Errors & Omissions: There is nothing foreign about learning a language

“He expressed concern that the increase in take-up of academic subjects did not extend to modern foreign languages.” I’m not surprised; nobody likes anything foreign.

This is not a criticism of the writer of the news story I am quoting (published on Thursday), nor of the source he, in turn, is quoting from. It is a protest against the pernicious term “modern foreign languages”, which seems to be regular educational jargon; it is even known by its initials – MFL.

When I was at school, in the 1960s, there were ancient languages – Latin and Greek – which appeared on the curriculum as “classics”, and there were modern languages – French and German. Nobody thought of any of them as foreign. They were all part of the common European cultural heritage that educated people were supposed to acquire, if they could. Who started calling modern languages “foreign”, and what effect did they think that would have on the willingness of children to study them?

• Chris Stevens writes in to draw attention to this, from a news story published on Thursday: “That the United States woke up finally was duly celebrated by President Barack Obama late last month when he unveiled his plans to force deep cuts in omissions of carbon dioxide from America’s power stations.”

What a difference a single letter can make – particularly when the mistake results not in nonsense but in a wrong word, which will not be picked up by the spell-checker. What Mr Obama wants to cut is, of course, emissions of carbon dioxide. The omission of carbon dioxide from America’s power stations is the very thing he wants.

• Here is the headline that appeared over a news story last Saturday: “Plan to ennoble Lib Dem donor prompts more claims of cronyism”.

But the story said: “The honours system is set for a new row over allegations of cronyism after Nick Clegg nominated a wealthy Liberal Democrat donor and friend for a knighthood.”

So he’s not being ennobled, which means given a peerage. It’s only a knighthood. “Noble” and all the related English words are derived from the Latin nobilis, which means “high-born”. So they relate more comfortably to a peerage, which until recently was a hereditary honour, than to a knighthood.

• Last Saturday, an article about the paedophilia allegations made against Edward Heath quoted an aide of the late Prime Minister (no doubt accurately) as follows: “We ran his life like a military campaign. We knew what he was doing every minute of every day. So to think that there were things going on that we weren’t aware of would be surprising, shocking and incredulous.”

“Incredulous” means inclined to withhold belief. The speaker means impossible to believe. The word for that is “incredible”. But “incredible” has been corrupted in recent years. People use it to mean “amazing” or “very good”. So you can’t use it in its original meaning and “incredulous” steps sideways to fill the gap. Very sad.