Politicians Re-defining The English Language

Gaf and GnT have something.

If “colour” is spelt “culla” that’s another $650,000 saving, perhaps more if GungahlinAl is right.

“Color” isn’t any more commonsense than “colour”, with the Australian accent – most people here pronounce it more like “Culler”.

Back to the discussion on norms in Australian English…

The Macquarie dictionary is considered the authority on Australian English, but it is ‘descriptive’ not ‘prescriptive’, that is, it describes the forms of English that are most prevalent, not those which ‘should’ be used.

So it is perfectly apt for a style guide to suggest one form should be chosen over another when all language is loaded with hidden meaning.

Personally, I prefer “program”. I also prefer more common-sense spellings like “meter”, “color” and “traveling”, but I’m sure they’ll take longer to become acceptable due to them being American spellings. For some reason Aussies resist any American influence even when it makes sense.

Hmm, that sounds scarily like how the Liberals were running near the end…

Just an observation on my own post…

Actually, thats a rather undemocratic attitude from sjp. You can not possibly make reasonable decisions on anything when only presented one side of the story.

Using this thread as an example, if you only wanted to hear the good news, you would cut a major chunk out of your avaliable information, and you would not be assessing the bad points vs the good points.

As Mr Evil said, back to your knitting circle, go knit a scarf for over your head if you want to remain in cotton-wool land.

sjp, go back to your knitting circle!

There is a lot of nastyness going on here. Is it really necessary? If there’s nothing nice to say, why say anything?

Doesn’t “SES” stand for Senior Editing Service

nah, it’ll be ‘wymyn’, mr evil…

and we’ll teach ‘her-story’ not history then, too… where’s is dilbert when ya need him!

That thought did pass through my mind evil, but the alternative word was “Sod” which is pretty much the same anyway…

“Bugger the lesbians….”

Don’t know if that was a good choice of words? 🙂

Bugger the lesbians and their “Gayelle”. What about the poor folk of lesbos that have had their good name pilfered and tarnished by the hairy legged, leather clad, carpet munching sorority for many years? (poor stereotyping I know, I’m sure it will appear in a certain journo’s column on sunday)

When I read that I had a mental image of athletic nubile women pracing across an African savannah, rather than the scary bulldykes who probably proposed the idea.

Oh my God – that is ridiculous!

Around about the time you get the “gayelle” memo.
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,26278,23102416-5007185,00.html

Okay, so how long until an edict comes from above stating that ‘woman/women’ should be spelt ‘womyn’? 🙂

Ha – I read that Dilbert too – I was convinced it was about editing govt publications!!

I like it when people criticize Australian English. 😉

HA! ‘Escape velocity’. That’s gold – I’m gonna use it today.

Its not listed in his media releases yet http://www.pm.gov.au/news/index.cfm

Oops – I should have hyphenated Pointy-haired One. Lucky I have 7 people to check my writing here…

Fluges, you started my day off with a good laugh!
Great rant and spot on the mark!

Reminded me of the Dilbert last week that HAD to be talking about ministerials and briefs:

Pointy Haired one: Makes these changes and run it by me again.
Dilbert: History suggest I have entered an infinite loop of making changes with no hope of finishing.
My life is a furious ball of nothing.
PHO: And I’m not wild about the font.

Troy, you have vastly UNDERestimated the time savings, given the number of briefs and ministerials that will no longer have to be returned from the long chain of parliamentary grammar checking dweebs before a document actually achieves “escape velocity”. I’d suggest your envelope calculations were under by an order of magnitude at least.

7 – that’s the number of checkers whom each have to “add value” to a piece of paper before it makes it as far as the Ministerial Advisor.

Meanwhile, I’m still hoping someone can furnish a link to an actual announcement about this that I can wave around the place as evidence….

Yes Fluges – I’m focussed on the BIG issues too 😉

So Troy, would it be a correct statement to say that you approve of Kevin’s ‘program’ policy over JW Howards previous ‘programme’ policy, as the estimated savings to the nation is $1.3m ?

Oh, I got nothing against you personally Troy. You’re a good pollie and you did and still do engage well with constituents in Fraser. It’s just your party, that’s all. They stink (sorry).

The 5000 unfilled APS positions indicate that there should be plenty of opportunities out there to shift people into more useful/functional roles.

I’d say “oh god, what did I start with this chain of thought” but in doing so would inadvertently start another string on the existence of God, with or without a capital, and the meaning of life.

Yes, my posting was definitely tongue-in-cheek. During the campaign all I advocated was for a clearly articulated statement about where, if Labor was elected, public sector job cuts were come from and the harm that large scale sackings would cause locally. If cuts are warranted I’ve no problem with that, however at the end of the day we are dealing with somebody who has to go home and face their family and say they no longer have a job. If they can be posted to a meaningful job in the APS, all good and well. If not, my hope is that we can ensure that the local private sector can provide them with meaningful employment.

Anyway, we have got way, way, way off the topic whether the extra two letters is needed in “programme”.

Just unwinding after another day in the Public Service …

Fluges has overindulged on the sweet sherry this evening.

There has been no ‘directive’ to spell program and I’m not expecting one. I’ve been running Commonwealth programmies for 30 years now and these sorts of ‘directives’ are a liberal trademark. A lot of us have used program all along and exasperated the people who were employed to thwart such union thug-like behaviour.

After all, ‘programmy’ is part of traditional Australian 1950’s culture and a core, essential AUSTRALIAN VALUE, and I’m not giving any money to any school that teaches otherwise!

One of the first ‘directives’ we got from PM&C in 1996 was that programmy was the only acceptable spelling. The Minister’s Office started returning documents without the programmy’s, for redraft. This was their idea of what was important. Umpteen Advisers in every Minister’s Office, each with their own formatting prefences. Detailed instructions constantly issued as to who prefers 11 or 12 or 13 font, which young liberal wants 5 spaces before his signature block, and which one wants 6! But they all wanted ‘programmy’, ‘cos the PM said they did.

And under the libs, these things were sent back to the Department for redrafting! Extra proof readers were employed to ensure the Minister’s eyes would never be offended by the lack of a ‘grammy’. Or an adviser had to suffer the indignity of only having 5 spaces before the signature block, when he or she ALWAYS has 6!

And anything other a page long? Forget it. We libs are too busy enjoying the trappings of office and looking after our mates to read all this stuff. If somethings needs more than one page to explain, then it’s probably something it’s best I don’t know about anyway. In case anything untoward pops up later. Now, about this document with two spaces before ‘yours sincerely’ , how on earth did this get through to me …

Kickbacks to Saddam? Well, nobody told me about that. If they did, it must have been over the page and I NEVER read over the page. I’ve TOLD everybody that! And if I don’t have to, then my staff don’t have to either. And if they do, then says who? So it’s not my fault I didn’t know, it’s those bloody wordy Canberra public servants, or it was, it was, Mr Speaker, the Labor Party! They were always going over the page, Mr Speaker. Who can forget those dark days when the socialists, Keating, union thugs were in power, when EVERYTHING, Mr Speaker, EVERTHING went over the page! The Australian people, ordinary people Mr Speaker, tell me every day that they don’t like things that go over the page and that’s all they ever got from the Labor Party! And the Australian people know me, Mr Speaker, they may dispise me, but they know I’ll never, ever, go over the page.

I’m sure that Julia Gillard won’t refuse to read something over a page long, or containing the programmy word or vice versa. And, unike Julie Bishop, Gillard has not insisted on expensive, special linen, embossed letterhead. She seems perfectly happy with normal paper. She and her staff are far too busy trying to fix up the mess that Howard left behind to worry about stuff like that.

Howard’s programmy directive was typical of the petty, small minded man and demonstrated a grossly misplaced sense of priority. It was all down hill from there, 11 long years of slow torture.

That was a good rant. I feel better now …

This is not the thread for a discussion of the subject of various kinds of revenue and expenditure decisions, but I’d have to disagree with Ralph. Any tax cut is, by its nature, likely to affect some more than others, absolutely and proportionally. The pork potential is there, it’s just that the carcase is being sliced on income level or expenditure type grounds rather than regional or sectarian ones. It’s just as political. Changes in income tax levels and the impacts of expenditure/activity based tax will benefit some and will affect (distort, if you will) behaviour. This country has been polluted for as long as I can remember by a mentality of avoiding tax at any cost, even if it was irrational to do so in a particular case. Reducing tax levels should (in an ideal world) affect the incentive to avoid, but I have seen no evidence, say since the GST, that it has. Anyway, I’m sure there’s a blog around where peope can tear out each others’ livers over this kind of thing. I’ll look for it.

Both he and I know the difference between public expenditure for public goods, distortionary policies and pork.

His column during the election campaign was targeting pork on both sides. Tax cuts are not pork, they are efficiency enhancing.

I actually remember when the edict for programme came in – good ol program made a sheepish come back over time.

Crap like this is why the rest of the country cannot wait to take the axe to the public service.

Rakph – ps to previous. I will be interested in his new project. I’d have to say I smiled a lot about an academic, in a substantially publicly funded university with substantially publicly funded students, using (no doubt) an ordinary array of public services like roads, saying simplistic Sunday Terror like things such as that all government expenditure was bad, and all tax cuts were good. I hope his new life frees him from at least some of the apparent contradictions.

I’m glad I was able to detect a common heritage then. Years of training have paid off.

Nope. He who you speak of is a former colleague at ANU, but not me. We have similar sentiments though.

He has moved to a new position on leave without pay. I’m not at liberty to say, but it may come out in a column.

Ralph – you read peculiarly like an economics academic, perhaps one with a sideline in writing for the Sunday Terror. Same lines. Same silliness. You must have been reading him enthusiastically.

I’m pretty sure “program” is ok (my old OED notes that it was originaly like that but “programme” was on the rise), but our former PM tended to like to flower things up, and adding an Anglofrancophilic affectation would be about right.

I was once in an agency where a Minister bounced a few days correspndence because he wanted “Mr.” rather than “Mr”.

Sorry Troy, I know your post was tongue-in-cheek, but I’m not happy with either yourself or Gary protesting against public service job cuts.

I know that you want to represent local constituents on issues that affect them, but as Liberals we should be advocating the economic benefits of small government.

Cut welfare, cut subsidies, cut red tape, privatise wherever possible, get rid of the states, and we can slash our tax rates to levels comparable with other countries in our region.

That’s cool DMD, everybody had their reasons for voting one way or the other. So long as people actually thought about their vote I’m satisfied that I accomplished something.

BTW, I drop the “me” too.

That, or maybe most people use ‘program’ instead of ‘programme’ anyway, Troy.

I haven’t forgotten the ‘night of the long knives’ either, neither has my dad. Every government seems to cut the P.S., so I can’t really see how the Liberals could use this as a card against Labor. I chose not to vote for you because of the Liberal’s social policies and workplace laws.

Hi guys

It’s possible that it’s part of Kevin Rudd’s plan to sack public servants (I did warn you).

Think of it this way. Say the average public servant uses “programme” twenty times per day (not an excessive guess as it’s one of those administration words they seem to like) over say 240 days per year, that’s 4,800 per times per person.

Say 35,000 people use the word 4,800 times each per year, we can estimate that “programme” is used about 168,000,000 per year.

Stay with me here …

If it takes half a second to type a letter (not everyone is good at typing) taking two letters off a word saves 168,000,000 seconds per year or 2,800,000 minutes or 46,667 hours or 23.61 working years.

At an average of $55,000pa that’s a saving of $1.3million each year or thereabouts.

Ok, the maths may be a little wonky but it’s the sort of odd thing the bean counters at Finance could have thought up.

I hate the mme… it just seems like overkill – look how fancy I am *rolls eyes*

al’s right – the ‘me’ suffix was a pretentious addition by the hoity toity poms to make it more, i dunno, something above the unwashed (gee, that’s erudite, innit)

and the americans have aluminum (al-oo-min-um) right too, dammit, dammit all to hell!

but in any case i guess an organisation (here, gov’t) has a right to dictate a uniform approach to certain matters, so if da minista wants ut, da minista is da dood… ‘right’ is what is demanded by da man.

The concept of individual Department Style Guides in addition to a Commonwealth Style Guide reminds me of the Andrew Tannenbaum quote, “Standards are nice, because there’s so many to choose from”.

Can someone point out this new style choice from the PM?
FYI post-MOG we still have “use programme not program, (unless it is in a formal title)” in the Dept Style guide, which says only to refer to Commonwealth Style if something is not covered.

My Macquarie has both. The Style guide says use the Macquarie – unless you’d prefer to use another dictionary.

You program the program by programming it so that it can print programmes, whereas once given the programme, it will tell you what is on the programme, and it may also tell you who programmed the program by programming it.

Telegram
Mammogram
Transesophageal echocardiogram
program

“Programme” is not the correct spelling, especially when using the Macquarie dictionary as reference.

I love spikking viz ze German accent. Zat is all.

DEWR insisted on the archaic French spelling too, despite deferring to the Style Guide on everything else, but with this curious advice from the Quick Guide for Ministerials and Briefings: “Avoid program – exceptions are Community Jobs Program, Migration Program.”

My Style Guide (6th edition p125) says “program”.

As an acknowledged grammar pedant, I for one am quite happy to read this. I always felt like writing shoppe, whilst, amongst, thee, thou, etc whenever forced to use programme…

Now where can we find a link to this edict please?

Beyondthought – to answer your question, the Macquarie is the authorative australian english reference document.

That does not necessarily or strictly mean that the Australian Government has to use it.

Within a year, all instances of Programme and Program in Kevin’s policies will be replaced by Pogrom.

It’s all to do with gorebull warmening.

Chopping those two letters off the word will save so much ink and paper that I can already feel my carbon footprint shrinking.

You sure Kevin didn’t mean Pogram?

No bloviating.

Not a PS type BT but I understand that the Commonwealth Style Manual is the last word on these things. It suggests that the Macquarie Dictionary is indeed the last word. When it comes to “Program/me” the Mac I have gives both with the shorter “Program” being the primary.

Couldn’t resist ….

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as ‘Euro-English’.

In the first year, ‘s’ will replace the soft ‘c’. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard ‘c’ will be dropped in favour of ‘k’. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome ‘ph’ will be replaced with ‘f’. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent ‘e’ in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing ‘th’ with ‘z’ and ‘w’ with ‘v’.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary ‘o’ kan be dropd from vords kontaining ‘ou’ and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl

The Australian government has for many years produced a “style manual” which covers presentation of work, spelling, forms of address for dignitaries, and a bunch of other stuff. Occasionally they change things and make an announcement, like the “edicts” you mentioned. It is in the interest of uniformity – so you don’t find the same word with different spellings (e.g. programme/program) used interchangeably throughout a document where two people with different preferences for spelling work on something and cannot agree on a standard spelling of a word, or form of address, or way of writing a phone number, and so on. Australian businesses are encouraged to use the style manual to guide their usage so that generally everyone in Australia eventualy uses the same style. This is important for instance in writing dates, to ensure we don’t confusion caused by some people using the American date or (month/day/year) while others use the order day/month/year.
In this case the Macquarie dictionary allows both spellings of program but puts “program” first as the preferred spelling, so it is appropriate that Mr Rudd has issued the “edict” mentioned to bring the public service up to date and keep things standard.

The PS people here can correct me, but I thought that the Macquarie Dictionary was the authorative reference?????

Good. Program is far more normal than Programme.

Last I heard only DEST insisted on Programme, while everyone else used Program, leading to annoyance on joint press releases etc.

Now what about the ATO insisting on ‘lodgment’ not ‘lodgement’ has Kevin got any ideas there?

“Programme” is the correct spelling, whilst “Program” is the American spelling. The former PM apparently insisted the correct spelling be used – I suspect that this is just a case of “new dog in the yard” syndrome.

Perhaps a case of new broom sweeps clean. Hasn’t a similar thing happened with certain bits of furniture? Then again if its come from a Govt. department could be complete crap.