Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words • Hacker News Board

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

#601

Post by DannyBee » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #562

DannyBee wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If tomorrow, everyone spoke the same language (ignore which one it was), society would be better off. It wouldn't last. Within years it would devolve into various creoles and with centuries; almost entirely different languages. Language is not merely functional but cultural and has purpose outside of meaning (e.g. identity).

This only serves to backup my point that culture preservation for no meaningful goal is highly dangerous.

Language-as-identity as a way of separating people has no meaningful use case that is positive for society.

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

#602

Post by DannyBee » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

re-thc wrote: post #555

DannyBee wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> everyone spoke the same language (ignore which one it was), society would be better off. Would it? It would matter which language. It'd benefit those most familiar with it today. People have been laughed at for their accents when learning a language. How does this help? You can't just flip a switch. It'd create a huge inequality divide moreso than today. Some countries are surviving because they use a different lan…

I posited a world where flipping a switch was possible and the result was perfect. All your complaints are about a world where that isn't true, and so are literally inapplicable. You can argue this is unrealistic, but i'd simply point out the rest is a question of tradeoffs - how fast you do it, what language you pick, etc, there are no perfect answers.

That is no reason not to make progress.

As for practicallness: In a world of 8 billion people, literally anything you do (something, nothing, whatever) will cause hardship for someone. It's not even an interesting goal to try. Doing nothing causing hardship. Moving forward causes hardship.

Combine this with the fact that the unfortunate reality of humans is that one of the main ways that change happens writ large is through seeing the suffering (and success!) of others. I don't think you will change that part of our psychology anytime soon.

The sad truth is we don't all get a perfect, or even good, life. You can't make progress on this, either, without causing hardship to some. Does that mean you should not try?

Because you will never make progress in steps that are only positive for everyone, or even often get the chance to choose who it gets to be negative for.

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

#603

Post by jamespo » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 7:17 PM UTC

revelio wrote: post #600

jamespo wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assigning them to the EU is a common trope of the UK right wing

It's a common problem amongst anyone who isn't an EU superfan because these organizations all have confusingly similar names. Council of Europe being different to the European Council is a popular source of thinkos, and none of it is helped by the way the EU routinely uses "Europe" to mean the EU institutions, not the continent.

Not common at all, apart from with the right wing attempting some conflation and thinking they’re clever.

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

#604

Post by fsckboy » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 8:20 PM UTC

thefz wrote: post #540

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…

> 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.

"OK" in the streets, "d'accord" in the sheets (of paper)

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

#605

Post by elnatro » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

marc_abonce wrote: post #373

elnatro wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern Spanish is not Castillian. The Spanish Royal Academy recognizes and acknowledges all varieties and dialects of Spanish. Castillian is only one of them.

While the RAE recommends calling the language Spanish, it recognizes that Castilian is a synonym of Spanish. [1] My personal experience also corroborates this. In common usage, Castilian is the same language as Spanish and in fact I hear people from Spain refer to the language as Castilian, even when talking about the language as spoken in Latin America, regardless of the Academy's prescription. [1] https://www.rae.e…

Calling the language “Castilian” or “Spanish” would depend on what region are you based on. In mine, “Spanish” is more used, and in most parts of the Americas.