montreal mike

how stupid!


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7705922.stm

AmyDavid

That has to be the stupidest thing I have read in a long time. How often have you confused "e.g" with "egg"?

Purley

By dumbing down the language - they are insulting the mostly intelligent and bringing everyone down to the lowest possible level. Who in England does not know what "via" means? The English language is made up of words that came from other languages for heaven's sake - are they going to ban every single word that derived from something other than . . . I don't know what the original English language was - there probably wasn't ONE.

bodgerx

Concilium combibo. EGO teneo , EGO opus pro unus.

montreal mike

I have to ask myself whether this not a misguided ostensibly politically correct step to rid the UK of yet another part of its European heritage?

bodgerx

No, it's just Councils being daft.

Ben W Bell

If they truly banned Latin words do they realise how difficult everyday conversation would actually be? People don't realise the number of such words in our language.

BristolUK

I think it's one of those mountains out of molehill cases. The headline says 'banned' but the report says 'discouraged' and then for certain cases.

You get the same enquiry letter at work from two people. One is written using good grammar, the right words, no spelling mistakes etc.

The other is riddled with errors, says things like "I seen your panflit an the addvertiissmant on the tellyvizion" etc.

Isn't your reply phrased differently and adapted to suit each customer?

Of course it's a bit much to say it shouldn't be used for people for whom English isn't the first language.

Lorna at Vicenza

Nobody dumbed down their Italian for me or others here and all the Brits in France, Spain and other countries are learning the language - often with dialects too.

Let all the people living in the UK learn our language.

I'd like to see the councils try and ask the Doctors to stop using latin based words ! That really would be impossible.

fledermaus

This forum shows us how low the standard of English is for people whose first language is English can be. Sometimes it annoys me, and sometimes I wonder if it matters. Public information needs to be in plain English so that the lowest common denominator can understand.

I studied Latin at school. I was a poor student but knowledge of Latin vocab has been a great help to me for medical terminology. It's a shame we didn't learn some Greek words too.

MikeUK

That fine, but latin isn't english and its not normal to teach latin inside an english class if its ESL

Lorna at Vicenza

yes I know, but those latin words mentioned in the article have been part of the English language for bloody ages so why should they be eliminated from our every day use?

What would be another way of saying "vice versa"? We are all so accustomed to hearing it and saying it. Nobody questions its Latin origins, I don't see why it should be eliminated from our vocabulary.

MikeUK

They’re not eliminating them they’re recommending that in areas where there are a significant population for whom English is a second language that councils should consider using plain English

Its worth noting that several legal bodies have issued guidelines for the replacement of traditional Latin words with plain English terms

When it comes to government documents and brochures I think the choice of plain English in a multicultural society is just common sense

I think its call progress

Lorna at Vicenza

So what is "vice versa" in plain English ?

dbd33

Conversely.