News that councils have begun to ban Latinisms truly deserves the anathema. I wouldn't go as far as Mary Beard here who describes it as ethnic cleansing, but I'm not far off.
There is a long involved explanation for why it is terrible, but essentially it suggests that people should be assumed to be morons, incapable of looking anything up or reading about anything they don't encounter elsewhere. Now, a lot of people are morons who are incapable of doing any of the above, but we let them vote and pretend their opinions matter, so tough. We can't have it both ways.
In addition, latin really shouldn't get banned just because we have refused to give state school children access to the intellectual heritage of the West. Pick on something else.
1 comment:
"A Campaign spokesman said the ban might stop people confusing the Latin abbreviation e.g. with the word "egg". "
Surely, SURELY the context of usage here offers some kind of a small clue. No? The fact that e.g. will usually followed by an example of something suggested in a previous paragraph MIGHT BE SOMETHING OF A CLUE.
Bloody hell.
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