Having their say on multilingualism, electric cars and climate taxes

The following comments reflect the views of DW-WORLD.DE readers. Not all reader comments have been published. DW-WORLD.DE reserves the right to edit for length and appropriateness of content

German language institute spotlights multilingualism

From the standpoint of travelling and working throughout the EU, it is certainly the case that English can be regarded as a lingua franca to a reasonable extent. However, it is my practical experience that a better-than-survival fluency in German, Dutch, French, Italian and Spanish is worthwhile knowledge to have. This may seem to be a somewhat ambitious call, but with a reasonable degree of application via the proliferation of online resources, language meet-up clubs, etc., it is not such a tall order. This is helped by the fact that the aforementioned languages have some commonality. -- Charles Smyth, Great Britain

In Germany, France, Italy and Spain the television institutions broadcast the protection of their national languages by dubbing movies so that everything is watched in the national language. It is proven that in countries that allow people to watch the movies in their original versions, people speak two or three languages including the national one. In Romania, due to that, the young people and even people from previous generations speak French and English as well. In countries where movies are watched in English, children are able to start learning at a very early age. Take, for instance, the surprise of the Spaniards and French who simply cannot understand how Romanians can so easily learn and manage their languages and already speak English. I know that as I, myself, speak five languages and even six if I count German. I remember that, as a teenager, every time I would start speaking French, people around me would show an honest respect and consideration for such ability. Keeping people from such knowledge in the name of conservation of the national language is economically damaging. -- Iacob Vasile, Romania

Merkel and Sarkozy call for tax to fight climate change

Climate change has been happening since the beginning of this planet with the atmosphere. And of course the other object that affects this place, the Earth, would be that bright shiny orb called the Sun. To call for a tax on this is just ridiculous. As for the money exchange from rich countries to poorer countries: Where do I stand in line to get my cash? You could call it a World Wide Welfare Check. As a poor middle class person, I would go to work all day so I could get taxed to pay some other poor person in a third world country where the leader is more corrupt than the country I live in. Great, just great. -- Jack, Canada

Merkel promotes green cars at Frankfurt Motor Show

Batteries will become more efficient on the whole and their price will drop, whereas the oil will simply go up and up as it becomes scarcer. It is as simple as that. The range of current electric vehicles (EVs) is sufficient to meet the daily driving needs of more than 95 percent of drivers. The vast majority of people (95 percent) drive less than 100 km a day, while 82 percent of respondents in a recent survey said they drive 40 miles or less a day, with an average daily driving distance of 27 miles. I'm hopeful that the charge network will extend from select districts to nation-wide scale throughout the world, and this environment would usher in active private investment in EVs. -- hsr0601, South Korea

Good- bye, gas station; hello, battery charger!

Nobody can say good-bye to the gas station but you can say hello to gas and battery rent stations. The idea is to have electric cars with the same easy, automatic disconnect dimension batteries, but with differences in volume and amount of battery charge. Existing gas stations could rent charged batteries. Recharging can be done at home or at electric charging-parking meters at a charging-parking fee. Cars with no batteries could be inexpensive, and then I would swap and rent the batteries I liked. I think this system would be very easy to implement. -- Steve Kiprillis, Greece

Normally, the car guys are all trying to punch Shai Agassi but finally here is someone audacious enough to show the dinosaurs of automobile industry the way out of their mess. In fact, I really hope that they finally understand and rally on the standardization efforts or get lost! -- Sinan Akay, Belgium