Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

Please, don't think Italians are like that. It's just this stupid government. For instance in Italian, unlike Spanish, French, ..., there are no italianized words for all the computer science words, we just use English. In general there is not a big sentiment of culture self-defence. But this government is trying to do things that will appeal the dumb people voting for it.

There's a bit of a contradiction in your comment. You say Italians aren't like that, but Italians voted the "stupid government" into power and the government is doing these things to appeal to those Italians.

You can use ordenattore/computadora in no time.

The fact is that the government reached power mostly because votes not happy with the populists (five starts) and the failure of the left in recent years. Only a small percentage of the voters really care about the other right-shit of the government. However, premier Meloni, to satisfy their allies during the elections, promoted many Lega Padana party crazy people into minister roles... and that's the result.

It's the same story everywhere. Every population has a sizeable minority that's far-right, and these people value culture/nation/race, and do not value individuals/freedom. Sometimes they win an election, and then these kind of policies get passed that try to force the people around them to conform to their aesthetic preferences.

Thinking about a standard computer, accessories and concepts, there are no common Italian words for computer, mouse, touchpad, touchscreen, scanner, web, link, app, database, word processor, bit, byte and the defunct floppy disk. Everything else is commonly named in Italian. Keyboard, memory, disk (in general, but hard disk is in English), screen, pen drives, power unit, mother board (this is maybe 50-50), folders, icons, programs, processes, windows, buttons, sort, filter, search, rows, columns, cells, sheets.

More of them who were against this presumed sentiment of culture self defence, as you claim that in general there is no such thing (i.e. the majority of Italians don't care about it), should have voted the side they truly wanted, or should have gone and cast their vote instead of abstaining. But you may equally assume that they expressed their opinion in doing what they did well knowing what the outcome would be.

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.

> there are no italianized words for all the computer science words, we just use English

You're bragging about your language being poorer.

You really want to use farsound instead of telephone?

am i on Reddit?

It's not only the far right that value tradition and culture. And it's not only the right that tries to force the people around them to conform to their ideas of how the world should be.

it’s not just the far right, but that is a hallmark of the far right. conservatives want to conserve the idealized snapshot of the present or a gilded past.

telefono is telephone though?

Calcolatore (my university teacher told me that. Nobody in Italy would use that), mouse, touchpad, schermo touch, scanner, web depends on how you use it: internet or "rete", collegamento, applicazione, base di dati (university course was named like that. Most people call it database professionally), no idea about word processor (I rarely use that in English too), bit, byte, floppy, hard disk is "disco rigido", schermo, chiavetta usb, not sure about power unit, scheda madre, cartelle, icone, programmi, processi, finestre, bottoni, ordinare, filtrare, ricerca, righe, colonne, celle, fogli

Are the english words spoken in a way that follows italian phonic patterns(vowel sounds and consonant vowel pairs)? How does grammatical gender work for loan words, or newly made up words?

In a country where the ignorant bureaucrats call computers "il cervellone" (big brain) this law has, as secondary goal, the task of hiding their stupidity!

The majority of folks don't really think people from any country are "like" their governments, except when it comes to other countries' perceptions of Americans, for some weird reason. But in reality, there's not very many governments left that represent their citizens, including the US. The citizens of the world have collectively lost control of their governments in the last couple of decades.

  other countries' perceptions of Americans, for some weird reason

it's because of American policies that have consequences on other countries. It feels more personal

The other side didn't show up, last time, because of disappointment after almost a decade of more-or-less-uninterrupted power.

Not much lost control as just given up. The post-1989 alignment with the US on any substantial topic (economy, foreign policy...) has basically neutered the European political process.

Power unit is alimentatore. All words in my second list are translated in Italian with the words you provided.

Yes, database is base di dati but it's seldom used as such. Calcolatore is the calculator app nowadays :-)

They are spoken with an Italian accent that fits into the Italian sentence they are used in. I think this is common to all languages, they import foreign words and adapt them at least to the accent of the language. I don't think that the tt in spaghetti has the same sound in English and Italian.

Italian words must have a gender, there is no neutral. Computer, mouse, touchscreen and touchpad are male. Power unit is female even if its Italian counterpart alimentatore is male: il power unit sounds bad, la power unit sounds good. Motherboard is female and its translation scheda madre is also female. Bug, bit and byte are male.

The rule is that loan words enter Italian with their singular form and they don't change at the plural. This might have funny consequences.

Medium / media (radio, TV, etc) entered Italian from English which got them from Latin. The plural of medium in Italian is still medium and pluralizing it as media as in English and Latin is a grammatical error. Media is becoming more common as more people read them in English sentences, not because they are studying Latin :-)

Gender is decided case by case as the word fits better in Italian. Medium is male (il / i, un)

I'm used to call it power supplier, hence wasn't sure about the translation (my English is at fault here).

And indeed if you say "calcolatore", I interpret that as the calculator app (or any small math-only calculators used in school)

We are both wrong, you less than me. The correct term is power supply. A power unit is the hybrid engine of Formula 1 cars :-)

Edit: power unit is actually power supply.