The controversy raised by The Bournemouth Council in banning the usage of Latin words,
phrases and sentences in current English
calling it anachronistic and considering the ignorance of Latin of the present generation is quite the subject of discussion in the media. The author has expressed his views on the subject. Quoting the view of Mary Beard a Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, who has dubbed the act by the council an “ethnic cleansing” exercise, which the author feels is pretty harsh.
There has been a progressive movement, at least in US, towards use of jargon free
language in legal proceedings. Even in legal documents Plain English is not only recommended but encouraged. The truly international quality of English today is seen by the preference for the usage of region-specific styles. Thus we see apart from American English, shades of the Queen’s language in Indian and other Afro-Asian versions of the language. Language being an emotional issue, people do take sides in how its usage must be standardized forgetting in the bargain that it is primarily a tool for effective communication.
It is easy to see that one could do away with Latin, and substitute simple English
phrases instead. The Bournemouth council believed that, the present generation is not quite aware of the abbreviated phrases from Latin like, e.g. (exempli gratia) i.e. (id est) etc (et cetra). Most present day students don’t seem to know what the expansions of these expressions are. It cannot however be assumed that their meaning is not understood or they are likely to be misled.
The idea that one must rid one’s writing of unwanted jargon, even if it were plain English, however, carries some weight. Expressions like “counter-cyclical capital requirements”, “capital arbitrage” and “reducing the amplitude of the capital cycle” are jargons that the author was amused by coming from Lord Turner are more opaque than most of the Latin phrases!
In the Indian context most Latin expressions are obviously in legal documents. Even to this day the legal documentation abounds in sentence constructions that are a legacy of the British Raj. As the author has rightly observed the primary purpose of lawyers’ penchant for Latin phrases such as “de minimis non curat lex” meaning “the law does not concern itself with trifling things” is to flaunt their erudition or to impress their clients. There is no allusion to eliminating Latin and by implication Greek terms from say a scientific subject like medicine. This may perhaps be due in part to the fact that the Latin and Greek used in Medicine are not pure are referred to infamously as dog Latin and mongrel Greek (sic).
The author has added a dash of humor in one paragraph, where he has interspersed his writing with a slew of Latin words that brings a smile to the readers’ lips while very nicely driving home the point he wanted to make. The author’s own stand is that “there is a case for taking a more critical look at linguistic confusion generally and so far as Latin is concerned, accepting the status quo.
In sum the tenor of the article is that the controversy has been the source of amusement for many. Even as the Britons were tossing such issues as the use of Latin, the usually reticent and insular English public did evince a lot of interest in the US Presidential elections. Latin does have a place in the history of the English Language. It would therefore be better to leave things as they are.