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| Europe |
| Italians urged to drop 'il weekend' and other creeping English words |
| 2008-09-11 |
| Italians are quite used to feeling "lo stress", looking forward to "il weekend" or trying to look "cool". But now an influential cultural institute has asked Italians to protect the language and reject "Anglitaliano". The Dante Alighieri Society asked people for examples of over-used foreign words and "il weekend" emerged as the worst offender. The society said the results showed that Italians want their language to receive more respect. For four months, the society asked visitors to its website, 70% of whom were Italians, for inappropriate examples of foreign words being used in everyday Italian, either written or spoken. "Who would have thought it - Italians protesting against 'il weekend'," said the institute, the Italian version of the French language protection body the Academie Francaise The least popular word was found to be "weekend", receiving 11% of the votes. "Too short? No, just not Italian enough," the society adds. They said it was pointless to use an English word, however elegant, when the Italian expression "fine settimana" means exactly the same thing. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #5 TW, even if the last part was a joke the post had many bits of sound statistician wisdom. In a less extreme form in Turkey, every so many years they have a Census Day during which everyone must stay at home and the only people allowed in the streets or roads beyond ambulances, police and fireman are...statisticians. |
| Posted by: JFM 2008-09-11 10:02 |
| #4 *gigggle* Thus speaks a true statistician. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-09-11 08:27 |
| #3 For four months, the society asked visitors to its website, 70% of whom were Italians, for inappropriate examples of foreign words being used in everyday Italian, Polls 101. You never, never, never, never even look at polls based on people coming to you. Who visits the site of the Dan,te Alighieri society? Normal italians or nationalistic losers with too muvch time in their hands? (Let's rember that they use the world calcio instead of football like France, Span, Portugal. A legacy of the Mussoloini era) And then who bothers to answer the question polled? The only>/b> valid polls are those who are based on the pollster selecting the people and going to them. Also because the people who refuse to answer tend to have different opinions tahnthe ones who do the more compulsive the poll the better the results: phone, where people can hang on you has greater bias than face to face and nothing beats the |
| Posted by: JFM 2008-09-11 05:47 |
| #2 Foolish, futile foibles. Can't stop words and expressions from oozing in from areas of dominate cultures. Just be grateful that the words come from American influence and not Arabic Islamic radical influence. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2008-09-11 04:35 |
| #1 From now on it's Freedom Pies. Delivered in 30 minutes or less is the American Way. |
| Posted by: ed 2008-09-11 01:30 |