You read that right.
A social media specialist for an English language learning center was fired after writing a blog explaining how homophones work. That’s right, the grammatical term for words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings.
Tim Torkildson’s employer, Clarke Woodger of Utah’s Nomen Global Language Center, thought readers would confuse the word with homosexuality.
And that’s a negative, how?
From The Salt Lake Tribune:
As Torkildson tells it, Woodger said he could not trust him and that the blog about homophones was the last straw.
“Now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality,” Woodger complained, according to Torkildson, who posted the exchange on his Facebook page.
Torkildson says he was careful to write a straightforward explanation of homophones. He knew the “homo” part of the word could be politically charged, but he thought the explanation of that quirky part of the English language would be educational.
Nomen has removed that blog from its website.
“People at this level of English,” Woodger says, ” … may see the ‘homo’ side and think it has something to do with gay sex.”
But Woodger denies that Torkildson’s termination had anything to do with homosexuality at all, saying he had concerns that the blogger would “go off on tangents” that would be confusing and offensive to the readers.
Believable? Or was Torkildson fired because people are too lazy to decipher the difference between homosexuality and a homophone? Sound off below…
SOURCE: SLT | PHOTO CREDIT: Facebook
