Union
institutions, Brussels and multilingualism. Most of the persons that filled out the
questionnaire were acquaintances and the rest were colleagues of said acquaintances. All
of them were Romanian citizens that work in Brussels for the European Union
institutions. The aim of the questions was not only to see a personal, inside view of the
use of a state members language, but to see how this affects the use of English, French
and Dutch, and how a multilingual complex environment helps develop other language
skills.
1

Questionnaire analysis
The questionnaire was filled by a number of twelve participants. The first four questions
are of demographic nature and their purpose is to confirm the typology of the persons
interviewed. Out of the twelve, eight were female and four were male. The number of
persons interviewed might not offer a precise statistic regarding the percentage of male
and female employed by the institutions, but it might be safe to assume that most of them
are female, due to the nature of the jobs. They are all employed by the different
Directorates-General of the European Commission and they all come from Romania.
Their ages are between 28 years old and 44 years old and have different positions and
types of contracts.
Question number 3 asks the participants to state their nationality and all of them
answered that they have Romanian citizenship (even though some might have renounced
and opted for the Belgian one for example). Romanian has important Hungarian and
German minorities, recognized by the state; question 4 is aimed at them, in order to
acknowledge an extra, almost-mother-tongue-like use of two languages, Romanian and
Hungarian. Out of the twelve, we found one person belonging to the Hungarian ethnic
group and one person to the German one. This counts to the fact that for every other
language spoken by regular participants they also speak the Hungarian dialect of
Romania and the Saxon-German dialect. None of them belonged to other Romanian
ethnic groups, even though we are sure there are. We further asked them to define their
mother tongue, all of the ten Romanians stated that Romanian was their mother tongue,
while as, the two members of the two Romanian ethnic groups, said Hungarian and
German. We most note that the German origin pupils would traditionally speak at home
a Saxon-German dialect, which is very different from the official modern German that is
2

taught in schools (we could say that they use three languages in different circles, all of
them of equal importance, though the Saxon dialect is rapidly vanishing). Also, the
Hungarian spoken in Romania, has its own characteristics, especially when it comes to
vocabulary, but the two are mutually intelligible.
The next questions refer to the employment in the European institutions, for how long
have they worked and if they always worked in Brussels. Three persons stated that
theyve been working for the institutions for 1-2 years, five persons said 3-6 years, two
persons said 6-8 years and two persons said that they have been working in this field for
more than eight years. All of the persons said that they live in Brussels. Next questions
refer to the type of contract that they have, and eight of them said that they have a
contractual position, i.e. a fixed-term contract, while four of them said that they have
permanent contracts. One of the persons said that they hold an interim position.
Out of the twelve, ten persons said that they have studied in Romania and all of them
attended a public institution. Eight of them also have studies finished in countries other
than their native one. Five persons chose a French university, one a Belgium one, one a
UK university and one person a Greek one. Out of the eight persons that attended
universities abroad, six of them participated in an Erasmus exchange program. All of
them defined the Erasmus experience enriching. When it comes to English language
acquisition during their Erasmus stay, most of the participants stated that it helped them
to some degree and two said very little and one answered to a great degree. Regarding
the acquisition of the hosts country language, since for most of them was French, the
answers were positive: all of them answered fluent , while the person who attended the
Greek university said basic.
During the Erasmus experience, Romanian was rarely used in an academic or a social
context, most of them said that they only use it when talking to the family. Regarding the
studies, six of them attended courses in French and two of them in English. The only use
of Romanian was for some administrative purposes. All of them answered yes when
asked if the language of the courses was one of the official languages of the European
Union. With three exceptions, all of the persons said that the studies helped them prepare
for the job at the European Institutions. The next questions refer to the languages the
3

subjects speak-five of them answered Romanian, English and French, five of them
answered Romanian, English and notions of at least two other Latin languages, two of
them stated Romanian, English, French and another.
When asked what other languages they use while in Romania, all of them checked
multiple answers: two of them checked One of the official language of the minorities of
Romania, English in a an academic environment, one of them answered other and
English, one answered Other and the rest said they use English when speaking to
tourists.
When asked if they chose to study Dutch, in order to integrate themselves in Brusselss
bilingual environment, only two answered affirmative. However, seven of them said that
they participated in language courses as a part of the free courses they could take as an
EU employee. One of them said that they went to English classes, one to Chinese, two
Dutch, one to Turkish and two to German. The four remaining said that they would
participate in language courses: Italian, German and Dutch.
Question 32, regarding the use of an official EU language other than English in the
institutions, made half of the persons say somewhat true, the other half to say
seldom. The use of English at work : one answered 100%, five answered 90%, five
answered 80% , one answered less than 50%. When asked how often they use English
outside work, the majority said that they use it less than 50% of the time, because they
use French. All of them answered that they use Romanian/Hungarian/German less than
10% of the time at work and less than 50% of the time outside work. Romanian is used
less than 10% when talking to colleagues and only three of them answered that they used
Romanian when talking to superiors. None of them said that they used Romanian in an
official email. However, all of them said that they used Romanian in social situations
while in Brussels. Two persons said that they know someone that is learning Romanian.
All of the persons asked said that knowing one language makes it easier to learn another.
When asked what language is easier to speak, after a multicultural experience, seven of
them said English and five said French. All of them agreed that Brussels helped develop
their language skills.
4

Conclusions
This report confirms the fact that Erasmus experience and attending higher education in
a country other than ones own, is a beneficial multicultural experience, that it helps
develop precious language skills; good knowledge of French and English are some of the
most important tools while working for an European institution and even though it is
expected that an European should know English and at least two other languages, and
while most of them do, English is sufficient for office use and even outside social use,
since more and more people speak English, and if not, conversational level French is also
enough, but not desired. The use of ones native language is restricted to friends, family
and colleagues from the same country and the occasional shops that sell products from
the motherland. This is only the case of Romanian, other official EU languages, might
have a different status, for example German, Spanish or Italian, since, these countries
offer more EU employees.