All y'all what rallied to Gov. Palin's side in her crusade against elitists may be happy to learn that local governments in Great Britain are striking blows for egalitarianism by outlawing the use of Latin phrases as, I kid you not, "discriminatory." Excerpt:
Local authorities have ordered employees to stop using the words and phrases on documents and when communicating with members of the public and to rely on wordier alternatives instead.The ban has infuriated classical scholars who say it is diluting the world's richest language and is the "linguistic equivalent of ethnic cleansing".
Bournemouth Council, which has the Latin motto Pulchritudo et Salubritas, meaning beauty and health, has listed 19 terms it no longer considers acceptable for use.
This includes bona fide, eg (exempli gratia), prima facie, ad lib or ad libitum, etc or et cetera, ie or id est, inter alia, NB or nota bene, per, per se, pro rata, quid pro quo, vis-a-vis, vice versa and even via.Its list of more verbose alternatives, includes "for this special purpose", in place of ad hoc and "existing condition" or "state of things", instead of status quo.
In instructions to staff, the council said: "Not everyone knows Latin. Many readers do not have English as their first language so using Latin can be particularly difficult."
More:
Professor Mary Beard, a professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge said: "This is absolute bonkers and the linguistic equivalent of ethnic cleansing. English is and always has been a language full of foreign words. It has never been an ethnically pure language."
Oh, but wait till you hear the politically correct nitwit defending this idiocy:
Marie Clair, its spokesman, 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."At the same time it is important to remember that the national literacy level is about 12 years old and the vast majority of people hardly ever use these terms.
"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."
How do you say "good grief!" in Latin? Because I'd like to say that. How stupid and degrading this is. The therapeutic state goes from strength to strength.
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DJW,
It's not a SSPX parish but a regular Catholic parish that has Sunday Masses in the EF, so the people there tend to be less radically right than many SSPXers. I also occasionally attend an Ordinary Form Mass in Latin (ad orientem, chants from the Graduale, etc.) and people there are mostly leaning McCain/Palin as well. While it's probably true that a majority of the parishioners at both parishes don't have a lot of Latin beyond that of the Ordinary and Graduale of the Mass, nevertheless they would certainly not advocate eliminating Latin from public life, which is what is happening in England. Therefore support for Palin does not = hostility to latin, In fact, I'd wager that the sorts of people who would support purging our public space of its relics of "eurocentrism" would be more likely to vote Obama. I studied Latin and Greek in the course of my BA and Phd in Philosophy; and, though I did considerably more work on the languages than is usual, even for work in Classical Philosophy, I can't say that I'm a Classics scholar in any serious sense of the word. All the same, like many "traditionalist" catholics, I value it and want to teach as much of the language as I'm capable to my daughter.
By the way, the "Minimus" books, published by Cambridge University Press, are a lot of fun for younger kids.
I see that the new Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, wants all schools in the city to teach Latin. However I would prefer Esperanto, not only because of its relative ease of learning, but because it has great propaedeutic values, also.
Aha! Another Esperantist reading the blog!
trp -- thanks for the tip about the Minimus books!
I think you're right, most of the parishioner who attend the traditional Mass at my parish (about twice a month on average) are probably more politically conservative than the parish as a whole.
David J. White: Another Esperantist reading the blog!
In factu, me preferi latino sine flexione, una lingua constructa ab Giuseppe Peano, et quale es multo plus simplice quam latino classico aut etiam quam latino vulgare. Es possibile que uno disce illa in modo rapido et que illa es comprehensa paene statim sine studio in schola. Et quia illa es fundata in latino, es plus pulcro quam esperanto, quale, oporte confitere, es una lingua aliquid bastardo.
I'm keen on Esperanto too. I won't argue about the linguistic merits of any other project - Latin based or not. The merit of Esperanto lies in its widespread speaker population and the strong network of local contacts available today.
By the way, I once had a brief and painful conversation in Latin in Slovenia: ("Ex Anglia sum ...)but five years of Latin in school did not give me the flluency which three months of Esperanto gave me.
Coul some please ask that cultural snob Marie Clair what "ego" means? We Latin-deprived peasants are deeply offended by the use of such elitist foreign words.
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