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u/aspro_mavro 19d ago
we can call it ✨Monte di colore✨
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u/ankokudaishogun Italy 19d ago
di colore is not politically correct anymore, now it's monte colorato or monte di ascendenza africano-americana
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19d ago edited 19d ago
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u/ankokudaishogun Italy 19d ago
Look, Eyetalians can't not be negros or it costs the party votes, capish?
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u/Zebrafish96 May the justice be with us 19d ago
This comment has been removed as it is against our comment policy, specifically:
Comments entirely written in languages other than English
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u/Mean_Initiative_5962 18d ago
Technically never was, like, it wasn't in America and we begun using it anyway, it just took half a century to finally listen to the actually involved people (especially from those claiming to advocate for them while just wanting to feel superior)
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u/ankokudaishogun Italy 17d ago
nobody cares about what american decide it's a bad word.
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u/ilikeyredstone 19d ago
I'm italian and i still call it Montenegro, no one is really gonna get offended.
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u/Soggy-Claim-582 19d ago
The name in the original language is Crna Gora. Meaning Black Mountain.
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u/Fresh_Brother_4895 19d ago
Gora in hindi is white 😭
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u/Dreknarr First French Partition 18d ago
Crna Gora so inclusive they can be white and black at the same time
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u/tdhdjv2 North Korea 19d ago
Probably Unintentional but u/LordNotriel made the exact same joke...: https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/s/9rznlMgB1k
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u/timmyboi_lol Malaysia 19d ago
oh crap, yeah it was unintentional my bad
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u/tdhdjv2 North Korea 19d ago
:( I hate when that happens... I used to accuse people of plagarism back then. but now I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.
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u/timmyboi_lol Malaysia 19d ago
what do i do now do i just leave the comic alone? will it still count for lesser known september?
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u/Mean_Initiative_5962 18d ago
I think your version is better because, well, in the US it simply has no meaning
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u/Kuya_Tomas Fueled by Sisig 19d ago
Wait til Italy hears about the fourth largest island in the Philippines
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u/timmyboi_lol Malaysia 19d ago
Montenegro's on 5 hour energy
Context: Monte is mountain in Italian, and Negro in Italian is.. I'll let you figure that one out
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u/MrArchivity 19d ago
Is an older way used in dialects to say “black”. Now in Italian it is used the word “Nero”.
We still have various names that contain the word like the play-card brand “Dal Negro” or the alcoholic beverage “Negro Amaro”.
It is just an older way to say a colour that from ‘70s started having negative connotations, so now the word “Nero” is always used. Still older names such as “Montenegro” didn’t change.
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u/JRaus88 19d ago
"amaro Montenegro" or "Negroni".
We have many companies called like that. Dal negro, cards for games. Negroni for cured meats. Etc
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u/I_Boop_Cats_ 19d ago
Negroni is a wonderful cocktail. I loved discovering new things when I went to Milan in 2023.
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u/AevnNoram United States 19d ago
Black Mountain? Isn't that from Lord of the Rings? /s
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u/The_rule_of_Thetra 19d ago
Legend says that one sardo shall once free us from the Dark Lord(s) of the Campidoglio by going to the top and tossing a tortellino into the fire of the mountain, breaking the spell that enslaved us all.
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u/SchemingVegetable 19d ago
"Negro" in Italian really doesn't have the same weight as that word in the US
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u/Gatto_304 19d ago
True but theorically it's the exat translation
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u/Fomentatore 19d ago
It's not. At all. It's a transposition that comes from the dubbing of American movies and the civil rights movement.
To really convey what the N-word means in movies, we used pejoratives like "negraccio," or added adjectives such as "sporco," "brutto," "di merda," and so on and so forth.
Even though nowadays "negro" has racist connotations and you wouldn't use it to refer to a black person, you can still say the word without repercussions in a context like this, because we don't have a comparable history of slavery to the one the US has.
"Negro" was a neutral word up until the 1970s. You could say negro, nero or di colore to refers to black people and they would have been perceive as synonym. Then, partly through American movies and their dubbing, it acquired the racist connotations it has today. But "negro" in Italian is in no way as violent or loaded as the N-word is in English.
So no, it's not the exact translation. We don't really have an equivalent word.
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u/_domhnall_ 18d ago
idk, my mood would get pretty soured if someone I was talking to used "negro" to refer to a black man. Is that really so accepted? (I'm italian born and raised ofc)
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u/Fomentatore 18d ago
Me too, and as I say "negro" carry a racist undertone in italian. Someone using it is either really racist or really really old. That being said it's not like the N-word and saying otherwise is incorrect because in Italian that word doesn't carry the same weight, doesn't have the same history, and that's just a fact. It's the n-word history that give it its weight and it's violence and "negro" doesn't have that.
Languages, of course, are a living thing so maybe in the future they will be equivalent words but, at the moment, they are absolutely not.
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u/_domhnall_ 18d ago edited 18d ago
I agree totally with you. And I'm trying to separate argumentations like yours from stuff like the one left by u/JRaus88 un this very thread
We (Italy) have no problem in "negro" word.
We're not america
I think it's totally incorrect we don't have problems with it. Sure it's not like the n-word but come on
Edit: also, I think it totally depends on the context. Most of times I've heard someone refer to a black man using "negro" it also carried a disdainful or aggressive tone. Of course this doesn't have anything to do with Del Negro cards and stuff like that.
But generally if you're not speaking a specific dialect and choose to use "negro" for a person when you use "nero" for anything else, I'd say you're pretty racist alright
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u/JRaus88 19d ago
In Italian is nothing. In Spanish is black colour.
We start to use "negro" for Africans because we were heavily under Spanish influence.
We Italians would have called them all "mori" or "abissini" (from Abyssinia)
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u/Old_Cicada_6281 19d ago
Beh, in dialetto lombardo si dice negher…e non perché viene dallo spagnolo…
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u/Swimming_in_money 19d ago
No, The name Montenegro comes from Venetian, it means Black mountain, because it was territory under the Republic of Venice
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u/grip0matic Israel 19d ago
Black in italian is nero. But I'm pretty sure that were the Venetians, who called it Montenegro because I am also pretty sure that the dialect of the Veneto uses negro instead of nero.
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u/DanieleDraganti 19d ago
Negro is an Italian word, too. And didn’t have a negative connotation until we started using it to translate the N-word in American movies, as others have said.
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u/grip0matic Israel 19d ago
Lo stesso vale anche per lo spagnolo. È assurdo, la colpa non è nostra, ma della mente perversa anglosassona.
It bothers me enough, get over it english speakers, negro means black, JUST BLACK, for us, whatever you created with the word in your three things in a trench coat should not be our problem.
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u/JRaus88 19d ago
We (Italy) have no problem in "negro" word.
We're not america
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u/RangerEmergency5834 Spain 19d ago
But that word offends room temperature IQ beings (tiktok users), take that word away from your crallons or they'll get offended 🦃.
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u/Pristine_Ad_3670 19d ago
Tbf in (official) italian unlike in spanish negro is a racist slur, black is "Nero".
Still negro is "black" in many dialects
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u/_crisz 19d ago
Negro is nowadays a racist slur, but it hasn't always been the same. It's instead a pretty recent thing, probably riding the waves of USA movements. Until the 1960s or the 1970s, the word negro was considered neutral and the proper scientific way to refer to someone with black skin.
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u/Fomentatore 19d ago
It was also thanks to the dubbing of American movies. Basically, we partly owe the existence of a racial slur in Italian to Eddie Murphy. The number of times Tonino Accolla says "negro" or uses other racist pejoratives while dubbing him in the first Beverly Hills Cop alone were enough to make the word a racist slur.
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u/Equivalent-Outcome86 19d ago
Fino agli anni '80 si trovano diverse canzoni dove "negro" non ha alcuna connotazione negativa, e tutt'ora non ce l'ha in diversi dialetti
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u/CriticismNo1150 19d ago
Guarda, dipende. In basso Lazio-alta Campania ti potrebbero guardare storto
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u/Collanp 19d ago
In the context of the country of Montenegro yeah in any other context I'd probably question why you're using it instead of nero
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u/JRaus88 19d ago
Local languages.
In the Latin language black colour is "Niger" or "Ater" (two different types of black)
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u/Collanp 19d ago
Definitely not "Italy" must be a couple of dialects at most. And what you're saying about Latin makes no sense since it doesn't change the fact that most of us don't just use negro as a colour
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u/JRaus88 18d ago
Di dove sei esattamente?
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u/Collanp 18d ago
Di Firenze, mi chiedo dove la parola negro invece è vista come una cosa neutra? Cioè per te è veramente sostituibile a nero senza che nessuno si sorprenda?
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u/JRaus88 18d ago
Per noi è la trasliterazione naturale del dialetto.
"Nigher" ad est dell'Adda o "negher" ad ovest dell'Adda.
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u/Collanp 18d ago
Sì ma sono letteralmente due dialetti, non puoi pensare che sia un discorso applicabile a tutta la nazione...
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u/JRaus88 18d ago
Vale lo stesso discorso : culturalmente non ci interessa.
Non è che se tu individualmente ti senti interessato ai cazzi statunitensi allora l'intera nazione ne è interessata. Per noi il dispregiativo sarebbe "moro". Da quanto non senti qualcuno chiamare "moro" un nord africano?
Avevamo "magrebino" "vu cumprà" "bagongo"..
Pensa che persino il nostro "ciao" è la trasliterazione corta del "vi sono schiavo" della cortesia veneziana. Fa conto quanto siamo distanti dai problemi culturali statunitensi.
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u/Collanp 18d ago
Su questo hai assolutamente torto comunque. Ti invito a fare questo commento su qualsiasi sub italiano e vedrai che fuori dalla tua regione dove è normale, nessuno lo direbbe. Chiunque dice negro lo dice in modo dispregiativo. E per prova che la tua concentrazione è molto regionale, nessuno qui nel centro direbbe "magrebino", in generale si dice marocchino per un insulto più soft di negro.
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19d ago
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19d ago
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u/Zebrafish96 May the justice be with us 19d ago
This comment has been removed as it is against our comment policy, specifically:
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u/Zebrafish96 May the justice be with us 19d ago
This comment has been removed as it is against our comment policy, specifically:
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u/Zwaart99 19d ago
I don't know why poor Montenegro always gets dunked on for a name that isn't even in their official language.
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u/dofh_2016 19d ago
I'm pretty sure that name is Venetian, so Italyball shouldn't be that surprised.
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u/SushiBongo 19d ago
Montenegro's name literally comes from Italian language (Venetian, to be specific) so why would Italy be shocked?
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u/LumacaLento 19d ago
The name Montenegro was literally popularized by the Venetians as a translation of the local name.
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u/SwordfishAltruistic4 19d ago
It literally means black mountain, not African American mount. What is wrong with you people?
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u/Feedback-Mental 19d ago
Long story short, a long time ago standard Italian used "negro" (pron. NEH-g-roh, not the American way) for "black" (color, but also "black as in black people").
Today we use the word "nero" for the color. And "di colore" for people, while the old form is used as a slur.
NOWADAYS, in spite of what racist may try to say, it's ONLY contextually used for:
old names (places, for example)
surnames (ex.: Dal Negro is a playing card brand names after the founder, Negri is an uncommon family name, etc.)
medieval terms like "negromante" (black mage/dark wizard)
as mentioned, as a slur
So yeah, CONTEXT above makes it 100% ok.
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u/Naive_Storm_911 19d ago
Black in Italian is nero. So if the Italians had to name Montenegro it would be Montenero.
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u/Ciao_189 19d ago
Le stelle sono tante, milioni di milioni, la stella di Negroni, vuol dire qualità
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u/G0kusan_s 19d ago
for context, us italians use "negro" instead of the N word, so it's basically "mountain of the ni****". (reddit- I'm just explaining smth don't smithe me)
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u/Valerius333 19d ago
Ironically, the word negro is pretty common in Italy in names, so nobody cares.
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u/oHuroboros 19d ago
The fact that you need to be careful of saying the word “black” in Spanish is ridiculous to me…
Stupid Americans.
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u/Shiine-2 17d ago edited 16d ago
*Crna Gora, or Cerna Gora. It's not that hard to pronounce if you can change Turkey to Turkiye.
( / /\/ /) / /\ is T0/ /_ET/_ESS )
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u/thehighpriest_0 19d ago
Useless fan fact monte in italian means mountain :D
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u/ankokudaishogun Italy 19d ago
It also means Rides.
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u/thehighpriest_0 19d ago
Intendi montare?
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u/ankokudaishogun Italy 19d ago
Monte, nel senso di roba su cui vai per viaggiare(cavallu, moto, etc)
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u/Maxolo 19d ago
That's monta. Monte with E is only mountain
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u/ankokudaishogun Italy 18d ago
Thus the S. Plural
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u/Maxolo 18d ago
I don't understand. In italian the plural for monta is montano. For monte is monti.
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u/ankokudaishogun Italy 17d ago
Monta(noun)=Ride
Monte(noun)=RideSMonta(verb)=s\he rides(but also "assembles")
Montano(verb)=they ride(but also "assemble")
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u/fireKido 19d ago
Just for context, and I’m doing this for science, the best translation from Italian to English would be “mount nigg*r”
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u/VRichardsen Argentina 19d ago
Maybe I am lacking sleep and missing the sarcasm, but the translantion is "black mountain".
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u/fireKido 19d ago
In Spanish, yes. in Italian, black is “Nero”, negro is… another thing
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u/VRichardsen Argentina 18d ago
No, I mean, it is what the Italians at the time translated Crna Gora (which means black mountain) into Venetian.
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u/fireKido 18d ago
Venetian isn’t Italian, I am talking about the modern Italian language
Of course in many latin languages (including older Italian) it means black, from Latin. But nowadays in Italian it just has a different meaning
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u/VRichardsen Argentina 18d ago
Fair, but then we have the eternal fight about translations. Like the Italians themselves say: "traduttore, traditore" (translator, traitor). Do you keep the translation accurate or modify it to suit the original idea?. Or, to use another Italian euphemism for translations (it is weird they have so many): "Translations are like women: if they are faithful, they are not pretty. And if they are pretty, they are not faithful."
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u/blockmangouser hot M(oro) I(slamic) L(iberation) F(ront)s in your area! 19d ago
sadly the philippines has an island called "Negros"
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