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After January 1, 2007, there will be 27 countries in the European Union. In how many ways will it be possible to write the names of these countries using official EU languages?
Question
#73645. Asked by davejacobs. (Dec 22 06 10:59 AM)
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davejacobs
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A few more than that I think, as each language has its own way of naming all the countries.
For example Germany in English, Deutchland in German, Allemagne in French, I don't know what in Greek, Romanian, etc.
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zbeckabee
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Effective 1/1/07 (January 1, 2007 OR January 1, 2007 --depending on how you read it) there will be 23.
The languages of the European Union are languages used by people within the member states of the European Union. They include the twenty official languages of the European Union (with Bulgarian, Irish and Romanian due to gain this status on 1 January 2007) along with a range of others.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_EU
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Baloo55th
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Some countries will have the same names in some of the official languages - for example in Czech and Slovak, or possibly Finnish and Estonian, or Danish/Norwegian/Swedish. The maximum will be 23 ways per country, and I leave it to someone else to find out the minimum for any particular country. The reason for the official languages numbering less than the nations is that Belgium uses French and Flemish which is virtually identical to Dutch, Austria uses German, and Luxembourg uses both French and German and while Letzeburgisch is an official language in Luxembourg it isn't used for official purposes, unlike Irish which is, even though all the Irish speakers also speak English and it isn't used for international purposes.
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davejacobs
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27 country names in each of the 23 official languages makes a maximum of 621 different ways to name the EU countries. (Up to 31 Dec 2006 only 25 countries and 20 languages, making a maximum of 500 versions.)
The trick is to eliminate those versions which are the same in more than one language. I've failed to find a site that lists the names of EU countries in any other language than English, although surely they must exist.
By the way Baloo, a good answer but the mention of Norwegian was a slip, as Norway is not in the EU!
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Baloo55th
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OK. Scrub Norwegian. I suppose the only way of finding out is to Google for European Comminity languases in each of the languages. Which would take more time searching than I'm prepared to spend on it.
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