It is illegal. There are protected language minorities in Italy.
Just a pr stunt.
Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
541–550 of 605 posts
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#542Italian here. This law is a copy of what the French already do, but unfortunately there's a staggeringly large population of 60 to 70 year olds who did not learn English at school and feel powerless and cut out when foreign words are used. This law is to cater specifically to the older population.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I like English spelling. I grew up in the UK and prefer British-English to American-English, both in terms of spelling and pronunciation. That said English has terrible spelling compared to other languages, it's impossible to know how to pronounce a word just looking at the spelling. I don't need to give examples, as it is well-known already. I benefit from the fact that many people I've met around the world speak…
> I benefit from the fact that many people I've met around the world speak English, but it's almost unfortunate that one of the harder/more inconsistent languages "won". English is not one of the harder or more inconsistent languages in the world. It's one of the simpler and more consistent ones. This is a general pattern with languages that go through a phase where they are learned by large numbers of adults.
> It's one of the simpler and more consistent ones.
floor
cooperation
coopRe: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
English is very inconsistent, not that this necessarily makes it harder of course, compared to languages such as Finnish which has very regular grammar and no ambiguity with pronounciation. ("I could have read the red book, because I like to read." is just one example of inconsistent pronounciation. Spelling is non-obvious to people learning the language, again as a result of unusual and inconsistent pronounciation.)
Comparing to Finnish is... a choice. Finnish is known to be one of the most difficult languages to learn because of the incredibly variation in cases. Different languages have different features which make them harder to different populations. A better description of English would be: English is one of the languages to learn. English has no complex case system. We do not have grammatical gender. Our use of grammatica…
I moved to Finland, which is why it comes to mind. Finnish is definitely difficult, for native English speakers due to the grammar.
But Finnish is easier than English in the sense that pronounciation is 100% regular and predictable - that's the metric I've been using in this thread to say "English is hard". (I understand the reasons behind that, the mixture of influences, loan-words, and voewl shifting.)
In a lot of ways English is easy, and even bad English is understandable.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This was done in Slovenia (računalnik)
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#546Earlier 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…
> If you have to penalize usage of English words, you are doing something really wrong. Just in official documents, though. You can still say "OK" in the street.
This only serves to form unnecessary barriers. If tomorrow, everyone spoke the same language (ignore which one it was), society would be better off.
History and historical culture, on their own, are a bad reason to do something (ie learning from history makes sense. Doing something for no other reason than the length of time its been does not)
The rest is just about which language and who chooses.
The only thing this sort of bill does is make it harder to get to a better state. At least here they are not pretending it's helpful to do it
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#547On 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…
All culture is a lie which persists only in the re-telling. There is no such thing as Italy or America, except when a few million people agree and re-tell the lie that is "Italy" and "America".
If more people realized this, they'd be less rigid to the idea of new - or indeed, old - culture being re-told - or not. The fact is, if you don't use a language - it dies.
Italians are merely trying to protect the lies that they prefer to be re-told..
What the world needs is more people willing to protect cultures which are not their own. There is no one culture more superior to any other - ALL cultures are subject to total loss when the natural fallacies that make up that culture stop being re-told as human truths ..
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I like English spelling. I grew up in the UK and prefer British-English to American-English, both in terms of spelling and pronunciation. That said English has terrible spelling compared to other languages, it's impossible to know how to pronounce a word just looking at the spelling. I don't need to give examples, as it is well-known already. I benefit from the fact that many people I've met around the world speak…
If you are interested, there's a good reason why English spelling is so weird. The pronunciation of vowels shifted between 1400-1700 and depending on when a specific word's spelling was "standardised" decides which version of the pronunciation was used. If it's the old vowel pronunciation the spelling will make no sense, whereas the new vowel are mostly ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift is pretty go…
And the great vowel shift happened very shortly after the introduction of the printing press to Britain and the standardisation of English spelling.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#549On 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…
There are many good reasons to learn from cultures, to understand them, etc.
But cultural preservation is a means and not an end, unlike you seem to be arguing. When made into its own end, Cultural preservation for the sake of cultural preservation simply exists to build barriers and differences between people.
That is literally the purpose when it is its own goal. To build a shared thing among a group that others do not have, so you can divide your group from them.
Cultural preservation only unites people by pitting them against an out group.
I'm honestly unsure how you can argue otherwise.
It has been the cause of many great atrocities precisely because it always creates an out group.
So yes, preserving culture for the sake of preserving culture is a net negative for society.
The rest simply becomes an argument that nobody should ever have change. Good luck with that. Change comes for us all. None of us live long enough that we should get to try to force future generations to abide our way of thinking.
Re: Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The UK is an American sub-state in all ways that is possible.