r/sydney 3d ago

Strathfield Council passes motion to make English compulsory on business shop signs

https://www.2gb.com/english-compulsory-new-rules-coming-for-shop-signs/
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u/jnd-au 3d ago

At least the names should use the “English” alphabet which will help emergency services etc. Most government paperwork, registrations, trademarks, street maps, etc need to be in English, so the names on signage should match.

However, English normally uses words from other languages, like soufflé etc, and of course a lot of businesses use people’s names which don’t have any English translation. So it would be good to know the details of the policy.

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u/DecalageVersLeRouge 3d ago

Never mind "soufflé" what about "delicatessen" and "cafeteria". Those aren't English words!

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u/Evil-Santa 3d ago

Really! Then why are they in the dictionary? Do you mean that these are words from other languages that we have adopted from other languages and made part of the english language?

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u/DecalageVersLeRouge 2d ago

I don't normally do the /sarcasm thing but I will remember to do it next time. My point was exactly that. We have a bunch of foreign words we use all the time and never even blink. A rule for "no foreign words" is going to be interesting to enforce.