Never mind, it's all a "First world problem" anyway -- but there's something lame indeed (sorry, but it's the best word for it) about a national broadcaster (like CBC the narrowing-caster) lecturing the public about what vocabulary they're permitted to use. Or hear. Making an actual list of terms to be censored?!?
How can there be something wrong with a phrase like "spirit animal", it being a concept embedded in almost every culture in history? No one owns concepts. Logically, it would seem aboriginal groups that object to Latin & Greek as artifacts of "Euro-centrist colonialism", shouldn't be using the words "spirit" and "animal" anyway, their roots being Latin: "spiritus" (breath) and "animus" ( moving living thing).
And "tribes" (which were simply groups settled along a river, itself a tributary of a greater river and conTRIBUTING to its flow) means everybody. Their languages flow one into another. To pick up expressions one from another is a way of giving a tribute. And (although CBC social justice warriors won't like this tool) these words are also related to 'tribunal' -- a hearing to confront governments (e.g. Roman senate) in defense of preserving citizens' liberties. CBC seems not to like liberties, like free speech, for example.
Anyone who speaks English or Romance languages speaks Latin; it's embedded in the flow, the confluence, the fluency of these language-streams. More examples among the favourite Latin woke-hates are actually their most-used: 're-conciliation', 'ap-propriate', 'geno-cide' (cidere - to kill, genus - group), 'misogyny' (from 'gynus' - Greek for woman), not to mention the Top Trio: 'diversity', 'equity', and 'inclusion' (vers, aequus, and cludere - to close).
Maybe Canada needs An Act To Defend Threatened Vocabulary, meaning words that stand for concepts we're losing, words like 'skepticism', 'satire', 'irony', 'jocosity', 'ribaldry'. Maybe there should be a contest like CBC's "Canada Reads". Call it "Canada Speaks". A panel would vote on the Worst Words of the Year -- all hysterically disagreeing on which words those were, of course. (The winner would win William Worstword's latest volume of illusional-allyship verse) and get a place on the show "This Thought Has 22 Micro-seconds".
Worst Words would be chosen in categories, like Worst Adjective ("systemic" would be the favourite), Worst Hybrid ("BIPOC" should win that), Worst Trans-Words meaning nouns converted to verbs (e.g. 'expensing') and verbs to nouns (an 'ask'), and Worst Epithet (if anyone still learns what an epithet is).
Meanwhile we'll have to ban Halloween and Carnivale (they're full of spooks), and replace savage (wild) with tame, black sheep with harlequin sheep, powwow with bowwow (an off-leash dog meeting), blind spot with failure-to-see spot, and brain-storm with brain-fog, the last 2 being what we've now got.
CBC has a strong objection to the existence of "black-face", but they should be experiencing red-face. It all makes us feel very jocose in anxious times, anyway ... so thank you CBC.
