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Ad Hoc Ban
3

Ad Hoc Ban

Ad Hoc Ban

(OP)
I was going to tag this onto one of the other threads (t seemed to fit with the one on Welsh language signs) but felt this one stood on its own.

For some reason, (PC of course, their use is "elitist and discriminatory")it appears that Salisbury Council wanted to ban the use of latin phrases in public/official documents.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3362150/Councils-ban-elitist-and-discriminatory-Latin-phrases.html)

Not to be outdone (but an imaginative headline from Scotland):
"Fife Council's ad hoc ban of latin..."
(http://news.stv.tv/scotland/37790-fife-councils-ad-hoc-latin-ban/)

You know, the use of pretty well any language can be considered "elitist and discriminating" in these terms and, taken to a logical conclusion in a country where the dominant language is some form of English, Welsh, Erse, Gaelic etc. can all be considered elitist and should be banned.

Of course, doctors, lawyers, gardeners and botanists all have some working use of Latin or Latin names. In the old days of the Beeb there was nothing so entertaining as hearing Latin tags in a broad local accent. Professor David Bellamy was particularly adept and rendering the Latin botanical tags entertaining.

Of corse, such bans are stupid and ultimately doomed to failure because of the extent to which latin pervades the English language anyway but supose we take it the other way and accord Latin the same status as Welsh, Erse or (in Canada) French and require all signs have a Latin Translation.

Some locations are a natural target such as hospitals: ENR becomes ORL (Ear Nose Throat = Oto Rhino Laryngology Dept.

It reminds me of my landlady when I was a student in Liverpool. She was an elderly grandmother with a gret  big house in Princes Park. She was also, naturally, of Irish origins and her greatest complaint was when the Pope decided that in future mass would be conducted not in Latin, but in the local language. She felt that wherever she was in the world she could attend mass and feel at home but if it was in the local language she would be alienated.
To my knowledge she had never left Liverpool so while it really had little relevance to herself it was none the less valid for others who do travel.

Incidentally, she, like most landladies and especially those with students, had a long list of "does" and "don'ts". The unusual addendum was " Don't let the dog out."
The dog was Shep, a long haired collie (Lassie type).

Our first day back from lectures and we had barely gotten the door a few inches open when the dog wriggled through, shot through a gap in the hedge and legged it for the park. We quietly pulled the dor closed again and set off in pursuit. Some hours later, having collared a couple of "Sheps" and been accosted by their real owners we retreated in disorder from Princes park and crept back to our digs.

Shep was waiting by the door sated by a dip in the lake and a roll in some very smelly mud.
We grabbed his collar and quietly opened the door and crept upstairs taking the dog with us and we then broke rule number two about baths and showers in order to wash the dog.
Our landlady seemed to think we were the best students she'd ever had that we should, on our first day, wash and groom her dog.

Of course, later events soon disabused her of this misconception but it was good while it lasted.

By the way, back on topic, I liked this quote:
""If you look at the diversity of all our communities you have got people for whom English is a second language. They might mistake eg for egg and little things like that can confuse people."
Do you want your exemplar gratia easy over or sunny side up?

 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

(OP)
There is an advert on TV by Microsoft where everyone goes round saying they're "PC"

I'm not sure if Microsoft are incredibly conceited or just ignorant but PC has the other meaning "Political Correctness".
These examples are found attached in some of the articles on Latin bans:

"Amber Valley Council, in Derbyshire, has told staff it is no longer acceptable to use language 'that portrays once sex as subordinate to the other'.

Staff have been instructed to say 'synthetic' rather than 'man made', 'lay person' instead of 'lay man', 'people in general' in place of 'man in the street', 'one person show' rather than 'one man show' and 'ancestors' instead of 'forefathers'.

Broadland Council, in Norfolk, has banned 'housewife' and replaced it with 'homemaker' and asked staff to refer to 'staffing' rather than 'manning' levels.

Several councils including Blyth Valley and Weymouth have banned the phrase disabled toilet and disabled parking because they imply that the facilities themselves are disabled.

They have renamed them accessible toilets and accessible parking."
 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

Microsoft is both incredibly conceited and ignorant ... but they don't care as long as everyone buys their computers!

Patricia Lougheed

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RE: Ad Hoc Ban

So... Now we'll have to say instead of 'man'
hupeople?
peoplekind?
fireperson?
Peoplechester? (yeah, probably a bad jk on this one, but hey! I'm an engineer, we do that!)

disabled persons are now accesible persons? Is disabled still PC?

Sometimes (very often) I think this asexism is just going way too far

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying " Damn that was fun!" - Unknown>>

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

Is there a field position equivalent to "Third Man" in women's cricket?

- Steve

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

2
Airplanes which are flown and staffed by only females, no longer refer to the pilots cabin as the Cockpit.  lookaround

cheers

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

Quote (From Fife Council Link):

The Plain English Campaign however praised the councils for introducing the bans.

Marie Clair, the campaign's spokesperson, said: "If you look at the diversity of all our communities you have got people for whom English is a second language. They might mistake eg for egg and little things like that can confuse people
Eggs and little things confuse people?

Quote (Same Link):

"It is far better to use words people understand. Often people in power are using the words because they want to feel self important. It is not right that voters should suffer because of some official's ego."
ummm, "ego" ???   Isn't that latin?
 

cheers

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

The Microsoft campaign is a direct response to a Mac campaign making fun of a character named "PC" (and, obviously, representing the PC).  I find it odd that people would be aware of the new campaign but not the older one.

And although one can go overboard trying to get rid of racist, sexist, and other -ist language, there's something to it.  I became a convert (backsliding a lot recently within the engineering world) to trying to use fairly gender-neutral language (without digging down too deep within word structure) after reading Douglas Hofstadter's "A Person Paper On Purity in Language", which is now a chapter in Metamagical Themas (which, on the whole, is a book that should rather appeal to geeks).  Here's the link:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.htm

I don't expect it to convert everyone, but it certainly got me thinking.

Furthermore, I don't have a cite on hand (used to), but there are studies that show that gender-specific language does indeed reinforce stereotypes, and so it's not just a neutral fact of grammar.

I got to where I could do a timed essay exam without resorting to gender-specific language (using plural to avoid pronouns, etc.).  It's easier to do than you might think.

I figure if I'm gonna take offense to usage like "He wanted $5 but I jewed him down to $3" (and I do, very strongly), I shouldn't be okay with sexist language either.

Hg

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RE: Ad Hoc Ban

What point is that?  "PC" standing for "personal computer" predates "PC" standing for "politically correct", and I don't see why Microsoft is committing any worse a vocabulary error in their response campaign than Apple was in their Mac vs. PC ads.

Hg

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RE: Ad Hoc Ban

I thought PC was for Paul Chambers?  So, now a "manhole" is a "maintenance entranceway"? Mmmmm

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

I don't know what the colloquial term might be for the box on the side of an electric motor wherein on connects the power wiring to the motor leads, but here where I'm located on the US Gulf Coast, it is commonly called a "peckerhead" a term we had to remove from vocabulary and work documents with the advent of female maintenance record clerks.  It's a "motor terminal box".
 

old field guy

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

(OP)
Er, yes, a rant, but I've had my coffee now.

Of course, engineers are coarse.
Think: how are we to rename male and female connectors without gender specificity....?
Chemists: lavo and dextro rotation...Latin and Greek.
Will they stop at eliminating Latin?
We could list any number of words in the English language that don't originate in English.
We will no longer run amok (Malay) or go Bersek (Viking?), or doolally. Jodpurs is out.
Gauche is out but replace with what? cackhanded?
Vogue magazine will need to be renamed.
Where does this stop?

It isn't a new thing. The French were very concerned about Americanisms and what to call a CD. "Un CD" Le weekend, Le Jumbo being among the terms held abhorent.
No PC in France, it is "un ordinateur".  
 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

The MS "PC" advert is all over the UK TV channels at the moment. I have never seen the Apple one. Perhaps that's why we don't get the joke.

M

--
Dr Michael F Platten

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

Hg,

Have you got a clear start date for the "politically Correct" usage of "PC"?

I first saw it in widespread use in about 1991 when I lived in a house with a student activist, but felt then that people like him had already been using it for quite a long time.

A.

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

"Is disabled still PC?"

I don't know but I do know my home PC is Differently Abled at the moment sad

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

I believe that you are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. In Washington, DC, Santa Claus is not allowed to say "ho, ho, ho" as some may consider it a disparaging reference to a small horde of prostitutes. The PC mentality, which I feel is Orwellian, has been around at least as long as Winston Churchill, as he has some admirable quotes on the matter.
 

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

"Hi, I'm a PC"  "and, I'm a Mac"  I'm sure there are pirate copies of some of the ads on Youtube.  The Apple commericials are pretty funny, particularly the ones that are make fun of the new "I'm a PC" campaign by MS.  (They are spending money on a new advertizing campaign --something MS has never done to this level before -- instead of fixing notorious problems with Vista.)

Matt Lorono
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
and Mechnical.Engineering Yahoo! Group

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

The only cite I could find online (in the limited amount of poking around I'm willing to do during work hours; I can look at dictionaries but shouldn't go overboard) for the date of origin of "PC" for "politically correct" gives it as early 90s; I know I heard it in the late 80s.

However, "PC" for "personal computer" goes back to early 80s if not late 70s.  My family purchased an IBM "PC" around 1982-3, and they had been around for a while at that time.

Keep in mind, Microsoft inherited (or stole, depending on your perspective) the whole "PC" thing from IBM.  IBM faded from the personal computer industry in both hardware and software, while Microsoft gained a near-monopoly on the software side, but we can thank IBM for "PC" as a trade name and eventually generic name for a particular kind of personal computer with a particular genre of operating system.

Hg

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RE: Ad Hoc Ban

I think now it mostly means "something that runs Windows and isn't a Mac".  But I believe it ought to include the linux box in your basement that ran DOS at some point in its lifetime.

Still not seeing what's rantworthy here.

Hg

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RE: Ad Hoc Ban

When I started working (1986) IBM was using PC-XT and PC-AT as model names.  The XT was the baby one.

- Steve

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

I can see that with regard to the language restrictions.  But is it really that unusual to use the word "PC" in a computer context??

Hg

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RE: Ad Hoc Ban

No, but it's as common to be used to mean Political Correctness.

Especially given that the original series of commercials appears not to have been widespread in the UK I think he has a point about MS being a bit conceited, or at least not really thinking things through.  

Plus, I haven't paid much attention but I think maybe the commercial only says anything about MS right at the end or in small text.
 

KENAT,

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RE: Ad Hoc Ban

If, as JMW has posted, manmade has to be substituted with synthetic, what would the PC terms for MANufacture, manufacturer, manufacturing be?

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

(OP)
Er, we could follow this PC lunacy to a logical extension of modifying not just gender specific terms but those that apparently contain a gender specific term, but only on the grounds that it might offend someone, of course.

Placenames, for example:
Manitoba
Manchester
Ladysmith


 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

Scunthorpe

- Steve

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

roflol, steve.  That reminds me about the old Chicago joke that they had three street names which rhymed with a particular anatomical feature - regina, paulina, and lunt.

 

RE: Ad Hoc Ban

More place names that'll get the chop:

Littlehampton
Northampton
Southampton

 

- Steve

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