cross-posted from: https://lemmy.wtf/post/43436964
Giorgia Meloni’s Italy wants to rename electricity
https://www.politico.eu/article/melonis-government-wants-to-rename-electricity/
https://www.politico.eu/article/melonis-government-wants-to-rename-electricity/
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.wtf/post/43436964
47 Comments
nocturne@slrpnk.net · 52 pts · 83d
solrize@lemmy.ml · 16 pts · 83d
Would the plural be "volte"?
Vinylraupe@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 82d
*Voltae
solrize@lemmy.ml · 10 pts · 82d
Hmm, I think Volti assuming Volta is masculine: https://connex-ita.com/plural-in-italian/
Voltae looks more like Latin. Romani ite domum!
Damage@feddit.it · 6 pts · 82d
Italian here. Plural would still be Volta, because it already is in a sense. Now, for the actual words "volta" meaning vault, arch, and "volta" meaning "time" (as in "that time we did that"), then the plural is "volte".
smeenz@lemmy.nz · 3 pts · 82d
Now write it out a hundred times!
Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 82d
I do not know Italian, but I'd be surprised if a word ending on "a" were masculine. Usually, "a" indicates feminine, making the plural "e"
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 82d
Ancient Romans gobbled a lot of classical greek; the masculine -a nouns are usually greek origin (sistema, tema, problema), but they are the exception.
Volta is a proper name, though, so there wouldn't be any rules.
Vinylraupe@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 82d
It would be neutrum in German. (the forbidden sex)
Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 82d
Voltae would be Latin, in Italian, Volte is the correct plural.
Vinylraupe@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 82d
In German it would be Voltae.
AzuraTheSpellkissed@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 82d
And now let the Italian and the German far right fight over it.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 81d
Yeah let's rename everything with the name of the one who discovered it!
I bet that'll be fun.
thisisbutaname@discuss.tchncs.de · 45 pts · 83d
Finally they stopped wasting time and got down to the serious issues of the country!
DrMartinu@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 35 pts · 83d
Give it a week, the US will respond by renaming it to freedom shocks instead
pastermil@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 82d
"We're getting rid of election, and we don't want our citizens to be reminded of the past everytime they turn on the lamp."
Buffalox@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 83d
It's him it's named after anyway, so I can see the logic in them wanting to do that.
Kind of weird it hasn't been called that all along.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Volta
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de · 7 pts · 82d
am i the only one who thinks "volta" sounds much much worse as a unit? Like, there's a reason people say "amp" instead of "ampere", we don't like saying needlessly long words all the time.
Even if you change the official name i'm almost certain it'll just get shortened back down.
Buffalox@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 82d
In my country nobody says Amp, we all say Ampere, an Volta sounds absolutely fine, IDK why it was anglicized?
Dicska@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 82d
Imagine looking for a Philip screwdriver.
Buffalox@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 82d
Here's the flipping screwdriver. 🪛
Not that that's a flat! I said PHILIP not flipping!
Thank god it's Philips with an s. 🙏
smeenz@lemmy.nz · 3 pts · 82d
But what you really wanted was a pozidriv
Buffalox@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 81d
I had to look that up, but yes absolutely.
Here we actually don't normally call them Philips, but "star" screwdrivers, star being "stjerne" in Danish.
obvs@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 81d
An even better question is "Why would countries not be allowed to localize standardized words for their own languages?"
Would it seriously be a problem if Italy used "volta" and the U.S. used "volt"?
Has it been a problem with France using "litre" and Italy and Spain using "litro" and the U.S. using "liter"?
Buffalox@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 81d
I think it's a science thing, just like in biology and medicine they use latin, and math has standardized symbols.
Standards are cool, and the standard for the French litre is liter, despite the liter is of French origin as part of the metric system. And was defined as litre in France in 1793, where the name was based on the older french litron.
For some weird reason these standards are almost always anglified no matter what their origins were?
I suppose Italy is free to use Volta, but it is not the agreed upon international standard.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 82d
Basically Italians "Gulf of America".
If you have nothing achieved to be proud of, you can only be proud of the country you were accidentally born in...
badgermurphy@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 81d
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 81d
And there is a vaccine that could make measles extinct - if it was applied globally.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca · 20 pts · 82d
Well then I have good news for ya, "volt" was already named after the dude, so this task is already done
smeenz@lemmy.nz · 2 pts · 82d
I think you may have missed the next part of the article where they explain they specifically want to change the spelling to include the a in the official name of the unit
CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 82d
Shouldn't it be "volto" since he was a man?
smeenz@lemmy.nz · 1 pts · 81d
I think this is where we defer to the comment made by an actual Italian
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 81d
On the one hand, I don't really care about the name or have any sentimental attachment to Volts over Voltas, and I can totally get behind naming the unit 1:1 with the guy's name rather than anglicizing it for no real reason.
On the other hand, it was two British scientists that coined the term, honoring the Italian scientist more than 3 decades after his death (though, interestingly, they originally used it for units of resistance, a.k.a. ohms, rather than the unit of electrical force it is now). It is not as if Volta himself wanted to name a unit in his own honor, or that he or anyone else initially called it a volta and then it was bastardized later.
So it really seems like this has nothing at all to do with Volta himself and honoring him, which the current name still does. Rather it seems it's stupid nationalistic posturing about rejecting the international cooperations and influences of science and proping up Italian scientific achievement in particlar.
Also while it's true that the vast majority of units honoring scientists' names are 1:1 to their namesake, including some that probably could've done with some abbreviation (looking at you, goeppert-mayer), volt is also not the only unit to have been abbreviated from their namesake. Farad (Faraday), bel/decibel (Bell), poise (Poiseuille), baud (Baudot), neper (Nepier), torr (Torricelli), Cartesian coordinates (Descartes), bark scale (Barkhausen)... probably more. He's got company.
wrinkle2409@lemmy.cafe · 12 pts · 83d
Really focusing on serious issues I see /s
luthis@lemmy.nz · 10 pts · 83d
I'm all for this
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 82d
You say volta, I say voltamort
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 83d
That’s… not going to happen lol
Photonic@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 83d
Why not?
The headline is misleading. They just want to change the Italian word for volt to Volta, since that was the man’s actual name in his native Italian
FishFace@piefed.social · 4 pts · 82d
Not the person you replied to but I imagine the SI will not change the name, and so scientists will not use "volta", so Italian schools will not want to each "volta".
Photonic@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 82d
I don’t think there will be much difference, since an Italian teacher would already pronounce volt as volt-a.
tobebannedbygaymods@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 82d
doesn't seem that bad , sounds better actually !
TraipsersWill@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 83d
Iay inkthay atthay I'llay artstay allingcay itay 'oltavay'.
vane@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 82d
Rivolta to volt for tribute to Volta
Smeagol666@crazypeople.online · 4 pts · 81d
While we're at it, let's change the name of North America to Amerigo del Nord.
gramie@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 82d
Next thing you know, they are going to want English speakers to say Roma instead of Rome, Napoli instead of Naples, and so on.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 82d
It's almost like they want everybody to use special pronouns for Italy.
Knuschberkeks@leminal.space · 1 pts · 81d
oh my god, they want everyone to turn into my mother
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 81d
Many countries do or did something like that already though? Like Peking -> Beijing, Ivory Coast -> Cote d'Ivore, Turkey -> Türkiye and so on.