Category: News

The decline in numbers of UK school pupils taking modern language has been widely documented over recent years, including by the British Council, The Guardian, and in this blog. The British Council’s annual Language Trends survey for 2022 shows no sign of this tendency reversing and highlights the specific impact…

It’s almost as traditional as the tinsel, mince pies and yule log. No, I’m not talking about Christmas stockings, I’m referring to the debate about inappropriate festive greetings. Whether it’s claims that “Seasons Greetings” is offensive to Christians for failing to refer to the true reason for festivities, or suggestions…

Earlier this year, women’s rights activist Maria Beatrice Giovanardi found herself looking for synonyms for the word “woman” using various online search engines. She was unimpressed with the results and reports on her experience in an article for the online publishing platform Medium. Describing the dictionary outputs as “patronising, misogynistic,…

Wednesday October 16th marked the second International Pronouns Day. Organisers hope to make “respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns commonplace”. Harnessing language to bring about cultural change is nothing new, nor are the impassioned opinions voiced as a consequence. Pronouns are little words that pack a big punch. If…

It’s been a while since this blog delved into the wonderful world of new entries in the Oxford English Dictionary. Updates to the dictionary are made four times a year, with selected highlights summarised at the OED website by one of the editors. It’s worth adding to your diary because…

Only a matter of weeks ago, this blog sang the praises of the linguistic pedant. We extolled the virtues of the stickler for grammatical detail and celebrated punctuation purists. Then along comes Jacob Rees-Mogg, whose many achievements now include being precisely the wrong kind of pedant. Following his appointment as…

The British Council has just published its annual Language Trends report, which surveys language teaching and learning in primary and secondary schools in England. Previous reports had already documented the general decline in language learning, with a 19% reduction in entries for GCSE languages over the past five years. The…

All too often recently I have withdrawn from following current affairs in a bid to protect my sanity. But when I dared poke my head out to see the latest excitement that Brexit Britain and the Tory leadership campaign has to offer, I noticed that language in the media has…

It is probably safe to say that not many people employed in the translation industry regard Brexit as an ingenious strategy destined to be the UK’s ideal path to prosperity. At times it’s hard to see much cause for hope or humour amid the political wrangling and uncertainty. Let me…

In early November 2018, CNN launched another of its banana series of commercials. It features a banana in a number of situations where an apple would be expected, such as on a medical advice notice now proclaiming ‘A banana a day keeps the doctor away’ or a banana falling on…