# Linguistic purism at the cost of freedom?



## Chazzwozzer

In Turkey, we experience a linguistic phenomenon what some people like me prefer to call 'linguistic fascism'. Local governments are passing laws restricting the property rights and forcing people to change their signs, if in any other language, into Turkish. These laws have been greeted with great enthusiasm by many people. Even almost all the shopkeepers who are forced to follow the language policy say they are happy that 'Turkish is protected.' The idea that Turkish is under threat due to loanwords and use of other languages in some areas is promoted by the official language institution, TDK. The local governments with such policies are called 'Turkish-friendly' by the same institution.

I'd like to know if you have such policies in your country and if you do, how do people feel about it? I'd also like to hear about those countries with no such policies and what people think about it.  Anything regarding the issue is more than appreciated.


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## Mahaodeh

In the UAE, where I live now, there isn't any; but frankly I wish there was because it has gone way out of hand.

The UAE has a huge number of expatriates, but the UAE nationals and Arab nationals are not really to happy about it and would like to put some rules. Recently the government has passed a few laws under the pressue of informal complaints but nothing has been enforced yet. In the UAE they have another problem, even if the sign is in Arabic more times than not the one who wrote it does not really speak much Arabic so you can find a lot of signs with horrible spelling, grammer and lexical mistakes that not even accepted in collequal.

In Iraq pre-2003 there was, but loan words are allowed in 3 cases: if it's a proper name, if there is no Arabic equivalent and if it has been formalized that it became part of the language. The letters of course are in Arabic but you are allowed to add English but the Arabic had to be the prominent one. In Kurdistan you were allowed to choose between Arabic and Kurdish but if you choose Kurdish you should add an Arabic translation although the Kurdish was allowed to be the prominent one.

People in Iraq had no problem with it whatsoever, or at least I haven't heard of any complaints. I suppose they do have a certain degree of freedom while protecting the language.


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## Paulfromitaly

I don't think anything like that could possibly happen in Italy nowadays..
The only similar thing that comes to my mind was called "Italianization"  and was enforced by Mussolini during the fascism..


> *Fascist Italianization* was the violent and systematic process of assimilation by which, between 1924 and 1945, Benito Mussolini's Fascist government forced foreign populations living in Italy to assume the Italian language and culture, and worked to erase any traces of the existence of other nations on the territory of Mussolini's Italy.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italianization


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## Chazzwozzer

Mahaodeh said:


> Recently the government has passed a few laws under the pressue of informal complaints but nothing has been enforced yet.


What do these laws exactly say?



Paulfromitaly said:


> I don't think anything like that could possibly happen in Italy nowadays..
> The only similar thing that comes to my mind was called "Italianization"  and was enforced by Mussolini during the fascism..
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italianization


Very interesting. 

Why could not anything like that possibly happen again?


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## Grop

In France many languages used to be spoken before we all spoke French. These languages are not well recognised by the state, for the given reason of protecting cultural unity. This wikipedia article goes further into details.

Such laws do not only protect local culture from foreign languages: it also endangers local culture, for it endangers non-mainstream local languages (such as Kurdish in Turkey).


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## Vanda

Well, a politician tried to pass a law like that here.


> ... deputado federal Aldo Rebelo (...) , que apresentou, na Câmara, projeto que "dispõe sobre a promoção, a proteção, a defesa e o uso da língua portuguesa". O texto, de 1999, ...(2001)
> source


Of course, it was bound to fail. There are no laws capable of forcing Brazilians to stop using foreign names - it might be by lazyness of thinking of a correspondent word, it might just be by love of simplification. 
The best people do is to adapt the words to our pronunciation or add a Portuguese ending to the English (nowadays it is English like in the 19 century was French) word.
So we continue to _deletar,_ to go to _shopping centers_, have lunch at _self services, _eat_ hoti dogguis,_ go to a _drive thru_, to visit someone's  _home pages_ : and so on.
A professor said about that attempt. 


> A presença de estrangeirismos existe em qualquer língua. Usar a palavra _dumping_, por exemplo, é melhor do que gastar uma linha inteira para explicar, *em português: vender abaixo do preço para prejudicar o concorrente. *O mesmo acontece com _doping_. Não acredito em lei que possa mandar na linguagem do povo".


In summary he says that using dumping is better than having to explain in a whole line the concept in Portuguese and the same with doping. 

In this internet, globalized world I think it is extremely difficult to a self - called democratic country to implement a law like that.


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## bb008

Hola

Hasta donde sé en Venezuela no hay nada parecido, no hay ninguna ley que te prohíba hablar o escribir en otros idiomas o la utilización de términos extranjeros.


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## Sepia

Almost all laws mean less freedom for somebody - the main thing to think about is how much freedom somebody loses as compared to whom or what the law protects. That is an important thing to think about before one says "fascism". I think it is important that we have laws that require manufacturers or merchants or even restaurant owners to haveimportant notices for the consumer printed in a language that is generally understood - even if it means extra costs that may be expensive to an owner of a small store or a small restaurant.


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## aleCcowaN

In Argentina we have experienced all. The Constitution says you can speak any language you want and also says you're free to learn and to teach, the law says you can sign a contract written in any language you want, only formal documents have to be in Spanish. But not so long ago there were regulations to control the "excessive" use and consumption of foreign names, adds, music, movies, etc. There were some quotas of national and foreign music. We had the "números vivos": local "artists" performing a short act before a Holywood movie was screened (or better getting their money to leave the public alone and save it to them).

Once you let them to choose the words you can read, hear or say, they'll start to choose what concepts you are "able" to manage and what cultural products are suitable for you. Then, I lived a time in 1977-78 when popular tangos were banned for broadcasting systems. Some of them like "Cambalache" and "Yira Yira" because they "promote a disheartening vision of life", other ones like "Niño bien" because they "promote class struggle".

We also had a list of 2 o 3 thousand names you can choose for your baby. We can't have a Jonathan or an Erik with a k, neither an Ayelén, an native American name. That is, if you were of native American descent and spoke at home other language than Spanish, you were forced to name your children with an European name. The same if you was an Asian immigrant, you were forced to change your name into some Spanish one (lots of Chinese born called "Walter").

Well, today all that cowpie is gone, or better, it fertilizes a chaotic field of renewed liberties. Governments have the right and the duty of promoting local languages, culture and values by a reasonable amount of financing for worthy projects and developments and also by establishing and funding cultural institutions, but not by suppressing or suffocating the competence under a regulation tangle or a pile of prohibitions. That would be the choice of the defeated.


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## ireney

No, not really. Katharevousa was as close as we came to something similar to what you describe, and I found it a bit ironic that it was the Turkish language that was the greatest "influence" some people wanted to "purify" away  (the other being Italian and 'Slavic' influences and, of course, Albanian).

Voices against the usage of English (mainly) words are a (relatively) new phenomenon, but, thankfully, they are usually just tolerated.

Note that the official language of Greece is Greek and all official documents have to be translated to Greek for usage in dealings with the Greek state.

Other than that, you can name your shop or whatever in any language you wish (although if it is something other than English or French people will probably mispronounce it and if in another alphabet or a totally diferent typing system chances are very few will even mispronounce it  ).

Question though: Are billingual (or trilingual or whatever) signs allowed? I mean what about tourism?


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## Sepia

ireney said:


> No, not really. Katharevousa was as close as we came to something similar to what you describe, and I found it a bit ironic that it was the Turkish language that was the greatest "influence" some people wanted to "purify" away  (the other being Italian and 'Slavic' influences and, of course, Albanian).
> 
> Voices against the usage of English (mainly) words are a (relatively) new phenomenon, but, thankfully, they are usually just tolerated.
> 
> Note that the official language of Greece is Greek and all official documents have to be translated to Greek for usage in dealings with the Greek state.
> 
> Other than that, you can name your shop or whatever in any language you wish (although if it is something other than English or French people will probably mispronounce it and if in another alphabet or a totally diferent typing system chances are very few will even mispronounce it  ).
> 
> Question though: Are billingual (or trilingual or whatever) signs allowed? I mean what about tourism?



How do native ethnic minorities go about this in Greece. I suppose there must be lots of Greek whose native language is some Slavic language.


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## mirx

Nothing like this exists in México and given that half the people in the north have and use their knowledge of English, I don't see any kind of law being passed to avoid this.

I do have to admit that even though there are some ads in English in some shops, as an overall everything is predominantely in Spanish, from what I read at the beginning that situation in Turkey was much worse.

I am not sure if a similar law could work in México but perhaps we can still be saved.


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## sokol

In *Austria *there's nothing of that: no rules at all of forbidding Non-German signs, no purism worth mentioning, and no official Germanisation campaign. But here it is necessary to go into more detail:

- Active Germanisation actually happened in Carinthia with the Slovenian minority, and the local ruler of Carinthia still tries to prevent Slovenian signs while the Austrian government finally tries to force Carinthia to put up more bilingual town signs (there are only a few right now, and only in small villages). The struggle still is undecided which may sound strange to you - but we have a federal Government, and a Republic, and the local ruler always finds another way to legally (or half-legally) delay the bilingual signs still further.

- Purism actually exists in private initiatives which play only a minor role in Austria; in Switzerland (dialect purism) and Germany (standard language purism) it is more important but also not by legal support as described by you for Turkey.

- Minority (bilingual) town signs do exist in Burgenland (Croatian and Hungarian) as well as Carinthian (only a few and not as much as the Austrian federal government would like) and there do exist rules to protect the minorities, e. g. they may use their minority language in court (also in Carinthia, of course).

Tourists actually don't really mind about bilingual sign, to answer ireney's question; it is (in Carinthia) only the regional government and the political right wing of the region that doesn't like them.
In Burgenland this is different, there's even a very well known village called Parndorf = Pandrof (in Croatian) according to the town sign: well known because a designer outlet is situated there visited also by many people from Lower Austria and Vienna. I never ever heard someone mention that he or she has objections against "Pandrof" on the sign.


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## xqby

mirx said:


> I am not sure if a similar law could work in México but perhaps we can still be saved.


 
I have my doubts! Pretty much the same thing happens here with but with Spanish instead of English. Immigrants move here and don't bother to learn English, so the service industry caters to them in Spanish. It's a pretty darn big block of money; simple economics makes it extremely unlikely that policy-makers are going to stop having advertisements and such in Spanish any time soon.



Chazzwozzer said:


> I'd like to know if you have such policies in your country...


 
I'm going to write this about my home state because the whole country is pretty big, and not entirely the same culturally. 

Lordy me, definitely not. All forms offered by the California government are printed in English and in Spanish. In non-Spanish minority-heavy areas there will be (government-issued) writings in a third language. Just off the top of my head, when I was in San Francisco I saw directions for using the emergency escape on the trolley printed in English, Spanish, and Chinese. With such a liberal government, it's not terribly surprising that the private sector is even more so. English is still the _lingua franca _of the state, but if you want to attract Korean customers, you can write your adverts in Hangul. Not a problem.

This isn't to say that there's no dissent. People get grumpy with Spanish-only TV shows or some other such piddling issue and write angry letters to their newspaper editor, but I think most of us realize that the state is an eclectic mashup of all sorts of weird countries and languages. 
The notion of trying to homogenize California is, frankly, pretty laughable.


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## Tagarela

Olá,

Vanda has commented about Brazil but I have somethings to add. 

For sure, if another language has a word for an idea that your language cannot express very well, use this word - but, as Vanda said, try to find someone in your language first. 

The law that was propposed here was, at least for me, reasoanable sensitive. It intened to avoid a huge number of shops and general services using foreign names (mainly English). For me, it was far from any facism or anything like that.  But laws like that would hardly be approved, most of people would consider a great lack of freedom and so on... althought I don't think this way.

Até.:

ps: Vanda, eu não deleto nem como hot dogs. Tá, mas vou ao shopping.


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## cuchuflete

In my experience in the U.S. outside of California, already described by a Californian,
we have the following:

1) No national laws restricting signs, speech, or publications to English
2) No state laws restricting use of languages other than English
3) A few local governments, usually in small, rural towns, making foolish attempts at restrictions, which are normally found illegal by state or federal courts
4) A few xenophobic or opportunistic members of Congress trying to pass laws mandating that English be the "official" language of the country, but with no restrictions of any kind on signs, publications or speech in other languages
5) In my home state of Maine, some highway signs are bilingual, French and English,
as a courtesy to our French speaking Canadian neighbours.  This is also practical, given the amount of cross border tourism and commercial traffic.  The words in French and in English are of the same size.  
6) In most large U.S. cities, there are neighborhoods that have predominantly foreign speaking people.  In these neighborhoods it is common to see signs entirely in other languages, sometimes in other alphabets.  This has never caused any public comment or disputes.  It is simply expected as natural for immigrant populations.  

I suppose you could say that we have a great deal of linguistic freedom, and are not especially worried about the loss of "purism".  American English has always happily enriched itself by incorporating/adopting foreign words.


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## avok

You may want to read the thread about the story of “Maria Cobarrubias". 



> ...One day, Maria Cobarrubias was fined $115 for the name sign, “Supermercado Jalisco”, posted outside her supermarket. -- a violation of Norcross' ordinance prohibiting signs that are less than 75% English, as determined by local authorities.


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## Sepia

avok said:


> You may want to read the thread about the story of “Maria Cobarrubias".



In this connection I'd like to mention France - and I wonder why France has not been mentioned yet: France has a law that for one requires the state to avoid using non-French words in its communcation and secondly restricts the use of non-French text in advertising. Everyone publishing adverts for the French market are absolutely panicky about this and in fact individuals and firms have been fined for violating these laws, for decades. However, in the late nineties a theater had puplished a pamphlet in English only, didn't accept being fined and took the case to the highest court. Verdict: According to he constitution one has the right of free expression. This means, also in writing and in any language, and it makes no difference one does it in advertising or in a newspaper or elsewhere.

So take a closer look at your constitutions. These laws you mention could be in violation.


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## Chaska Ñawi

The only Canadian province where "linguistic purism" is an issue is in Quebec.  All signs must be primarily in French.  Other languages are welcome, but must be in smaller letters than the French on signs.

The only children who have a right to an all-English education are those whose parents are anglophones born in Quebec.  Others must follow the regular French program, with the introduction of English in Grade 4.  Although French immersion schools are very popular in other areas of Canada, particularly Ontario and New Brunswick, English-immersion schools are not allowed in Quebec.  Some Quebecois living on the border simply pay the extra fees and send their children to school in adjacent provinces, or even in the U.S..

That said, this seems to be a reflection of government policy rather than cultural policy.  I just returned from some time camping in Quebec; frequently if my children or I looked baffled or confused, the people with whom we were talking would immediately switch to English.


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## Sepia

Chaska Ñawi said:


> ...
> The only children who have a right to an all-English education are those whose parents are anglophones born in Quebec.  Others must follow the regular French program, with the introduction of English in Grade 4.  Although French immersion schools are very popular in other areas of Canada, particularly Ontario and New Brunswick, English-immersion schools are not allowed in Quebec.  Some Quebecois living on the border simply pay the extra fees and send their children to school in adjacent provinces, or even in the U.S..
> 
> ....



That, however, has little to do with linguistic purism, I'd say. It has more to do with the fact that they don't want francophone kids educated away from their native language. And vice versa: At least kids from anglophone families have a RIGHT to go to an anglophone school. That is not the way it goes in most bilingual regions I know. Where I live now native Danish-speaking Germans had to found their own schools to make Danish-language education possible. On the Danish side of the border in the formerly German region it is the same thing with the German population.

So I don't really see your example as linguistic purism, rather than a way of giving both sides a fair chance.


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## ernest_

We have got something similar around here and I'm pretty sure they got the idea from Quebec. There's a law according to which signs in shops have to be written in Catalan. This law is not strictly enforced, and it doesn't forbid using other languages along with Catalan, but it has stirred some controversy, especially in other parts of Spain, where it is seen as a "proof" that the Catalan government is embarked on a campaign to eradicate the Spanish language. I am no big fan of such a law, but to be honest it doesn't affect me in any way, so it's not like I can be bothered or anything.


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## Sepia

I remember the uprising as the new airport in Palma de Mallorca was opened:

All signs were in English, German and Castellano. NO Catalan.

Now we have all four languages there.


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## Chaska Ñawi

Sepia said:


> At least kids from anglophone families have a RIGHT to go to an anglophone school. That is not the way it goes in most bilingual regions I know.



I wasn't as clear on explaining this as I could have been.

Not all anglophone kids have the right to an English education - only those whose anglophone parents were born in Quebec.  If your anglophone parents have moved to Quebec from out of province, you must attend a francophone school.  

There are many cases of children being reprimanded in Quebec francophone elementary schools for speaking a language other than French on the playground, even if they were recent immigrants.


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## Adolfo Afogutu

In Uruguay, accounting should be kept in Spanish; contracts, deeds, etc. have to be in Spanish in order to be registered. There are no other laws restricting communication to Spanish.
  As far as I know people are not concerned about the use of foreign languages in mass communication media. Despite the fact that there is no restriction, only very few TV ads are in English or French, e.g. perfume advertising. I remember now some small communities, like Armenians, who broadcast in foreign languages.

  There is a different aspect of linguistic purism which is a matter of concern for those who care about their own language, at least in my society. This is about the misuse of words, elementary grammatical mistakes, diction errors, etc.  For example, in the Cono Sur, there is an ad on TV by –according to their own definition- “the biggest multinational company producing and selling consumer goods in the world”, that goes like this: “…jabón XXX, *el *mism*o* agua…” , something that is not accepted in any Spanish grammar book.  The main question is about the capacity of schools and  teachers to counterbalance the wrong use of  native language on media.


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## ernest_

Chaska Ñawi said:


> Not all anglophone kids have the right to an English education - only those whose anglophone parents were born in Quebec.  If your anglophone parents have moved to Quebec from out of province, you must attend a francophone school.



While I can see the idea behind this, I don't understand how the government could prevent anyone from claiming that they are anglophone when they are not. Do you need to show any proof?



> There are many cases of children being reprimanded in Quebec francophone elementary schools for speaking a language other than French on the playground, even if they were recent immigrants.



No offence, but I will take this with a grain of salt, until I see this happening with my very eyes. If this is true, it's no joke, but somehow it reminds me of certain stories that circulate in my country which are complete fabrications.


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## Chaska Ñawi

Yes, you need to show proof that you attended an anglophone school in Quebec yourself before you can register your child.

As for being reprimanded for using a different language on the playground, I'm sorry to say that it does indeed happen - and in anglophone Canada too, not just in Quebec.  I'm a teacher and also do occasional work with the immigrant community.  Some of these stories I hear firsthand; others show up in the professional literature.


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## Nanon

Chaska Ñawi said:


> The only Canadian province where "linguistic purism" is an issue is in Quebec.  All signs must be primarily in French.  Other languages are welcome, but must be in smaller letters than the French on signs.



To this I would add that "linguistic purism" is much stronger in Québec than in France.

Quebec Francophones are much better and more scrupulous at creating new French words and finding equivalents to anglicisms than the French.

France has had its share of purism against regional languages, too.


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## Sepia

ernest_ said:


> While I can see the idea behind this, I don't understand how the government could prevent anyone from claiming that they are anglophone when they are not. Do you need to show any proof?
> 
> 
> 
> No offence, but I will take this with a grain of salt, until I see this happening with my very eyes. If this is true, it's no joke, but somehow it reminds me of certain stories that circulate in my country which are complete fabrications.


 
However, such things took place a few decades ago in Germany as well as in Denmark - they are no fabrications. I don't think that Danish-language kids would be reprimanded for speaking Danish or Low German in a German school today (except you wouldn't find many kids today speaking Low German), but they used to, and the amount of people speaking these languages in Germany are decreasing. The same goes for German-language people in Denmark. In the southernmost part of Denmark that, after a referendum, went back to Danish administration in 1920 the the German-language population has decreased sinde then from approx. 25% to 6%.

Denmark never had any laws requiring you to speak Danish in public, but teachers often make their own "laws" - and when kids don't know their rights, there is not much they can do about it.


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## Grumpy Old Man

No laws restrict the use of any language in Finland. In bilingual areas of the country everything official like the names of streets has to be in both Finnish and Swedish. Anyone who owns a shop can advertise it in as many languages as he wants to. English is often used on signs for tourists.


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## Sepia

Grumpy Old Man said:


> No laws restrict the use of any language in Finland. In bilingual areas of the country everything official like the names of streets has to be in both Finnish and Swedish. Anyone who owns a shop can advertise it in as many languages as he wants to. English is often used on signs for tourists.


 
Well, this is obvious - there is no place in Europe where you can restrict the use of a language.

What is possible is to follow certain policies about the use of certain languages within certain organisations - including private enterprises and government institutions. It is to some extent possible to oblige somebody by law to use a certain language when spreading certain informations - this does in no way imply that he cannot additionaly publish the same information in one or more other languages. 

The EU is probably one of the areas of the world where native cultural minorities has the strongest support in the legislation. On top of that several EU and Non-EU members have signed other aggreements obliging them to grant native cultural/lingual minorities more support and protection. 

That still does not say much about possible attempts of "purifying" a language.


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## L4ut4r0

bb008 said:


> Hasta donde sé en Venezuela no hay nada parecido, no hay ninguna ley que te prohíba hablar o escribir en otros idiomas o la utilización de términos extranjeros.



Ley no hay, pero sí hay una norma interna de CANTV.

CANTV busca abolir uso del inglés en vocabulario venezolano 

"Password," "staff," "host," "meeting" o "mouse" son algunas de las palabras del inglés que buscará eliminar del vocabulario de los venezolanos la telefónica estatal CANTV


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## EmilyD

In the realm of education of Deaf and Hearing Impaired children in the U.S., there was a time when Deaf children were prohibited from using sign (manual) language.

Adults, usually hearing, and "well-intentioned", were concerned that Deaf children would not learn to lip read and to be "oral" if they were allowed to use sign...

Currently there is a philosophy espousing "total communication", but it was definitely a source of conflict, and freedom was at the heart of it.

http://www.asd-1817.org/history/history-deafed.html

_Nomi_


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## Nanon

L4ut4r0 said:


> Ley no hay, pero sí hay una norma interna de CANTV.


 
In this case, it is not a law but an internal policy of the company. Some companies, either public or private, do emit instructions about the vocabulary that shoud, or should not, be used. The same goes for language. despite the strong tendency to mix politics and primary anti-Americanism to many things in Venezuela, I am not sure that is the only reason for banning Anglicisms from IT vocabulary in CANTV...


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## bb008

L4ut4r0 said:


> Ley no hay, pero sí hay una norma interna de CANTV.
> 
> CANTV busca abolir uso del inglés en vocabulario venezolano
> 
> "Password," "staff," "host," "meeting" o "mouse" son algunas de las palabras del inglés que buscará eliminar del vocabulario de los venezolanos la telefónica estatal CANTV


 

Esa tontería no llegará lejos, es casi imposible tratar de abolir palabras que el 80% de la población venezolana conoce y utiliza casi como propia y sobre todo en una empresa como la CANTV, que es una empresa que fue manejada por Estados Unidos mucho tiempo. (Tendrían que penalizar a los trabajadores que las utilicen) 

Saludos.-


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