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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Venezuela seeks oust English biz, tech terms like 'marketing,' 'mouse' |
| 2008-02-26 |
| President Hugo Chavez's government is taking its battle against US "imperialism" into Venezuelans' vocabulary, urging state phone company workers to eschew English-language business and tech terms that have crept into the local vernacular. Through a campaign launched Monday, newly nationalized CANTV hopes to wean employees and others from words like "staff" ("equipo"), "marketing" ("mercadeo") and "password" ("contrasena"). Stickers and banners printed up by the company exhort Venezuelans to "Say it in Spanish. Say it with pride." The Communications and Information Ministry said in a statement that Venezuelans must recover Spanish words that are "threatened by sectors that have started a battle for the cultural domination of our nations." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #9 Was it somewhere here this week that it was reported that there are over 1,600 languages in the world today, but that only 700 or so are expected to be around 100 years from now? Maybe Hugo's Spanish is on the proverbial chopping block, eh? |
| Posted by: BA 2008-02-26 20:09 |
| #8 Let's go a little further in this moronic thought game. The Spanish came in as invaders. So get rid of the imperialistic Spanish language and all the related trappings, hardware, etc, and while you are at it, burn all the wheels. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2008-02-26 16:22 |
| #7 I share an office with a fellow from Venezuela. When I told him about Hugo's latest stupidity, he said that most Venezuelans would probably respond by saying "OK" - a very American expression. |
| Posted by: Rambler in California 2008-02-26 16:20 |
| #6 Spanish, French, Italian and many other European languages are all vulgar anyway. If Hugo and the French really want to deny the evolution of languages and be such purists about it they should be speaking Latin. What about TV, Hugo? What do you call that? How do you come up with a Spanish word for something that was invented by English speaking Americans? But don't feel too bad. Any language that can come up with terms like "pendejo estupido" is OK with me. :) |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2008-02-26 15:07 |
| #5 How about "pendejo estupido"? |
| Posted by: mojo 2008-02-26 12:51 |
| #4 "we also prohibit such gringo words as 'profit', 'income', 'low inflation', 'infrastructure maintenance', etc....although you will not likely have the need for them in our socialist paradise future anyway!" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-02-26 08:35 |
| #3 A centrally run language will fail in exactly the same way as a centrally run economy and for the same reasons! |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2008-02-26 07:12 |
| #2 There are (almost) a million words in English but only 250,000 in Spanish. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2008-02-26 07:05 |
| #1 The French went thru this awhile back, fighting against le cheeseburger and such. How did that work out for them? Hopefully, Hugo will pursue this to the level of comic buffoonery. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2008-02-26 00:28 |