In his recent article “Whose English?” in the Financial Times, Michael Skapinker describes the growing popularity of English in the non-English speaking world. For example, one South Korean politician is promising that if elected he will greatly increase the availability of English language teaching in the country so that families are not “separated for English learning”. That anecdote gives an insight into just how much importance people in developing countries give to learning English. They will risk family break-up in order to travel abroad to study English. There’s a video on YouTube of a “crazy” mass English lesson in China that’s possibly evidence of the same attitude.
Based on the assertions of scholars like David Crystal that 1.5 billion people can speak English at some level, Skapinker notes that “non-native speakers now outnumber native English-speakers by three to one”. That could mean that the spoken English of the future may not be the English spoken in Britain or United States. It may have a more international flavour. That kind of English may well make native-speakers wince, as Skapinker suggests, and may give people like Lynne Truss apoplexy, but I think it may well happen and we’ll just have to get used to it.
An article by Sam Dunn in today’s Independent on Sunday compares the user information that accompanies financial products to Egyptian hieroglyphics, and unsurprisingly, the hieroglyphics come off best.
For some unscrupulous companies, jargon and obscure language can help to sell products or services. Customers cowed or dazzled by technical or impressive-sounding language will be reluctant to shop around for alternatives.
In order to create publicity material to accompany the implementation of a law making it illegal to smoke in enclosed places, the UK Department of Health (DoH) have invented a new word: “smokefree”.
In fact they have an entire campaign going on about “Smokefree England“.
I am in despair about this. Not, let me explain, about the legislation. I am all in favour of banning smoking in pubs and restaurants as well as in the workplace. But I am in despair at this new word, and the way the DoH have chosen to use it.
It appears to be an adjective, and to mean “free of smoke”. But in their literature and on their web site the DoH have applied this adjective so widely as to make it meaningless. For a start, will the entire country of England be free of smoke of all kinds and in all places for 1st July? In fact, it will only be free of tobacco smoke in designated places. So “smokefree England” doesn’t make sense.
The literature prepared by the DoH refers to the “smokefree law”. Does that mean the legislation itself was free of smoke?
And don’t get me started on the new verb the DoH have introduced: “to go smokefree”!
According to a news item on the Plain English Campaign’s web site, the Tesco supermarket chain is to replace the signs reading “10 items or less” with new signs reading “Up to 10 items”.
Lovers of good English usage have always been infuriated by the old signs because they ignored the rule that “fewer” is used with countable nouns and “less” is only used with non-countable nouns, as in “I worked fewer hours last week and so I earned less money”.
Now I wonder when supermarkets are going to stop selling “stationary”?
(Many thanks to my friend Karen M. for pointing out this news item.)
