Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 605 posts

Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

#341

Post by Tade0 »

juancn wrote: post #230

Languages evolve, they're living things. Isolation creates new languages, that why Europe has a gazillion of them, people of different valleys developed different languages, on the other hand communication mixes them and blends them, for example after wars and invasions, immigration waves, tourism, or even introduction of technology such as TV or the internet. It's a pointless exercise to try to preserve the status-q…

Italy already went through this when it took its current form as a state over 150 years ago, producing Standard Italian in the process also known as "most widely spoken second language in Italy" - due to the plethora of dialects and accents spoken to this day.

Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

#342

Post by pessimizer »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #120
seydor wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'd vehemently disagree. There's a clear cultural divide between the average of the US and the average of Europe on many topics, albeit much of that is a cause of the large quantity of remaining traditionalists in the US skewing the American average. For example there's clear differences on secularism, gun-rights, access to abortion, universal healthcare, labour laws, privacy and regulation. > The silent death of eur…

> For example there's clear differences on secularism, gun-rights, access to abortion, universal healthcare, labour laws, privacy and regulation.

I think this is a common Anglo-American outlook that thinks that generic European is the ultimate expression of Democrat (or Blairite Labour/LibDem). There are plenty of reactionary Europeans, and since they're not completely bound to US right-left ideologies there are plenty of examples of e.g. race-realist environmentalists, or anti-abortion socialists.

edit: I mean, you've offered a literal list of US wedge issues, and assumed that Europe takes the Democratic Party position on them.

Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

#343

Post by bombcar »

seydor wrote: post #165
Quarrelsome wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is basically our common cultural base now This is wishful thinking. People pay a lot of attention to the US due to its cultural output and importance in geo-politics but when they open the door they still pay attention to their own locality which has its own context. > At least 4 of those issues are american , not european. I'm sorry, how are those issues not European? Do you think Europeans aren't human or…

> how are those issues not European? because they are not contested in europe, only in the US > privacy is a much greater It's nowhere near as important as housing or employment i think. Strict privacy was mainly championed by German Greens, not a pan-european issue

It would be interesting to setup a sort of “quiz” about the US for Europeans and vice versa for Americans, I bet both would get those political points vastly wrong (eg, they’d think abortion laws way stricter or lax than they actually are, same with guns, etc). Most of what you know about other places comes from the media depicting it.

Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

#344

Post by pessimizer »

tmtvl wrote: post #313
seydor wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and so are Italian and Finnish cultures. But inter-USA cultures are as differnt as local cultures are within a single european country. Would be interesting to have a distance metric for cultures , however

Yeah, the Navajo and Lakota are very noticably culturally distinct from each other, maybe even more so than people from Swabia and people from North Frisia.

The Navajo and Lakota are nations.

Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

#345

Post by Barrin92 »

lxgr wrote: post #63
unpopularopp wrote: post #18

Good. Americans are usually not aware of the extent of american cultural imperialism which is basically everywhere, not just in Europe but you can see it very strong here I'm not saying it's bad or good. But I wish we have less Hollywood, less Netflix, less american music, less american videogames, less imported american culture topics etc when actual local music, movies, books, games exist.

I enjoy local music, books and games a lot, but legally enforcing "less American culture" seems like a really strange/indirect way of supporting local productions. Why shouldn’t people be allowed to choose what they spend their money and time on? And if you think that there should be more support for their producers to compete with Hollywood budgets: Have you watched the credits of any European film or TV production…

>Why shouldn’t people be allowed to choose what they spend their money and time on?

this marketiziation and individualism is as much a product of Anglosphere culture as the English language itself. It's kind of hilarious to demand that the only legitimate way for Italy to defend its culture is in the most American way possible, through the ideology of 'the customer is king'.

There's nothing strange about a society collectively, through governance, deciding how a nation's culture should be shaped, what an appropriate way of life is. It's how most societies on this planet operate.

Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

#346

Post by samus »

lultimouomo wrote: post #28

The current Italian government has introduced the "ministry of industry and made in Italy". That's what's it called, made in Italy , in English in the official name. I guess they're going to fine themselves.

The "made in" monikers are a concept that has genuinely arisen in the anglosphere though. It's over of the cases where it would be fully justified to keep using the English term. It would be like translating "mafia" or "pasta".

Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

#347

Post by bnjms »

kuboble wrote: post #48
cm2187 wrote: post #41

Whether 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.

I like this because the nice trait English has is it’s a mishmash of whatever words it can get from many languages. Other nations may want to avoid imported words.

Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

#348

Post by pessimizer »

wolverine876 wrote: post #306
forinti wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to get books on MLK and Rosa Parks for my kid's school. Why?? This drives me crazy. They are not part of my country's history and we have plenty of local heroes.

Why restrict your kid's knowledge? I know about plenty of people in plenty of countries.

Did you have to read books about Slovenian history in school? There's not enough time to include everything about everyone. The history of the descendants of US slaves might be more interesting to people because of our cultural reach, but it's not necessary for Slovenian kids to learn except as an example of a well documented protest movement.

Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

#349

Post by pessimizer »

kiratp wrote: post #320
unmole wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a protest march in Mumbai against gun violence in the US. That was the only time I ever wanted to punch someone for expressing a political opinion in person.

I think you are underestimating how many people in the upper middle class in Mumbai have some form of family here and are thus impacted by American gun violence. Indian and American societies are link way deeper than political relations show.

There's no possible way to underestimate the effects of US gun violence on even the upper-middle class of Mumbai.

Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

#350

Post by WalterBright »

throw_a_grenade wrote: post #252
Quarrelsome wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its necessarily about the culture itself here, its merely a cheap populist tactic to rabble-rouse among a nation that has a rich history and struggles to handle the fact that its present isn't at that zenith. France do a lot of this sort of thing too. I would argue that belittling cultural preservation demonstrates deep Anglo-centric bias. While its fine for lulz, I worry that you're being sincere. Try…

> Try asking _anyone_ who doesn't have English as their first language in a serious context how they feel about their language and you'll struggle to find someone without a genuine fondness for it. Well. My first language is Polish, and there are some of us who call it "superpowers". If you go to a conference, you can be quite sure no-one understands you apart from your friend who you are talking to, and possibly tha…

> If you go to a conference, you can be quite sure no-one understands you apart from your friend who you are talking to

I'd be careful about that. I've overheard others making nasty remarks thinking I wouldn't know what they were saying. Seinfeld had a pretty funny episode about that.

I've watched Polish movies. It doesn't take long before one gets the hang of what others are saying.

Post reply on HN