The differences in regional accents between say local Dublin English and the Supra regional Dublin accent (i.e. without even leaving the city) are reasonably large. I dunno what italian dialectal differences is, but Englishes are often very large city.
I'm not saying it's impossible; Trainspotting, for example, is mostly written in phonetic Scottish english. Many english speakers find it difficult to read though, for precisely that reason…
It's actually worse than this; you'd need centralised control over pronunciation as well. Otherwise, would a speaker of local Dublin english spell tree and three the same? And should a speaker of South Eastern Hiberno-English spell three and tree differently, even though the difference in their t and th is indistinguishable to most speakers of British English?
The lack of exact correspondence between spelling and pronunciation is a feature, not a bug.
This is interesting, but I suspect Maersk's work on ammonia/Methanol engines may beat it to decarbonising shipping. Interestingly Maersk Oil tried using wind power a few years ago - iirc they found it got about a 10% reduction in fuel usage, which is not nothing, but it very far from perfect…
>If we ever want to get close to the dream of an European Federation we need to get the Army done.
If we want an EU army, we need a single EU foreign policy first. Otherwise who decides when to use it?
And if we have a single EU foreign policy, how do we deal with NATO? Do state that are non-aligned just have to suck it up? How do we deal with France's military adventures in Africa? Do the countries that object to them have to suck it up and Françafrique quickly collapse? What's the EU position on the Carlingford Lough Dispute? Is Imia in Greece, or not?
> Then maybe some EU equivalent of the FBI (no Interpol doesn't cut it, something with trained men with guns and bugs and all, and EU only).
This bit is ongoing; The European Public Prosecutor is the first step in this, and frontex are already armed. Note that despite the EU having armed forces, the oversight mechanisms for them are, so far, atrocious. Perhaps we should fix those before expanding to an army?
> Even a possible future improvement of the relationships between Europe and Russia is contingent on this: we need to be able to talk with Russia without the US sitting at the table, and to have the option to also act against the interests of the US. Which, frankly, don't really coincide that much with that of Europe anymore.
Do you have a course of action that you think we should be pursuing that we cannot currently? I can't think of one, but it may exist. And if you do, is it one that would command support in all EU states, or is the first step getting foreign policy to move to QMV? And if that's the case, how do you plan to win a referendum in Ireland to (effectively) abolish Irish neutrality?
I'm not saying it's impossible; Trainspotting, for example, is mostly written in phonetic Scottish english. Many english speakers find it difficult to read though, for precisely that reason…