O Tempora! O Mores!

As you may already know being a dragon I am moderately well versed in Latin; the rules for being a dragon say you have to be I think. Back in the day a knowledge of your second and third declensions was regarded as a mark of an educated gentleman. If you didn’t know your locative from your dative you were regarded as a bit of a thickie.

Now of course in ZaNu Labor’s brave New England that will never do so certain councils have instructed their staff under no circumstances to use Latin phrases in speech or writing because

using Latin is elitist and discriminatory, because some people might not understand it - particularly if English is not their first language.

Well boo fucking hoo! Look you morons Latin was used for years as a lingua franca (see, see what I did there) to enable people who spoke different languages to communicate, it greased the wheels of politics and learning for centuries. The whole point of using it was that you didn’t need to know the other guy’s first language.

But what are they talking about, are council officials writing huge tracts of Plutarch and Pliny to Mrs Scroggins of 27 Mugabe Avenue and expecting her to understand it…

Several local authorities have ruled that phrases like "vice versa", "pro rata", and even "via" should not be used.

Fuck me, if you don’t know what these mean then you really are too fucking thick to live. I bet even most of the pond scum of this septic isle know what these mean even though they don’t know where they come from. Are we going to have to remove the “v.” between names of people in boxing tournaments or football teams in next Saturday’s fixtures now as well?

Course we are, it’s elitist and discriminatory. So in the spirit of anti-elitism shall we get rid of words from other foreign languages that people won’t understand. How about all those Arabic words: algebra, azimuth, zenith, nadir. That’ll do for starters.

What was that Mr Inclusive Councellor, we don’t want to upset the mussies? Thought so.

Final word on the subject has to go to the morons at the Plain English Campaign:

A Campaign spokesman said the ban might stop people confusing the Latin abbreviation e.g. with the word "egg".

Can I suggest that anyone who does mistake “e.g.” for “egg” have several ostrich eggs rammed forcibly up their rectums? Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem!