The Times of India on Monday applauded
a bill from Premier Giorgi Meloni's rightwing Brothers of Italy
(FdI) party that would ban the use of English in all official
Italian documents, imposing fines of up to 100,000 euros
($106,000) on officials who fail to use the language of Dante
and opt for Anglo equivalents.
The issue of using English instead of Hindi or even Sanskrit is
keenly felt on the sub-continent.
English is one of India's official languages but its use is
often described, and not just by Hindu nationalists, as "baggage
from colonial domination, to be abolished", noted India's
biggest selling English language daily.
Many of the daily's millions of readers echoed those sentiments.
The article took Times readers through the salient details of
the Italian story, reporting that Meloni's FdI has filed the
bill aimed at banning the use of foreign words and terms in
Italian, an increasingly common occurrence which was recently
stigmatized by former premier and ex-European Central Bank chief
Mario Draghi.
The bill, it said, was presented by FdI's House Deputy
Speaker Fabio Rampelli and would institute fines ranging from
5,000 to 100,000 euros for public employees using foreign
instead of Italian words in any public communication, for firms
that employ foreign terms for job titles, and for schools and
universities using non-Italian expressions, unless this is
justified by the presence of foreign students.
"The use of Italian will be obligatory for using all goods and
services, and in all other walks of life, where non-Italian
terms have become rife leaving many people baffled," Rampelli
was quoted as saying.
The Times quoted the FdI bill as saying "Anglo-mania has
negative repercussions on the whole of society...and the spread
of English undermines and mortifies Italian," adding that "the
inconsiderate use of English words and acronyms defining roles
in companies is paradoxical, in light of the UK's choice to
leave Europe".
Draghi last year chided people for using foreign terms to
try to sound more important, saying Italian was a beautiful and
expressive tongue that needed nos substitute and observing that
many people who do not know English, the main culprit, are left
in the dark.
The left-leaning opposition 5-Star Movement (M5S) accused
the FdI of inconsistency since the industry ministry has been
renamed 'Made in Italy Ministry', saying "does Rampelli want to
disown his colleague Adolfo Urso, the business and made in Italy
minister, a fact also noted by the Times of India.
The centre-left opposition Democratic Party (PD) has accused the
government of wanting to turn the clock back to the days of
Fascist 'autarky', when cocktails were renamed 'Harlequins' due
to their bright colours and jazz legend Louis Armstrong became
Luigi Braccioforte.
It also noted that Meloni herself used an English term to call
herself an underdog, in English, when describing her rise to the
premiership last September, another detail picked upon by the
Times of India.
photo: Rampelli
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