Time to get with the program/me
Image: Steve Weaver via PhotoPin cc
Under the new dispensation of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, there are going to be a few changes.
But here at Red Pony we’ll restrict our discussion to the orthographical changes (that’s ‘spelling’ to you and me).
Reviewing some of the Coalition policy documents released in the lead-up to the election, some senior public servants noticed a shift in the spelling of the word program. It had gained two letters and was now being spelt programme.
In fact, now that the new government is in place, one can find at least a couple of instances of a shift in the spelling here and there, although this last one, the Department of Education, is even-handed (or can’t make up its mind), using both spellings on its homepage.
It is said that the new prime minister has a preference for the British spelling, programme, over the American spelling, program. While the evidence for such a preference is scant, it brings to mind a couple of points about the mongrel origins of most words. Programme or program is derived ultimately from the Greek word programma, meaning ‘a public written notice’.
However, when it came into English in the seventeenth century, it took the form program. And so it remained right through to the nineteenth century, when the fashionable French influence saw sturdy old program sprout an extra -me on the end.
Of course, the Americans resisted this influence, probably thanks to that apostle of orthographic simplicity, Noah Webster, who would never have permitted the addition of two such pointless letters.
If I didn’t know better I’d suggest the current preference for programme represented a prime ministerial ploy to propagate French influence through the back door. If we end up with a public holiday for Bastille Day as well as the Queen’s Birthday, we won’t complain.
