Council bans employees from using Latin
December 8, 2008 by Shane BorerPosted in: "Seemed like a good idea at the time", Discrimination, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest news & views
We’ve all been guilty of work-speak now and then, but this council is actually requiring employees to use much wordier alternatives when speaking to the public.
U.K.’s Bournemouth Borough Council has placed a ban on 19 Latin terms and phrases it no longer considers acceptable for use. Among the words banned:
- Ad lib
- Bona fide
- Etc., or et cetera
- Per
- Vice versa, and
- Via.
Linguistic and cultural professionals liken the move to ethnic cleansing, but other factions support the ban.
The Plain English Campaign congratulated the council for the move, saying it’s a tremendous service for those who speak English as a second language. “They might mistake ‘eg’ for ‘egg’ and little things like that can confuse people,” said the foundation’s spokesperson.
Dr. Peter Jones, co-founder of the Friends of Classics charity, argues the opposite, claiming “the great strength of English is that it has a massive infusion of Latin.”
Bournemouth’s Council should have a hard time arguing against that logic — its motto still remains “Pulchritudo et Salubritas,” or “beauty and health.”
Popularity: 1% [?]
December 12th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Aaaaand, once again, we find that we have dumbed down for the lowest common denominator out there. What’s wrong with expecting people to have at least some degree of education?
Instead of creating a standard, even a standard of excellence, and sticking to it, we prefer to accommodate every little substandard whim that comes along.
Why not push for people learning and understaning more tomorrow than they do today?
Lou
December 13th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Not only would it be impractical but it might even be impossible to remove “foreign” words and phrases from the English language (especially Latin ones) as the English language is a conglomerate of other languages. When I started studying Spanish, I was amazed at the number of words that are similiar in both languages, differing only in pronounciation. I don’t know if the word was Spainish or English first; my guess is that they both are derived from a Latin word.
I agree with Lou: why demand that people decrease their vocabulary because there are those that might not understand the words they use. Perhaps we should all be “stuck on stupid”. When langauge does not evolve, neither does civilization.
vBreezo