Chinese shop signs covered by cops... Italy like (once) South Africa?


欢迎中国人 Yesterday in Prato (near Florence), a decree was issued by the maire, order to hide all shop signs where "italian terminology is not prevailing". Policemen hastened to cover all shop signs in chinese by ability of black rubbish bags, and heavily fined the unlucky shopkeepers. I find it simply appalling.. and you? [ I mean: of course, surrounded by all Italy signs as "American bar" or "coiffeur pour dame" or "boutique de Paris" or "Doner kebab" are ... thousands! And they always have be there (for decades, without ever been fined or removed). Therefore, this management is a clear attack against chinese people, who committed the unforgivable "crime" to offer average part goods (particularly clothes, just in Prato, the italian property of textiles) at really LOW prices. I feel and express the highest esteem for those sober hard-working family, who (generally speaking) don't live above their means as many of us do here, in the country of occult monopolies, agreements lower than the table, legalized usury, sly trusts (e.g. banks, insurances), speed limits at 60 km/h in wide open and straight motorways (just to bleed your bucks ^ ^), and such... Chinese (of course not everyone, ok) appear to belong to the few people who really work here, and "earn their daily loaf with the sweat of their brow" (as my grandad used to say). This approach they're defying our "unwritten rules", the easygoing comfortable life led by our own indolent short-sighted shopkeepers, always trying to sell their goods up to that time buying them... ]
Best Answer:
Years ago France outlawed use of non French words. It seems some want to live in the past and outlawing speech and words is a farce. Today the world is a unbelievably small place and every country uses words from other countries, to fear the use of foreign words is like sticking your head within the sand to make the world go away.
Italy is having a severely hard time at the moment trying to understand and deal near the change that has recently hit their country since the slow 1990s which is the arrival of small numbers immigrants with their own langauges and cultures. Anyway... it should be sensible for the shops to have a touch italian so locals can understand what is being sold their!?!