IS POLITICAL unity possible without a common language? Of course it is. Switzerland (four official languages), South Africa (11) and India (22 “scheduled” languages) are just a few examples. On the other hand, many of the world’s countries were born out of waves of nationalism, and built around the idea of one state for one “nation”. The nations in question were often those that spoke the same language.

Nowhere is this truer than in Europe. Here, waves of independence (the biggest being after the first world war and after the cold war) mostly produced states based around one nation with a single language. Multi-national states like Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union fell apart. And in the older states, like Spain and France, linguistic minorities have long-standing and legitimate gripes.

All this should be mitigated by the European Union. Its 28 members give the union 23 official languages (Croatian is the newest). Official documents are translated (at no small expense) into all 23, and speakers at the European Parliament may speak in any of the official languages, with simultaneous interpretation. At some forums—like within the European Commission—English, French and German serve as informal working languages. The management of all this is even more impressive when you consider the diversity in question. Among the 23 languages are members of the Romance, Germanic, Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Baltic, Celtic and even Semitic families. (Maltese is a dialect of Arabic.) The languages use three different scripts, as seen on the new five-euro banknote (with “euro” in Latin, Greek and Cyrillic letters).

This lavish multilingualism was on Johnson’s mind at a conference last week in Krynica, just inside Poland near the border with Slovakia. The annual gathering (billed as “the Davos of the east”) is a kind of showcase for today’s Europe. The conference, though heavily Polish in attendance, is officially trilingual (English and Russian materials are available everywhere), and even more multilingual in its attendees. A typical panel featured two Hungarians, one Pole, one Czech, one German and one American. On that panel, everyone spoke English. At others, Polish was the dominant language, but headsets were available for translation to and from Polish at any time.

This kind of meeting—and its accommodations for language—are just the kind of thing a multinational and multilingual Europe needs. Yet it remains obvious that language is a huge reason it has been so hard to create a true European identity. In Krynica, many panelists making their bravest effort in English were hard to understand in echoey rooms. When speakers spoke Polish or Russian, the ubiquitous interpreters did their best, but often struggled with technical terms, jokes or cultural references. Even with the best of interpretation, it is a drag to be several seconds behind the original speaker, with nearly all the vigour of the original language lost. No matter how interesting the content, the mind can wander when it is hard to pay attention.

This is unfortunate. Human beings tend to believe memorable and clear messages, even if those messages are stupid or wrong. We also tend to identify tribally with those who are more like us, and language is one of the most obvious tribal markers. This matters in connection to the euro-zone crisis, much discussed in Krynica. How long Germans and other strong economies will continue paying for the weakness in peripheral economies is an open, and serious, question. Yet (western) Germans have been paying a “solidarity contribution” to build up the former East Germany for more than two decades. The reasons for the discrepancy are obvious: even Germans from across the country, born and raised in a different state, are fellow Germans.

The various solutions to Europe’s Babel all have their drawbacks. Reducing the number of official EU languages to three or so is a political non-starter. The spread of English as an informal official language is convenient, but annoys (formerly privileged) Francophones, and not only them. Technology is making cross-linguistic communication much easier, but even with all of the recent strides in machine translation, quality is still choppy, and remains impossible for the kind of spontaneous conversations that start friendships.

Europe’s best bet is an old-fashioned one. It is multilingualism—and not just bilingualism. EU institutions should do still more to make sure European children learn early and fluently not just English, but another European language. (This goes for the British, too.) This would calm fears of English domination, and give real heft to the European idea of unity in diversity. This is expensive, and every class-hour given to language is one taken from another subject. But the alternative would be more expensive: a Europe that falls apart because its citizens simply don’t see what they have in common.