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231 points rntn | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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raspo ◴[] No.35413421[source]
As an Italian now living abroad, every time I go back I am horrified by the way Italians mis-use all sorts of English words in many contexts of life...

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.

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1. Eddy_Viscosity2 ◴[] No.35413489[source]
They needed a word for this new thing so they took it from english. English itself steals words from all languages should it need a new word for thing. There's no governing body for language, people just use the words they think work best. You say this type of word use doesn't benefit anybody, but it does, it benefits the people who needed a word for a new thing and now have one. Words are just mouth noises after all, it doesn't really matter what it is, only that everyone agree what it means.