Yesterday morning while having breakfast, I turned the TV on, to check the news, to see if something major happened during my sleep time. Usually I check a few international news channels, from all over the world, to have an overall image of the recent events, obviously everything taken with a pinch of salt as each news broadcaster have their angle and you can't trust them, but this is not the point today.
One of the big events the BBC covered at that hour was about a senior citizen getting their OBE. Usually global news is what influences my work, so for me this was not exactly what I was interested in, but still, I wanted to watch it to see what this OBE means as I had no clue.
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The whole piece about this event was 2 minutes long at best and believe it or not, I had to research after, what OBE means as not once was clearly stated. The funny thing is, BBC is not some 5th grade local TV post, it broadcasts worldwide, but they didn't care to spell it out for those who are not UK citizens, therefore not familiar with the abbreviation, which lets me believe they think this is a must know term.
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a knight if male or a dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with the order, but are not members of it.
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The news report was about the oldest postal worker being rewarded with this OBE by the King, for her service, as both her and her husband were victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal.
We live in a funny world where human interaction is less and less, we keep in touch via internet and you need to have a certain knowledge and vocabulary, to understand the language these days. Now I understand typing can be tiring for some and it is trendy to use abbreviations even when you speak as you think it makes you look cool, but when you're a news anchor, you should have some standards, not to mention that you need to think about the global audience as well. This has not crossed their mind and they were fine with butchering their own language.
Not long ago I Snapped about another reporter saying "you know" at least 15 times in 2 minutes, while reporting from one of the war zones. She's a news reporter, not just someone ad hock reporting from where the action happened, so speaking proper language should be just as important as reporting facts, but apparently it is not.
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The biggest problem is they don't even realize the effects of their actions. Life has changed a lot and we have a bunch of new words invented with new technology, English words that are used in other languages as well, without translation and I can honestly say, there's a category of people who doesn't understand what they say in TV, even though they speak the language. Not once I had to explain certain terms to my dad as news anchors thought it's trendy to mix English with Hungarian.
What they don't realize is the damaging effect their actions have on children. You as a parent are trying to teach your kids to speak properly, then they hear this language in TV and then good luck explaining why it is ok to speak like that in TV and not ok for them.
There's an ongoing ad on TV these days, aired on every possible channel so you can't really escape it, even if you want to, which is a huge problem as it's really annoying. It's about some chicken nuggets and what better way to attract every age category, then to use children and showing how much they love it. In this particular ad the kid is shouting to her mother that the nuggets are so delicious, she doesn't want to share them with anyone. What do you think the mother replies to her? "No problem honey, we buy another box". Buying two boxes is definitely good for every business, but teaching kids that it's ok to be selfish is not something you'd want to see in TV.
Now you understand why I prefer to read the news and avoid most of the news channels along with stupid ads everywhere.
No standards these days it seems. I'm not saying they should speak like back in Shakespeare's day, but this is getting out of hands already. I think every language is getting butchered one way or another.
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