Germany had that, too:
https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/man-spreche-deutsch-der-ka...
some good ones:
"Viertopfknallzertreibling" - 4-cylinder motor "Angströhre" - top hat
Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
481–490 of 605 posts
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spanish has much more complexity: complicated verb conjugation, gendered nouns, etc. English has no gender at all, and very little conjugation, and what conjugation it has is simple, except for a handful of words that it inherited from German. English isn't "notorious" for being difficult to learn at all. Citation needed. It's spoken all over the world. It's known for being difficult to become extremely proficient in…
> Spanish has much more complexity All this tells me is that you haven’t learned either Spanish or English as a second language learner. Spanish is incredibly consistent. Unlike English, once you learn the alphabet, you can read everything in Spanish correctly. > It's spoken all over the world. That has zero to do with how hard or easy it is to learn. There is absolutely no correlation. It is spoken all over the worl…
> English is full of homophones that are pronounced identically but have different spellings and meanings, such as the words way and weigh.
English the same word can be pronounced differently based on tense:
"Did you read the same book I read?"
Besides confusing I don't know what to even call a thing like that.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#483Nice, let's solve people's real problems
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm well aware and I find it somewhat amusing. The problem is the interpretation people give to the word. If I say computer, people think of something with keyboard + mouse and a screen, or maybe a laptop (funny enough, they will not think of their phone). If I say "calcolatore", we envision one of those devices to do math operations, used in school (are those still a thing?)
that's a calcolatrice, calcolatore is a computer :)
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#485On 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…
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…
First paragraph, I agree. This however, not:
> I would argue that belittling cultural preservation demonstrates deep Anglo-centric bias.
Counter point: I’m German. We currently have a lot of discussions about gender-fication of the German language. This has nothing to do with an Anglo-centric bias and still, we have exactly the same talking points.
On the one hand, it’s preserving language how it is spoken and written for the last 100 years, on the other hand, it’s about the biases in the language and how to overcome them.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#486On 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…
It's the same phenomenon in the US as well, when trending Github repos became 80% in Chinese, Github added ... a language filter so that you can filter them out.
Pointing fingers is a bit hypocritical when most cultures will do it given the circumstances.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#487English won because it was the language of the winners. Like Spanish, Russian, French, Portuguese and others won regionally along the History. So it’s not a matter of the language itself even if it certainly helped being a simple language.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#488This is the exact opposite of what we need. We need to merge on languages, not stay stubbornly divided.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#489Earlier 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…
First paragraph, I agree. This however, not: > I would argue that belittling cultural preservation demonstrates deep Anglo-centric bias. Counter point: I’m German. We currently have a lot of discussions about gender-fication of the German language. This has nothing to do with an Anglo-centric bias and still, we have exactly the same talking points. On the one hand, it’s preserving language how it is spoken and writte…
> how it is spoken and written for the last 100 years
make it more like 1 thousand years.
The point is culture and language evolve naturally and organically, so the language is not biased, people are. Discussing on how to remove biased from a language is the same think as to say "someone wants to put their biases in". It's true that it is happening, in the richest western countries only though, it is also true that it is because the Anglo-centric bias is predominant in the west when it's about social networks and influence on younger generations.
In China kids are restricted from using social networks and consequentially are not exposed to "content creators" that are just trying to ride the indignation wave to profit. it is also a well know fact that Chinese kids test scores on average are much better than the average western kids ones. this is another bias we are importing from Anglo-centric World, that we aren't discussing enough.
https://www.statista.com/chart/28802/childhood-aspirations-i...
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm well aware and I find it somewhat amusing. The problem is the interpretation people give to the word. If I say computer, people think of something with keyboard + mouse and a screen, or maybe a laptop (funny enough, they will not think of their phone). If I say "calcolatore", we envision one of those devices to do math operations, used in school (are those still a thing?)
that's a calcolatrice, calcolatore is a computer :)
I'm aware, but still in the small circle of people I asked to, they all envisioned that over a computer, lol