Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words
cnn.com
cnn.com
On the other hand: I think countries should resist global cultural homogenisation. 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 suspect this is where things like these proposals are coming from; it's the pendulum swing reaching too far before it settles in the middle.
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 asking _anyone_ who doesn't have English as their first language in a serious context how they feel about their language and you'll struggle to find someone without a genuine fondness for it.
On paper there is absolutely nothing wrong with cultures seeking to preserve the use of their own language, however it is fair for us to argue that restrictive and punitive measures such as this are not helpful.
Bear in mind one day English will no longer be the lingua franca as demonstrated by the word for lingua franca. ;). Would English then be a "relic" to you?
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 something really wrong.
And when I talk about work it's really hard for me to do in my home language. Some words have no translation or incorrect translation (I work as software developer), which incidentally is the same situation my Italian teacher faced when trying to explain some concepts that had a translation in Italian, but the original latin word had a "wider meaning" that wasn't captured by the translation.
> 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 about communicating meaning but also cultural content, identity and social markers. This is part of what drives its frequent development and also part of why some people want to preserve their way of speaking even if its merely a creole or a "dying" language.
Just in official documents, though. You can still say "OK" in the street.
I was under the impression that you could communicate roughly but effectively between Italian and Spanish.
The people pushing for this do, in fact remember that the primary purpose of language is communication.
Imagine being an aging Italian, or Quebecer, who has spoken Italian, or French all your life, do not have a good grasp of English, only to become unable to understand much of the discourse in your own mother country.
I, myself, am not super keen on seeing Spanish, Mandarin, or Esperanto become the lingua franca of my area.
That phrase is as English as the word tomato today.
Lingua Franca is a phrase in the most dominant language 2000 years ago, about the most dominante language 1000 years ago, used in the dominant language now. All of those languages used tons of loanwords as well. Someday Mandarin or Hindu may become the most dominant and they will use loanwords, and phrases from those languages will slip into English speech.
But those changes won’t be because English in unique in some way, it will be because that’s how languages work.
The major currency is USD... Most English speaking countries are of British origin... Non-English speaking countries trade with the largest partner(s), which are of English origins...
I don't think it's the features of the language that are at play here.
Like we say "it was a bloody Sunday" to generically mean a massacre.
"Lingua franca" was a language, did you know that?
> That phrase is as English as the word tomato today.
It has been at least since the XI century. Long before tomatoes were a thing in England.
> English is the most international language in the world
Which English?
Because British and American English aren't.
And probably right now Mandarin Chinese is even more business oriented than English.
Well. My first language is Polish, and there are some of us who call it "superpowers". If you go to a conference, you can be quite sure no-one understands you apart from your friend who you are talking to, and possibly that one passer by, who is also Polish or Ukrainian.
That is, unless we start to curse. Then we are probably well understood.
Slovenia being small, we had already met years ago at a local meetup or something.
I'd be careful about that. I've overheard others making nasty remarks thinking I wouldn't know what they were saying. Seinfeld had a pretty funny episode about that.
I've watched Polish movies. It doesn't take long before one gets the hang of what others are saying.
I'm such a person. I realize that any kind of preference I have for the language that I grew up with is an accident of birth. It helps to be part of a country that is so small as to be irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. Life doesn't stop at the border and if you want to be active at all then you're going to have to interact with people speaking different languages. English, German and French to begin with, and maybe Spanish, Chinese and one of the Slavic languages after that.
I think English is here to stay in a way that Latin never was, the digital repository of English text is absolutely massive, unless you want to limit yourself you simply have to speak English. When there was no internet that meant books and once the printing press was invented and books were no longer in very limited circulation (and reading and writing became more common skills) written culture really took off. The Roman empire is what drove the spread of Latin and once the empire collapsed it took Latin with it, with the exception of some niche uses (science, mostly, and religious texts).
I also don't see a reason why you would support the region you were born at all, if you like something else better. Tons of people move away and have zero regrets. Does reverse nationalism exist? :P
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.
I asked myself, and I said; 'meh'. Admittedly I speak English better than my first language now, and I'm also being deliberately facetious, but it's also true that I don't much care about my first language.
> Bear in mind one day English will no longer be the lingua franca as demonstrated by the word for lingua franca. ;)
I used to think it was hilariously ironic too, but then I stumbled on the actual etymology one day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca?oldformat=true#E...
> 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.
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...
I‘m German, and I don‘t care for that language. It‘s unnecessarily complex.
I also saw it happen over the course of maybe 4-5 years when I lived in Mexico City in 2013-2017.
Italian is a descendant of the Latin language, which itself borrowed extensively from Greek. What is so special about today's Italian language that it should by all means be preserved in it's current form without continuing to borrow from foreign languages?
European languages borrow from English because the US offers so much that we voluntarily adopt in Europe. If most good movies, music, streaming services, computer hardware, computer software, Internet, electric cars, smartphones, AI, business ideas etc. were Italian, the English language would adopt more Italian words.
The example in the article (bru-shetta/bru-sketta) highlights the absurd pedantic nature of this proposal.
I truly weep for the world which we seem to have created.
Some might say only non western or ex colonised countries should get protection and the ex colonisers culture should be left to rot (i.e. to be swallowed up by Disney). I think that's the neo liberal / left view. It's a bit biased in my opinion but it's certainly a common thing I've heard.
The idea that their army is the coolest and will save us from aliens, that their bilionaires (oligarchs) are secretly superheroes, that foreign leaders are crooks secretly plotting to conquer the world and so on.
These are Projections
There have been occasional British TV shows/movies with this premise as well. That's not American culture, that's "what would happen if aliens invaded and we make a movie about that" culture.
The reason you think it's American is that only the Americans seem to make sci-fi these days. I don't know if that's budget or culture or what. On HN we talk a lot about how impoverished the Euro tech scene is vs the USA but it's not just tech. Italians use a lot of English words because the Euro movie/TV scene is also out to lunch. What was the last mega-franchise that came out of Europe? Probably Harry Potter? So, Europe but not EU. And Harry Potter was created in the UK but actually brought to worldwide attention thanks to investment by ... Americans.
My guess is it's due to the dominance of government funded media firms. What's the best known European sci-fi franchise? Dr Who? A relic that dates to the 50s. The BBC lost interest in sci fi and fantasy a long time ago. Too expensive, only popular with unpopular demographics. Far better to make yet another 1800s period drama.
Nothing more American than this example of how an oft-derided-in-the-rest-of-the-US bunch of coastal Hollywood elites constantly put out a bunch of movies glorifying guns, violence, capitalism, and the USA.
Also, language is different compared to cuisine. Not saying that cuisine isn't important in defining a nation's "character", because it is, but language is quintessential when it comes to nation-building.
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-history-of...
It is all smoke and mirrors to distract the public opinion from the government's failures.
OTOH the use of English words that have an equivalent in Italian has reached such high levels of stupidity that it has become a popular meme here, under the name "Milanese imbruttito" which roughly translates to "this is too much even for someone from Milan"
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 the world wouldn't become so Americanized, but I think that's only viable if the population doesn't learn English en masse.
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.
Pointing fingers is a bit hypocritical when most cultures will do it given the circumstances.
One of the key takeaways was that speaking and thinking are interrelated. When you are thinking, the same area of the vocal chords are activated but with a lower intensity compared to when you are speaking.
This means that what you cannot speak, you cannot think. By prioritising Italian, they are scientifically enabling the population to think more like Italians.
I don’t care about the ban though, it doesn’t affect me.
(aka Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)
What the previous poster if describing is a strong, deterministic relationship between language and thought (the idea that, by banning certain uses of language, they can control how Italians think). This is essentially nonsense: Italians are Italian, regardless of whether they work in a company run by a CEO or an "amministratore delegato".
This is false.
As an American who has lived in the US my whole life, it can be tough to see outside the box, so to speak. What parts of the US worldview are being exported? How does it differ with traditional attitudes?
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 borne by entertainment is mostly US now.
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.
Please explain, in detail, what part of Golden Dawn was actively exported from the US.
What are the evidence of this? Has there been an uptick in American right-wings activities in Europe?
> As an American who has lived in the US my whole life, it can be tough to see outside the box, so to speak. What parts of the US worldview are being exported? How does it differ with traditional attitudes?
Your evangelicals export homophobia and prosperity gospel to Africa. And other not so nice things that were kept in check by church-state separation on your soil, but developing nations don't have mechanism to defend themselves against. Tobacco industry floods poor nations with cigarettes using marketing and legal threats. Your puritanism shoved into everyones throat, can watch violence all day, but saw a nipple? End of the world. YouTube no swear rule was/is ridiculous. The land of the free, my ass. And the idea that culture can be owned by corporations. Disney much?
Sounds funny on the surface, but it's more consequential than that.
A legit/legal Asian paid porn site that I used to visit was shut down because American credit card companies decided they didn't want to get involved in that business. It's the kind of things that drives people to crypto (disclaimer: I never owned any crypto), and it's not just because of ideological or scammy reasons, sometimes it's just to get away from American hegemony in the finance sector.
There are other similar but more sinister things like these: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa8xy9/is-the-doj-forcing-ba...
It's fine by me if America is just enforcing their morals within their own borders, but given that the USD is the de-facto world currency, these policies get exported everywhere.
The way most people experience this is partisan ideological fighting that spills out into the rest of the world, especially left wing social movements. This is how you get people yelling "hands up don't shoot" at unarmed British police, and BLM marches in central European cities where there's no history of slavery and famously civilized police. It makes no sense in the local cultural context but people are bored and copy what they see on TV and social media.
The only way to achieve this is with illiberal, authoritarian measures -- I.E. a centralized government forcing people to think and behave in a certain way. And not because such thoughts or behavior is harmful in any way, it's only because it's aesthetically displeasing. Not good.
Also, not all cultural homogenisation is created equal. It's good that all cultures have evolved to say that murder is a bad thing. That was cultural homogenisation, and it was good.
Nitpick, but there was no such thing as "Italy" in the 1500s. There were several kingdoms and city states at war against one another. Modern Italy is a 19th century invention.
https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/italian-americans-and-th...
A counter to this is the Académie Française [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_Fran%C3%A7aise
Which happens to be the laughing stock of the rest of the world, good call.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/13/le-la-covid-co...
Just because some aspect of the commons would be lost to the pressures of market economics doesn't mean it's not worth preserving. If left to the tyranny of markets, we'd cut down every tree, dam every stream, catch every fish in the ocean, and the only culture you'd have would be drip-fed to you for $120/month by a television syndicate.
Also, even Americans aren't interested in leaving their culture up to the markets. Remember all the hoopalah about Disney and the NBA kowtowing to China, and how incensed people were that their culture was being changed by foreign sensibilities? The rest of the world gets to wear this shoe, a lot.
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 ..
Current italian government is 100% USA's puppet with no shame.
The provision in the proposal to force every public meeting to be held in italian is crazy… it'd kill holding scientific conferences in italy.
To be honest I'd want them to push it as an internal memo for the national tv. There is this trend to insert english words (mostly wrongly, just like americans use italian words mostly incorrectly as well) to sound cool. If this was eliminated from TV, I'd imagine it would go a long way already.
For example?
After all, Tu vuò fà l'americano is merely satire. https://youtu.be/BqlJwMFtMCs
I find that beautiful, but this law seems to be against it
For example just this evening I was listening to this Neapolitan (I think it's Neapolitan, definitely Southern) song Brigante se more [1] and I needed to see the written down lyrics to get a hold of it [2], as I couldn't understand almost anything at a first hearing. I know Italian pretty well, but I just couldn't parse the song when hearing it directly.
Does the pendulum really ever settle in the middle with anything society?
I wouldn't class this as anywhere on the pendulum as its not an economic policy and social issues are a bit of a fudge into the classical left/right spectrum.
They're a mild form of isolationism and nationalism and they can but do not have to be the first stage of a country moving further away from the center rather than a pendulum swing. With a pendulum the assumption is that it will move back but this sort of thing can easily move a country to the right and then ultra right, of which history carries a fair number of examples.
The actual way this gets exported is via the HR firms and executive picks of American corporations. That then affects the funding of movies, TV shows, video games and everything downstream of that.
And regarding attitudes toward women's bodies, one only needs to visit any beach in southern Spain and count up the topless women to notice those values are already Americanizing.
Are these two mutually exclusive?
I’m not sure I know what you mean. Can you elaborate on this world view that you say American culture is exporting?
This is a funny example to use, because while the first tomato reached Europe in the early 16th century, it was not widely eaten in Italy until the mid-to-end of the nineteenth century. For a number of reasons, people (incorrectly) believed them to be poisonous.
There followed a highly entertaining (if you like that sort of thing) debate in the UK House of Commons as to whether to retaliate by banning French words[1][2]. The difference being, they were only joking while the French were deadly serious.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH0wvkZmGKQ&t=70
[2] https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1994-07-05/debates/8a1...
One elderly gentleman left the meeting, it turned out that he didn't speak English and was the one that had insisted the meeting be in French and after that we got along just fine.
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, political priorities and cultural values.
France have always been conscious of this, no doubt as a result of their centuries old conflict with England, but it is interesting now to see Italian nationalists responding similarly. It's futile of course, as neither Italians, French nor any combination of European countries can or will make an internet independent of the US
It's like people are more involved in US politics than their national politics.
The same people went to the same engineering uni as me, which had a lot of middle eastern and east Asian classmates that they couldn't give a single fuck about how they subtly mistreated them.
US focus also serves as a convenient denial of our own daily misdeeds here. I'm still to this day shocked to meet a lot of (continental) Europeans that think (systematic) racism is a US thing, and can't possibly be happening here.
Why?? This drives me crazy. They are not part of my country's history and we have plenty of local heroes.
I couldn't even tell you what kind of government the Netherlands has lol could be a monarchy for all is know hah
Ever gone on Reddit and looked at what Swedes say about refugees and immigrants (post ~2014 or so; in 2015 they were burning refugee camps)? The racist, anti-non-Swede, nationalism type is only going to get a lot worse there. The integration of refugees into Swedish society has been a complete failure, which you can see in the crime and employment outcomes. If it were the US, the blame would be squarely placed on racist behavior / dominant culture preventing the refugees from thriving.
On one hand there seems to be a strong sentiment of what swedish culture is and is not, on the other there is also an unusual higher permeability to american culture compared to other EU countries.
You know when someone is incessantly speaking louder than others, drowning their conversations? ... yeah.
It has always seemed like a losing battle to me. Basque people might speak more Basque, but they still see Netflix, listen to international bands via Spotify and immerse themselves in international trends via Instagram and Tiktok.
My conclusion is that the government does this because language is the one part of culture the government can legislate around.
However, there's already an English translation of that book. It's published under the ttitle _Civilization: How we All Became American_, and was translated by David Fernbach.
Anyway, thanks again for pointing out this book. I'll be looking into it thanks to your suggestion.
It's worth noting that a variation of language collapse may be occurring. The English speaking part of the US is imploding (aging demographics, fentynal, Covid, mediocre healthcare for the bottom 1/2, etc), the Spanish speaking part of the US is rapidly taking marketshare (immigration being the only thing keeping the US population afloat). You can expect some decline in US cultural power accordingly, as Spanish is less popular globally than English (and far less potent as an entertainment, media force).
The EU will indeed end up more or less making their own Internet. That's happening gradually. Their own rules, laws, beliefs are increasingly governing their slice of cyberspace (and anything in tech broadly). That separation will only get wider. Over time, the laws governing the EU Internet end up making it quite distinct from the US Internet, from the Chinese Internet, from the Russian Internet, and so on (as different as the physical spaces are today, at least).
The only way to effectively fight this homogenisation is to use authoritarian measures that force people into compliance. And that's when you are bordering on literal fascism, using force on your own people to ensure conformity to cultural and national norms. Cultural homogenisation is a natural process that will happen when you integrate people with trade, the internet, transport, and communications. You can't fight these processes without significant and unreasonable amounts of force applied to people.
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.
They stopped doing that decades ago, before I was born. The language of the German minority is protected and their representation in Parliament is guaranteed by the constitution. The Autonomous Province of Bolzano has a high level of self-government and a special fiscal regime.
I don't think you've paid much attention to the last 25 years of Italian politics. Italian nationalists are definitely a thing, and they are winning. The current government is led by openly-avowed post-fascists. The last time fascists were in power, Superman became "Nembo Kid", Internazionale Milano became "Ambrosiana Inter", and people with foreign surnames had to italianize them or risk ostracism (how do I know? My great-grandmother was one of them). One of the reasons Italian national identity is so traditionally weak in the postwar period is that its period of unabashed strength was so clearly associated with an unpresentable regime; the latest move by this government is an explicit bridge to that period, a dog whistling exercise that will work very well with their electorate.
I think it's great if local languages and identifies can continue to thrive, but I don't think it can be said that Italian nationalism isn't a thing though - it has explicitly been a thing as the suppression of regional dialects and the 'making of Italians' was a stated objective of Italian nationalists immediately after the unification of Italy.
btw this does not make Italy exceptional in any way, the way modern 'nation states' were built followed exactly this pattern - suppression of regional languages - 'cultural genocide' - and the creation a new national identity to replace them
I suggest they also forbid every cultural aspect of the Italian culture that came from America/England: Italian Rock & Pop, Spaghetti Western, Il Calcio (invented by the British),...
And, btw, the food historian Alberto Grandi has been claiming that even pasta Carbonara is an American born dish...
other countries' perceptions of Americans, for some weird reason
As far as preferring the use of local words - or made up words based on the current language - it's something you find in many other countries/languages other than the ones you mention. Or tell you more, some of their languages did not change for centuries thanks to or because of their prolific written tradition. Everything proves that English doesn't have to be present within every language.
I agree they could have just made a silent transition without making a bill and imposing fines, but in the end the decision doesn't sound very controversial to me.
You're bragging about your language being poorer.
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/italian-language-and-fasc...
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.
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.
Most Swiss speak at least two of their four official languages. It's actually an example of how having multiple official languages isn't expensive nor hard to achieve (and the country is on top of most human index charts).
But the EU should make Latin it's official language.
Note that this is British English as much or perhaps more than US English - many Europeans have studied or worked in the UK, and their native English speaking contacts are likely to be British.
I'm not saying it's bad or good. But I wish we have less Hollywood, less Netflix, less american music, less american videogames, less imported american culture topics etc when actual local music, movies, books, games exist.
And if you think that there should be more support for their producers to compete with Hollywood budgets: Have you watched the credits of any European film or TV production recently? There are lots of government funds (EU and national/local) being spent on just that.
Also, Netflix has probably done more for both the funding and international distribution of European TV shows than all European streaming services combined.
Note that they also get a lot of subsidies from the local governments to film in their location. They are not doing it for charity.
this marketiziation and individualism is as much a product of Anglosphere culture as the English language itself. It's kind of hilarious to demand that the only legitimate way for Italy to defend its culture is in the most American way possible, through the ideology of 'the customer is king'.
There's nothing strange about a society collectively, through governance, deciding how a nation's culture should be shaped, what an appropriate way of life is. It's how most societies on this planet operate.
Don't forget that Mercantilism and strict control of trade and information exchange was the rule until America forced "free trade" upon the world as a condition of entry into WW2.
We live in what is mathematically the exception, not the rule. The world didn't begin in 1945.
If you go to Brazil, for example, there's zero worry about American music. Brazilian music holds its own, and then some. If you go to India, their domestic cinema is obviously thriving.
Nobody's "pushing" American media on consumers around the world. Cultural imperialism is ultimately a false narrative -- consumers pick the things they like, as they should because that's their free choice. Switching the TV channel or the radio dial is the easiest thing ever.
Cultural exports and cultural homogenisation isn't imperialism. There is nothing in common between this, and when a country actually colonised another country and forced it to adopt its language (or indirectly forced it via neocolonial measures). One is voluntary adoption, the other is colonisation. So stop using concept creep in order to push a rhetorical point.
What we're seeing is largely the natural outcome of having a superpower economy, having communications technology, flight technology, free trade, etc. All this openness and integration coalesce to cause smaller countries to want to voluntarily adopt the status symbols, norms and entertainment of bigger countries that are culturally adjacent to them already.
Your argument structure is basically "this thing is really bad because I'm going to label it as really bad via concept creep, therefore it's good when far-right authoritarian measure X is implemented, even though X won't work at stopping really bad thing and much more extreme measures will be needed".
In my country, immediately after the last US backed coup, the new 'democratic' government literally ditched French and German for foreign language education from all education institutions and pushed English in every level of education. As a result, I, like millions of youth in my generation, had to learn English as a foreign language. At this point it must be noted that a decent amount of the coup leaders were military men who received additional training in the US, 'School of Americas' style.
In addition to that, the US-backed government first jailed or banned all the artists who used to create content in national, traditional formats, and instead promoted literally American music - one reason for this was the majority of those artists were left-wing, pro-people artists who opposed US corporate interests so they were detrimental to the 'new order'. Those who were not banned refused to appear in state-run channels in protest. Naturally private channels also excluded them because they were seen as 'hostile' to privatization and other US-backed policies. What was left of the creative space was wiped out by private TV and radio channels who were founded by US-friendly capital or direct US-connected investments, run by those who were educated in Angloamerican institutions, pushing either directly American artists or their imitators. It was a literal takeover of an entire country's culture.
Result? Literally a decade of uncontested American movies, series, songs in tv and radio and recorded medium, culturally imperializing around two generations and slapping a weird layer of 'American' on top of their actual cultural identity. These generations still did not recover from this cultural rape, and they are unable to fit in in their own society, leave aside anywhere abroad.
This is what happened in every other US-backed regime. Even in Europe, US-backed parties and capital literally Americanized their societies methodically by either through the local friendly capital or literally US-linked interests buying out local channels. Even in the country that I now live in, the biggest media group is still owned by a corporation that is owned by an American-German dual citizen. Leaving aside it pushes entirely American content with a few national ones sprinkled in, the news that it shoves into its programming is literally US corporate news, pushing literally the policies of the US itself.
You would think that this would be something related to the US foreign policy, mostly affecting people abroad. It was not. It was a concerted, persistent policy that targeted Americans at home as well as it targeted foreigners.
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/the-lewis-powell-me...
The 1971 US Chamber of Commerce Lewis-Powell memo said that the then-existing popular movements like the antiwar movement etc were pushing Americans away from the 'American way of life'. And the rich who own the media and education corporations should use their corporations to condition the people back into 'the American way'. The result is the concentrated, lying corporate propaganda machine that not only pushed wars like 2003 Iraq War, but also destroyed all the humane behaviors and traditions in the US to maximize corporate profit.
...
Then there is this thing about the monetization of entire world's resources that was started by Nixon, forcing everyone to trade in dollars and providing unending capital that was created from zero-interest money inflating everything in the US economy, leading to the corporate takeover of everything abroad by US interests as well as creating phenonenon like Silicon Valley and allowing business-model-free companies that ran on endless investor cash cornering all angles of the Internet and killing off their competition including the domestic independent players, forcing everything to revolve around Silicon Valley.
Which is precisely why many non-Americans here not only speak English aside from the above cultural imperialism reasons, but also post in this forum.
But no worries - as the zero-interest economy goes away, things will change.
I would argue that the US (and perhaps some other English-speaking countries) need more cultural diversity imported from other parts of the world.
Many Americans are unaware because they have not traveled outside of the US nor have they studied other languages, cultures, music, etc.
The Internet and the growth of global media has helped, but it's not the same as going to another place and meeting the people there.
> I'm not saying it's bad or good.
Yeah you are?
Which of the 35 American countries are you referring to? ;)
Edit #1 with examples:
mescita = cafè/bar
acquavite = brandy/whisky.
tramezzino = sandwich
bevanda arlecchina = cocktail
torpedone = bus
Pellicola = film
And a bunch football terms
I personally like instead of “gangster” you say “malfattore”, which just sounds very funny.
Anyways here’s a link for those who are interested: https://www.archeome.it/approfondimento-le-parole-proibite-d...
Edit #2 they also changed famous peoples names
For example Louis Armstrong = “Luigi Braccioforte”
> existing bid by the government to protect the country’s
> cuisine.
> It has introduced legislation to ban so-called synthetic
> or cell-based cuisine due to the lack of scientific > studies on the effects of synthetic food, as well as “to
> safeguard our nation’s heritage and our agriculture based
> on the Mediterranean diet,” Meloni’s Health Minister
> Orazio Schillaci said in a press conference.
I hope they plan to do something about the "tomatomania" that has gripped Italian cuisine in recent centuries. It must have been crushing for their cuisine be corrupted by an invasive new-world fruit.
One example: "smart-working". At the beginning of the pandemic, when we all started to "work remotely" or "work from home", Italians decided to call it "Smart Working". The first time I heard this term from a relative I was very confused, I thought it was just young people trying to "be fancy" as usual, with their fancy english words, but no, it actually had become the official way to refer to "working from home"... people had it in their contracts.
IMO this usage of the English language doesn't benefit anybody. Italians are not getting any better at English in general, language purists keep getting angrier and it's just adding a lot of confusion.
In theory “smart working” doesn’t mean just working remotely, but it implies flexible working patterns as well. Also, it has been used in British English (even though it didn’t become very popular): https://civilservice.blog.gov.uk/2016/01/21/smart-working-th...
One of English's greatest strengths as a language is its willingness to borrow wholesale from other languages when it comes up short. It would be pretty ironic for English to take issue with the way in which other languages adapt and use its words.
Aside from that last one, people don’t generally seem to care
https://intimesgoneby.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/on-this-day-f...
Very roughly speaking, similar rules apply to all companies operating in Quebec with 25 or more employees, not just public officials.
For those who have not seen it:
I don't think Italian is in any danger of replacing it's vocabulary with English though - most speakers can't pronounce very common english sounds, like "h" in "hit".
I'm going to sweat next time I go to Italy. I suppose that asking pineapple on a pizza will be the equivalent of a lifetime sentence.
> requires anyone who holds an office in public administration to have “written and oral knowledge and mastery of the Italian language.” This might be useful, but it will be applied badly (as they do) so you get people that don't intermingle English words but the speak only in the local dialect or with an accent so thick that they might as well be speaking another language.
> It also prohibits use of English in official documentation, including “acronyms and names” of job roles in companies operating in the country.
I don't have great feeling about this as we have words that are correctly taken from another language because they did not had a counter part (mouse for example) so this will breed horrible new Italian versions of the English words: we will have to work with a "computatore" (remember nobody will remember that "calcolatore" already exists) and a "topo".
> Under the proposed law, the Culture Ministry would establish a committee whose remit would include “correct use of the Italian language and its pronunciation” in schools, media, commerce and advertising. The sentiment is good, the Italian language is a beautiful language, we need to learn to speak it correctly and help it evolve naturally, but I feel the approach is wrong and reminds me of a similar thing that the goverment did during the fascist regime where people where forced to even change their name because it sounded too foreign...
Jokes aside, I understand the fear of your own language erroding in front of you. I see how this plays into the sentiment of "these goddamn young people, polluting the language of my youth with words I don't understand!"
Yet, after calming down my own emotions, I realise that I cherish the Polish and German words in my own accent of Czech. I value immensely the work of Czech intellectuals fighting for my language against German "overlords" in the 19th century. However, I wouldn't want to give up the trace influence of German on own language. I hope future Italians feel the same way.
I think about this general problematic often. My girlfriend and I are both Czech. Yet, considerable chunk of our conversation happens in English. We both intellectually grew and continue to grow with English, making it typically a more effective modus of discussion. But Czech has its unassailable place in our relationship. The fact that we use both languages and associated idioms, cultural baggage, ..., makes for a richer life.
Good luck to other non native speakers who have to ponder and navigate the same concerns about their identity.
How is it that I, an "Italian as a Third language" speaker, who only lived there for four years can immediately come up with the suitable, precise, and everyday Italian equivalent of an English word?
These folks are showing off that they speak [1] English to lord it over regular folk.
[1] typically very poorly. Italians are some of the worst English speakers in Europe.
> While the legislation encompasses all foreign languages, it is particularly geared at “Anglomania” or use of English words, which the draft states “demeans and mortifies” the Italian language, adding that it is even worse because the UK is no longer part of the EU.
This is comically disrespectful towards Ireland.
English wasn't dominant until late XIXth century.
As few of them have experience as leaders, all they can do is mimic fascism. I believe that many of these initiatives are personal, but no one is stopping them as these behaviors are praised in their environment. In the meantime they will lose money from the recovery and resiliency plan from Europe because of their incompetency, and they will fail to promote an European plan for immigration. They’ll probably even get more votes because of this as they master the art of choosing an enemy (Europe, immigrants) and ride people’s anger.
https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/man-spreche-deutsch-der-ka...
some good ones:
"Viertopfknallzertreibling" - 4-cylinder motor "Angströhre" - top hat
Goodness, have mercy. I do not understand the point of clinging to a language as if it were an essential part of life. Although Sanskrit is considered a god-given language by Hindus, it is barely used today. Similarly, many other languages are in decline. If even a god-given language cannot prevent its own disappearance, why waste time on such nonsense?
If a language, in whatever form it may take, can communicate your thoughts and ideas to the listener, that should be sufficient.
It is often said that history is taught in schools to help people avoid repeating past mistakes. However, while people may learn to avoid certain mistakes, they often do not learn about the natural decay of things.
For nationalists, English is one of those pests that just grows out of control. And the more they try to destroy it the more the young people flock to it.
It's a pointless exercise to try to preserve the status-quo, and it could be counter productive and isolationist. The language will change anyway.
Also, when do you freeze the language? Which words are you nostalgic about? The ones that were in common use when the legislators were young? Their grandparents? Current usage?
'This would mean that saying “bru-shetta” instead of “bru-sketta” could be a punishable offense.'
What is CNN's or the author's incentive to deliberately insert mud-slinging into an article about a country's politicians drafting laws?
Man, after the ChatGPT ban, looks like they're firing on all bad cylinders now!
https://www.amazon.es/Italiano-urgente-anglicismi-tradotti-i...
Urgent Italian: 500 English loanwords translated into Italian under an Spanish model.
I really hope that law won't pass the parliament scrutiny!
Not making a qualitative statement about whether that's a morally or economically right or wrong thing to do.
Ireland & Malta are so tired of being forgotten.
(Yes these countries have other languages, so does the UK.)
Good.
Europe is beautiful and its diversity in such a small area is beautiful. Be a bit chauvinist I say and conserve the things that define you. Don’t be tricked into becoming globalist, homogenized, generic culture.
Embrace beauty and your cultural aesthetic.
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.
At the point where the game was supposed to handle CONTINUE, the comment was CONTINEKU. Another one was METARU GERU SORIDU (or GIRU, don't remember). and more than that... all in all though even with word-by-word translation I was able to get through (we were only 3 "interns" working on the project + our boss (lead)).
Also learned how well "C" can be written :)
When your country is on HN for all the wrong reasons (facepalm)
Just a pr stunt.
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 interesting world.
What would people think if there was an american movement to stop using foreign loan words in English because they're diluting our culture?
I live in Quebec, Canada, where there is extreme policing of the French language, including various unconstitutional legislation to "preserve" French (the Canadian constitution has an override clause). It's a purely populist measure that does nothing for culture. I find it ironic but typical how much Quebec focuses on superficial cultural aspects (language) while hardly engaging at all with real questions of celebrating heritage - and other than the language, the culture is way closer to english canada than anything European.
Anyway, these language things are shallow populist measures to whip up a base, they're not about serious stewardship of cultural identity.