Ma sti’cazzi. Nothing really ever gets enforced in Italy anyway. Italian culture will survive just fine.
Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
181–190 of 605 posts
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#182Whether the UK is part of the EU or not is irrelevant to using english as a mean of communication between europeans. I remember a study from the French ministry of education which estimated for each language, what was the percentage of the EU population, to which it is not a native language, that studied it as a foreign language either in high school or university. German and italian are in the 15-20% range, french a…
My personal hope is that the EU would make a plan to adopt English as the only official language. Now that UK is gone it can't be seen as unfairly promoting one country. I think the example of Switzerland shows that there is no problem if spoken language is different from official language.
> think the example of Switzerland shows that there is no problem if spoken language is different from official language.
Most Swiss speak at least two of their four official languages. It's actually an example of how having multiple official languages isn't expensive nor hard to achieve (and the country is on top of most human index charts).
But the EU should make Latin it's official language.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet Qubec is one of the most culturally distinct places in the U.S. and Canada combined. Surely cultural preservation laws are part of that.
We have many French cultures in Canada besides Quebecois. There are Acadian people in The Maritimes they are not Quebecois many forced to flee to Louisiana and are called Cajuns. Non-Quebecois French people in Ontario and the prairies, plus Metis (French+First Nations) on the prairies too. Other distinct cultures in Canada would be Newfoundland a separate nation for years. Plus all the First Nations across Canada and…
And none of those cultures have cultures nearly as strong as the Quebecois, which is basically a global cultural brand at this point.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 'outside world' is worse. Europe is aging, it's looking backwards and has very little interest in the future. The left side of the spectrum is stuck in '70s social democracy and believes it can still work despite the demographic collapse (french protests). It is not forward-looking nor has it made a post-boomer vision. The right is stuck in awe of its old glory and tries to revive nationalism (like Mrs Meloni, Br…
That's a very limited definition of culture then I'd say the french protests are a good testament to the french culture being alive and kicking when basically every other country accept slaving their lives away until 67+
France also is the cradle of liberal economic ideas, its culture did not start in 1968. And let's face it, the protesters demand are not realistic, they are about kicking the can down the road a bit more before it explodes
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#185April fool?
Nah, propaganda. Write a stupid bill, do nothing to make it progress in Parliament, you nevertheless gain airtime and visibility for yourself and your party. By the time of the next election everyone will have forgotten.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#186I stood behind some German-speaking people at the hotel check-in recently (I think they were Swiss), and I noticed they would sprinkle English phases into their conversation in a sort of jovial way. “Up in the room.” At breakfast I saw the same group, probably recovering from a night of partying, one said to the other on sight, “under the weather?”
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#187On the one hand: If your culture needs a preservation movement, it's not a culture, but a relic. Culture is defined by people, not some sacred thing that needs to be preserved. How much of the Italian cuisine they're trying to protect would exist if they had the same attitude in the 1500s, when the tomato was introduced to Italy? On the other hand: I think countries should resist global cultural homogenisation. No of…
> How much of the Italian cuisine they're trying to protect would exist if they had the same attitude in the 1500s, when the tomato was introduced to Italy?
Nitpick, but there was no such thing as "Italy" in the 1500s. There were several kingdoms and city states at war against one another. Modern Italy is a 19th century invention.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Racism is at least as prevalent - and far more out-in-the-open - in Europe than in the US. There should be BLM or equivalent protests all over Europe, frankly. It's shocking how openly racist Europeans are (whether eg Italians about Africans, Germans about anyone, or Europeans routinely about gypsies). Ever gone on Reddit and looked at what Swedes say about refugees and immigrants (post ~2014 or so; in 2015 they were…
I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue). Like in the UK the Prime Minister, Home Secretary, and Scottish First Minister are all from immigrant family backgrounds. As for the refugees, it's not so much racism as just a very difficult situation - a nation can't accept literally millions of young men with no language skills or qualifications and expect…
> I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue).
Europe is not less racist than the US. However, Europeans are much less used to reflecting on and taking about racism in their own countries than Americans are.
That reluctance to talk about race is exacerbated by the fact that, in many European counties (Sweden being one of them), it is either difficult or impossible to legally collect meaningful data about race, making it impossible to actually report on objective racial disparities and issues.
> The real question is why Europe has to deal with it when it was the USA which started the wars.
I see Europeans express sentiments like this quite often, and it's quite amusing. Racism isn't something foreign to Europe - Europe is literally the birthplace of white supremacist ideology, and racism has been ingrained in European society for centuries. It's quite ludicrous to pretend that it somehow evaporated overnight without cause, and even more absurd to make that assertion when there's copious evidence of direct and overt racism in across Europe literally every day.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also, Netflix has probably done more for both the funding and international distribution of European TV shows than all European streaming services combined. Note that they also get a lot of subsidies from the local governments to film in their location. They are not doing it for charity.
Absolutely, Netflix is not a non-profit by any means. Still, I think in this case it's a synergy. I don't think something like "Dark" would have existed without Netflix, for example, nor would I be able to watch Belgian, Spanish, Turkish, Japanese and many other productions in Europe or the US that easily.
Fair points. I'm definitely a fan of Netflix, and their european productions are very shiny visually although sometimes the the quality of the script is kinda bad. But some of their european productions are really great. But in those productions, at least if they play in the current day, they are using paypal, google, tinder, etc all the time. But yeah at least sth like Dark would probably not have gotten funding by either the public or private broadcasters in Germany.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it was shocking here in Stockholm when there were BLM protests in 2020. It's like people are more involved in US politics than their national politics.
Racism is at least as prevalent - and far more out-in-the-open - in Europe than in the US. There should be BLM or equivalent protests all over Europe, frankly. It's shocking how openly racist Europeans are (whether eg Italians about Africans, Germans about anyone, or Europeans routinely about gypsies). Ever gone on Reddit and looked at what Swedes say about refugees and immigrants (post ~2014 or so; in 2015 they were…
> Racism is at least as prevalent - and far more out-in-the-open - in Europe than in the US. There should be BLM or equivalent protests all over Europe, frankly. It's shocking how openly racist Europeans are (whether eg Italians about Africans, Germans about anyone, or Europeans routinely about gypsies).
You're, unsurprisingly, getting downvoted for this comment, but you are entirely correct. Racism is actually far more overt in Europe than it is in the US - the difference is that it's so widely accepted that people literally do not recognize it as racism even when it's plain as day.
Perhaps the most obvious example of this is Zwarte Piete, the annual Dutch blackface tradition, which as of 2011 was supported by 93% of Dutch people. 2020, unsurprisingly, marked the first year when "only" 47% people (less than a majority) supported the practice, but even then it's an incredible contradiction between collective self-perception and actual practice.
Ahistorical excuses for it vary ("it's not racist", "Blackface is an American thing; we don't have that in the Netherlands", or my personal favorite "it's not blackface, because it's just soot"). All are incorrect: blackface is always racist, and blackface/minstrelry as a form of entertainment was actually popular in Europe longer than it was in the US, and portraying Black people as "dirty" from soot is a common minstrel trope.
If you want an interesting trip, dig up some Dutch news reports from 2019 when Trudeau and Northam were caught in their blackface scandals. Dutch-language international media actually had a hard time covering it, because the average Dutch person at the time literally could not understand why it was even an issue in the first place. They had to dedicate extra time/space to very elaborate explanations of why blackface is considered offensive, whereas most American media could just report it as-is, leaving any explanation for the final filler paragraphs (if at all).