Pulaski

This, from the linked article: I understand why politicians are whining about it, and why national pride might be offended, but you can't stem the global tidal wave of the growth of the English language. In an increasingly global world, with jobs and marketing controlled by global businesses a global language is inevitably going to emerge, and that language is not going to be Italian, nor French or German, nor even Chinese. The Chinese, the Germans, and especially the Dutch know that (the French I am not so sure about ), and are embracing the English-speaking future. I fear that countries that behave like ostriches and try to fight the spread of English, are just going to further hinder their prospects for economic growth.

BTW If the politicians had really wanted to do something, they should have stopped the likes of Benetton using English adverts in Italy twenty years ago!

Garbatellamike

Caput Mundi = broken Monday, right?

MarkRD

Caput Mundi = pointless Latin

Garbatellamike

Or as my sister who went to a posh school and had to study Latin used to say:

Latin is a language,
As dead as dead can be,
It killed the bloomin Romans,
And now it's killing me!

37100

Dillo in italiano e studia l'inglese: firma la petizione - Cronaca - Gazzetta di Mantova

Sorry, in Italian. Short version. It's a petition for the use of Italian where the word exists.

Garbatellamike

Wow I didn't know Italian was the fourth most studied language ... you learn sonething every day. English, Spanish will be 1 and 2 presume French or German is number 3 or is it Mandarin?

La lingua italiana è la quarta più studiata al mondo. Oggi parole italiane portano con sé dappertutto la cucina, la musica, il design, la cultura e lo spirito del nostro paese. Invitano ad apprezzarlo, a conoscerlo meglio, a visitarlo.

Il Design???????? Are they not doing exactly what their petition wants to outlaw?

37100

No equivalent word, just an approximate, but isn't that the case of the vast majority of English words used?

MarkRD

So design is OK, but fashion isn't?


I think I'll sign it anyway.

Lorna at Vicenza

Something for all you retards out there .....................

ononno

[QUOTE=Lorna at Vicenza;11641860]Something for all you retards out there .....................[

.......memories are made of this.......

MarkRD

mikelincs

The French tried to replace the English words that had made their way into the French language, but the people there were having none of it. Most of the words had no French equivalent, and so the created approximations, which, in many cases, meant replaceing the English word with a French phrase of about 6 words, no wonder it didn't really take off.

britaly00

reminds me of the scene in Borat - his brother's 'retardation'. Hilarious.

Pulaski

I think the irony is lost on the French, that the English language became the phenomenon that it is in large part because it is a mongrel language that has adopted many words from wherever it finds them (wherever people speak some version of English) and whenever it is convenient to do so (pretty much always), and not because it had a guardian overlooking its linguistic purity.

primularossa

What do you mean exactly with "the phenomenon that it is"? phenomenon in what? thanks