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

41–50 of 605 posts

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

#41

Post by cm2187 »

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 and spanish in the 30% area, english north of 90%.

When you have 27 different EU nationals in a room, there is just one language they can practically speak among themselves. The EU will not go anywhere if its countries resist adopting english.

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

#42

Post by hanniabu »

_vbnz wrote: post #33
hunglee2 wrote: post #14

I think we (Americans and Europeans alike) wholly underestimate how Americanised European culture is becoming. This is an observation rather than a criticism as I don't know whether this is 'good' or 'bad' but it is noticeable phenomena manifest through language, and probably an unintended consequence of the dependency of Europe on US communication technology, leading to the import of US communication styles, politic…

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.

Maybe racism isn't just a US thing

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

#43

Post by mmarq »

linhns wrote: post #21
borroka wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a very poor argument and ignores the fact that the lives of people, institutions and countries are not just about (the very important) jobs and economics. I, who have lived in the United States for decades, cringe when English words are used instead of those of my native language to give a sense of respectability to those words. A global culture and a world homogenized in ways of living is a much less interesti…

Yes, and if you actually read the bill (I'm not Italian, just trying to translate it online), it just bans other languages in official documentation, which every country does. I'm surprised Italy has not done it until now.

No, its probably broader than that, but it’s not written very clearly. And it doesn’t matter because every year some new idiot emerges to propose laws like this, that are never approved and often not even discussed in Parliament.

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

#44

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

ryandrake wrote: post #39
gordian-mind wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because there are other problems that are more pressing or severe doesn't mean that the proposed solution to a particular problem is not worth pursuing.

I guess it depends on whether the amount of effort applied to solving the problems is proportional to the severity of the problems. On this side of the Atlantic, we have a catastrophic opioid epidemic, crumbling infrastructure, inflation and recession, failing national and state-level institutions, mass shootings, growing income inequality, race- and class-warfare, and out-of-control policing. But what are ~50% of ou…

Divide et impera. We've yet to develop antibodies to that as a species.

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

#45

Post by linhns »

kuboble wrote: post #32
linhns wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and if you actually read the bill (I'm not Italian, just trying to translate it online), it just bans other languages in official documentation, which every country does. I'm surprised Italy has not done it until now.

From the article i understood it goes deeper. It includes all official communication like job offers - not limited to public institutions. So you could be fined for having a position for "Product Manager" or "Test Engineer", etc.

If you advertise these positions in English, that's fine. But must be Italian in official contracts.

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

#46

Post by barrysteve »

tacone wrote: post #8
alex_suzuki wrote: post #2

Italy really knows how to focus on what’s really important to address challenges like high unemployment and weak economy.

Italians lose wars as if they were football matches, and football matches as if they were wars - Winston Churchill

Probably never said it [0]. Those kinds of quotes are unlikely to be understood in today's cultural lense, because people don't see the world in national identities and the meaning those identities carried, like they used to 1800-1940.

[0] https://richardlangworth.com/quotes-churchill-never-said-2

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

#47

Post by pyuser583 »

hunglee2 wrote: post #14

I think we (Americans and Europeans alike) wholly underestimate how Americanised European culture is becoming. This is an observation rather than a criticism as I don't know whether this is 'good' or 'bad' but it is noticeable phenomena manifest through language, and probably an unintended consequence of the dependency of Europe on US communication technology, leading to the import of US communication styles, politic…

But “Italian nationalists” aren’t a thing.

There have been Italian language wars in border regions but they fizzle once non-locals get involved.

For example, South Tyrol has a large German speaking population. The Italian government has historically encouraged adoption of Italian.

But South Tyrol has (had?) a large Sicilian population that supported the local German speakers.

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

#48

Post by kuboble »

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.

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

#49

Post by version_five »

m3kw9 wrote: post #36

Trying to prevent some sort of western style gentrification? How come japan doesn’t have this problem?

I don't consider it a problem, language alone is an extremely superficial indicator of culture - see my other comment.

But japan is a good example- maybe that's what you're driving at - because the language is full of english loan words. That's a big part of what the katakana characters are for - fitting predominantly English words into the japanese syllables.

トイレ

ミーティング

ダンス

パーティ

フライドポテト

Etc. As you say, it doesn't impact the culture.

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

#50

Post by unmole »

_vbnz wrote: post #33
hunglee2 wrote: post #14

I think we (Americans and Europeans alike) wholly underestimate how Americanised European culture is becoming. This is an observation rather than a criticism as I don't know whether this is 'good' or 'bad' but it is noticeable phenomena manifest through language, and probably an unintended consequence of the dependency of Europe on US communication technology, leading to the import of US communication styles, politic…

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.

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.
Post reply on HN