3d ago

Italy bans gender-neutral symbols in schools in latest culture clash

www.reuters.com

reuters.com

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"The use of non-compliant graphic signs, such as the asterisk (*) and the schwa (ə), is contrary to linguistic norms and risks compromising the clarity and uniformity of institutional communication", the ministry said in a statement.
Oh fuck off Bigots. Language and the written word changes over time, so why try to stop this progress? (this is a rhetoric question and doesn't need an answer as we all already know why)
- I should think the push-back against e.g. semantic drift, spelling alterations etc. is also a normal and natural phenomenon, in the sense of language being a usable shared information network. The amount of effort the French put into preserving their language is a particularly extreme example.
  
  Let's be honest: That is not "a push-back against semantic drift or spelling alterations". They hate transgender people and diversity and are using every argument they can find to discriminate them.
  
  Fine, I have more of an issue with the inevitably-repeated mantra from every internet linguist when anyone offers any pushback on "correct" grammar, spelling, usage. There must be some equivalent of dialectical tension at play or language wouldn't be stable enough to be usable. There's no moral component in whether language changes or the rate of that change, that's just an emergent phenomenon from that kind of network.
  
  You have more of a problem with people not using language "correctly" than people not being respected as humans???
  
  I don't understand how you've reached that conclusion.
  What I was saying is that I have more of an issue with the knee-jerk "languages evolve" response than I have with any particular instance of a language actually evolving.
  The reason for this is that it has become another thought-terminating cliché which greatly oversimplifies things but is nevertheless trotted out as if it is the be-all and end-all of linguistics. It isn't. Particularly with politicised language.
  
  I think that there are many things to consider here:
  "correct" usage of a language is important, but we must be careful to not exclude people. English is not my native language, so this post will contain errors and if you're going full grammar nazi, you might end up excluding people from written communication. That is not good
  languages are evolving and it is the written mission of every official language committee to keep the official guidances in line with the changes of the language. Here in germany they are changing the official rules if the language is changing and are "legalizing" some new words
  But: They are not legalizing gender neutral language due to political reasons. According to their own guidance, they have to, because that is in actual use, but they are refusing.
  And then literal nazis are talking about "correct grammar" while not being able to spell themselves and that is stupid
  
  Yes, that's a reasonable take.
  
  The French did make a huge thing about changing the way they write in recent years to include multiple genders etc, there was a big fuss about it.
  
  The French have a body for deciding language so it makes way more sense for them to do something like that. They are fuxking weird about their language.
  
  That's right, they're called 'l'académie française" and every year they update the dictionary with new words, take out old ones etc. The population then promptly ignores all of that and keeps talking however the fuck they want hahaha. But "inclusive writing" was indeed a big topic a few years back from what I gather (I don't live there full time since a long time).

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