Looks like Sydney Trains is going to drop the jargon from its PA announcements.
From the SMH:
"Commuters will soon be told to “get off” the train, rather than “alight”, after Sydney Trains resolved to overhaul its station announcements to favour colloquial language.
"The phrase “this train terminates here” is also being retired, due to concerns the word “terminates” is difficult to understand."
Seriously though, alight and terminates are not hard words to understand - particularly when given context and used in repeated announcements. It doesn’t reflect well on our literacy levels if these words are now considered too difficult for the general population.
That’s likely at least part of the reasoning behind this change. However the majority of people learning English will simply have a lack of vocabulary rather than a lack of reasoning capacity, so should therefore be able to figure out the words mean from context and observation (or look up the meanings considering smartphones are basically ubiquitous these days).
Hmm not necessarily. Let me put it this way. If you went to Thailand as say a tourist and they say get off instead of alight in Thai would you have a hope in hell of understanding? Would you even pick up the words to pump it into a smartphone ? Context might be helpful but in a foreign city that can quickly go out the door, pardon the pun.
You’re right that I wouldn’t recognise an unknown word/phrase, but since train announcements are operating in a limited context and I’d be seeing people respond by getting off the train at multiple stops you’d hope I’d figure it out before too long.
This is of course assuming I know some of the language and can recognise basic words such as their equivalent of passengers, going in completely blind would be a real mission (just as it would be coming here with absolutely no English).
@ajsadauskas@sydneytrains I was amused but not surprised on a recent trip to the US to hear the announcement on the aeroplane as “de-plane” instead of “disembark” or “alight”. I suppose you have to meet people where they are with language.
@rusl@ajsadauskas@sydneytrains Oh god I hate "deplane". Also "detrain". Can't see how disembark is difficult. Or terminate, for that matter. Or alight!
@rusl@ajsadauskas@sydneytrains You think that's bad? I was in an airport where they made passengers "deplane" to take care of a mechanical issue. When it was time to have the passengers get back on, the gate agent made an announcement asking them to "re-deplane". 😒
The phrase "this train terminates here" will be replaced by " Get of the fucking train here, mate, or you will be spending the rest of your fucking drunk arse night in the fucking rail yard"
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