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Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

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

#461

Post by tsimionescu »

midoridensha wrote: post #393
somethingsaid wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase lingua Franca shows why languages become dominant, because they’re the one spoken by the most powerful group of people. It’s not because English is uniquely good at absorbing from different languages. Japanese uses a ton of foreign loanwords for things. So does Hindu. Lingua Franca is a phrase in the most dominant language 2000 years ago, about the most dominante language 1000 years ago, used in the domina…

>The phrase lingua Franca shows why languages become dominant, because they’re the one spoken by the most powerful group of people. It’s not because English is uniquely good at absorbing from different languages. Japanese uses a ton of foreign loanwords for things. So does Hindu. This isn't true. English is easily the most-spoken 2nd language in the world, and it's not just because of Anglophone nation power, it's be…

Grammar is really not that much of an impediment to picking up a 2nd language for business and trade purposes. Unlike in school, no one really cares that much about grammar if you can understand what the other is saying.

And English grammar is really not that simple - for example, few other languages have the distinction between continuous and perfect forms of a tense, but foreign speakers can simply avoid it in English ("I read the docs" instead of "I am reading the docs" for a really basic speaker).

One advantage you may mean by "grammar" is that English has relatively little variance for a verb or noun form - once you learn the root, there's not that many variations to account for tense, plurals etc. But Mandarin Chinese for example is much simpler from this point of view: there are basically 0 variations.

Phonetics are more of a problem. Chinese would be very hard to pick up in much of the world simply because tone is a very foreign phonetical feature, and people who haven't experienced it growing up are unlikely to even realize it is meaningful just by listening to speech.

However, even that doesn't matter too much. French is also a phonetically difficult language, with many very similar syllables being important for distinguishing words (for example the distinction between -n as a consonant vs a nasalized vowel). But, that didn't stop virtually all of Europe from adopting it as an international language at some point, not to mention much of north Africa.

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

#462

Post by ithkuil »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #394
Quarrelsome wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from my perspective given my English background, I like English spelling. Sensibility says I should just give it all up and adhere to the dominant language form (en-US) for the sake of clarity.... and yet.... I shall not. > We tend to forget that the main purpose of a language is communication But also one might consider, or seek the word, that certain way of spitting, tells some peeps we fam. Language isn't just abo…

Yeah but this stuff get pushed as a higher priority over communication, that's my problem with every argument about "preserving culture". If everybody in Italy understands "computer", calling it "calcolatore" is outright against communication (that word in italian is closer to "device to do math operations", which is technically correct, but not what people imagine)

Ironically that's exactly what "computer" means.

The root "comput-" comes from latin "computo" while "calcolatore" comes from the latin "calculo" which is a rough latin synonym of "computo". The form "comput-" transformed in Italian into "cont-" like in "conto" (English count), "contante" (cash) etc.

So perhaps "contatore" (counter) instead of "computer" would make more etymological sense.

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

#463

Post by pmontra »

totetsu wrote: post #379
pmontra wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking about a standard computer, accessories and concepts, there are no common Italian words for computer, mouse, touchpad, touchscreen, scanner, web, link, app, database, word processor, bit, byte and the defunct floppy disk. Everything else is commonly named in Italian. Keyboard, memory, disk (in general, but hard disk is in English), screen, pen drives, power unit, mother board (this is maybe 50-50), folders, i…

Are the english words spoken in a way that follows italian phonic patterns(vowel sounds and consonant vowel pairs)? How does grammatical gender work for loan words, or newly made up words?

They are spoken with an Italian accent that fits into the Italian sentence they are used in. I think this is common to all languages, they import foreign words and adapt them at least to the accent of the language. I don't think that the tt in spaghetti has the same sound in English and Italian.

Italian words must have a gender, there is no neutral. Computer, mouse, touchscreen and touchpad are male. Power unit is female even if its Italian counterpart alimentatore is male: il power unit sounds bad, la power unit sounds good. Motherboard is female and its translation scheda madre is also female. Bug, bit and byte are male.

The rule is that loan words enter Italian with their singular form and they don't change at the plural. This might have funny consequences.

Medium / media (radio, TV, etc) entered Italian from English which got them from Latin. The plural of medium in Italian is still medium and pluralizing it as media as in English and Latin is a grammatical error. Media is becoming more common as more people read them in English sentences, not because they are studying Latin :-)

Gender is decided case by case as the word fits better in Italian. Medium is male (il / i, un)

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

#464

Post by ithkuil »

lwhi wrote: post #340
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Italian, living in Canada, the reason why I'm attached to my primary language is because I know the most vocabulary and language usage. Aside from that, it's an unfortunate language, since you can't use to communicate anywhere else beside Italy. We tend to forget that the main purpose of a language is communication, when invoking cultural issues. If you have to penalize usage of English words, you are doing somet…

Difficult to find a word for 'snow globe' too ..

This is an artefact of how Germanic languages can often just glue words together without explicit connective words

"Sfera di neve" doesn't like a word whole "snow globe" does and indeed some write it as "snowglobe"

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

#465

Post by pyrale »

RestlessMind wrote: post #360
pyrale wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few examples: Your far-right political movements, especially religious movements, are actively trying to export themselves to Europe, with varying success depending on the specific trend. A large part of corporate culture, as people in EU management still long for an idealized version of what exists in the US. Outside of a few pockets, EU entertainment has more or less completely been wiped out now, so any culture…

> Your far-right political movements A nit - it seems the US far-right is adopting tactics from European far-right history and not the other way around. Trump literally used the words "blood and soil" at some point and Fox is mastering the art of propaganda.

If the granularity of your analysis is the century, you may have a point. Otherwise, Europe has experienced a significant decrease of far-right activity and popularity between WW2 and the 2000's, approximately.

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

#466

Post by pyrale »

relativ575 wrote: post #305
pyrale wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few examples: Your far-right political movements, especially religious movements, are actively trying to export themselves to Europe, with varying success depending on the specific trend. A large part of corporate culture, as people in EU management still long for an idealized version of what exists in the US. Outside of a few pockets, EU entertainment has more or less completely been wiped out now, so any culture…

> are actively trying to export themselves to Europe What are the evidence of this? Has there been an uptick in American right-wings activities in Europe?

An example of it:

https://www.politico.eu/article/roe-vs-wade-us-the-european-...

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

#467

Post by ithkuil »

somethingsaid wrote: post #366
rhaway84773 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase lingua Franca is a great example of why English is the most international language in the world. It’s because of its ability to absorb from different languages. That phrase is as English as the word tomato today.

The phrase lingua Franca shows why languages become dominant, because they’re the one spoken by the most powerful group of people. It’s not because English is uniquely good at absorbing from different languages. Japanese uses a ton of foreign loanwords for things. So does Hindu. Lingua Franca is a phrase in the most dominant language 2000 years ago, about the most dominante language 1000 years ago, used in the domina…

Minor nitpick: lingua franca was not the language of the most dominant group like English is today. It was rather the name of a pidgin loosely named after the name of one of the people's on Europe but having almost no connection to it other than "franks" being the exonym for "western Europeans" as perceived by east Mediterranean people. Sabir was not the language used by the Franks.

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

#468

Post by Mordisquitos »

xiphias2 wrote: post #418
Aerroon wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No offence meant to the Americans here, but I detest the exportation of American culture to Europe. I don't mean music and films, but rather the way of thinking about the world. I think music and film are actually the primary way that this American culture is exported. Think about the whole culture surrounding movies - much of it is controlled and inspired by Hollywood. I agree that it would be nice if the rest of…

At this point there are much worse American things. In a small European country's facebook I can't have a day without a payed onlyfans advertisement hidden in a story about a poor teacher who became rich instantly after she started a side job.

While I do agree that cultural Americanisation is a problem, I must point put that OnlyFans is a UK-based company.

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

#469

Post by samus »

opportune wrote: post #364
samus wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might not help that much. The US is already one of the most popular destination for immigration. Immigrants either assimilate into the wider culture or stay restricted to their enclaves, either social or location-based ones. I can't recall any event in history where immigrants have been able to significantly change the culture of the destination country unless they began to assert political dominance as well.

The assimilation goes both ways. American culture is heavily influenced by our immigrants. Looking at food, we Americanize practically any culture’s food, which may just mean changing the seasonings a bit (like making it less hot-spicy), swapping ingredients (Americanized Asian food in the US doesn’t commonly include organ meat), or branching out in tons of directions like we’ve done with pizza. Irish, German, and Je…

While these things are quite influential and continue to the appeal of American culture, they are unable to affect many core attitudes like capitalism, Manifest destiny, and other hallmarks of American navel-gazing.

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

#470

Post by wizofaus »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #367
wizofaus wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The music and films are a big part of what conveys the American way of thinking about the world surely? I'll only genuinely start worrying about the Americanisation of world if the US somehow starts successfully exporting its insane attitudes towards guns, women's bodies and universal healthcare. Oh, and imperial units...

It's hard for me to imagine guns or imperial units catching on any time soon (to be fair, we didn't invent imperial units!), but I would not be too surprised if some European nations start slowly privatizing bits of their healthcare systems. The profit motive is sneaky and creeps in slowly. Usually it starts by capturing the hearts and minds of those in power. And regarding attitudes toward women's bodies, one only n…

Not sure I understand your last point at all - aside from the fact I was purely referring to women's rights to make medical decisions involving their own bodies (even life saving ones), I would have thought toplessness was typically considered far less acceptable in the US than in most of Europe...
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