Sunday, August 03, 2014



No homophones allowed

A blogger for a school in Utah has lost his job after he wrote a post explaining what a homophone is and his boss accused him of promoting a gay agenda.

Until his recent dismissal, Tim Torkildson worked as a social media strategist for the Nomen Global Language Center in Provo, a private language school which aims to help students with their English.

One of Torkildon’s tasks was writing about the English language and his last post had focused on explaining what homophones are.

Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings and often different spellings such as be and bee, through and threw, which and witch.

When Torkildson’s boss, and the school’s owner, Clarke Woodger read the article he called him into his office and told him he was fired.

‘Now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality,’ Woodger complained, according to Torkildson, who posted their exchange on his blog.

Torkildson said that while he understood that the word’s 'homo' prefix might cause controversy, but he said that the explanation he had given had been 'straightforward' and something that those in the early stages of learning English needed to know.

SOURCE



11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now the school will be noted for ignorance of the subject they purport to teach, as well as inflexibility in dealing with that ignorance, rather than being inaccurately associated with homosexuality.

I am reminded of the blacks who felt insulted by the use of the word "niggardly." When informed of the words meaning, they were still offended. Accuracy doesn't stand a chance in the face of massive ignorance.

Anonymous said...

Right on 1:13 !

Dean said...

How does a person running a school dedicated to teaching English achieve such a level of ignorance that he doesn't know the difference between a homophone and homosexuality?

Even if there were other factors in firing, as claimed by the owner, his worry that a dissertation about homophones would associate the school with homosexuality indicates he is perhaps a homophobe.

Anonymous said...

It should be remembered that this is an accusation leveled by the fired employee.

The school and the man that allegedly made the remarks said the allegation is false and the employee was told his posts for the school were too advanced and "boring."

As the employee had only been there for three months and had been talked to about the posts previously, one wonders if this isn't more of a case of sour grapes and not understanding the position rather than some sort of bad dream from the company.

Anonymous said...

12:09 - Let the lawyers fight it in court on a charge of unfair dismissal. If the employee is found to be accurate then I feel he has an outstanding chance of a good payout. The employers better have a good documented history of reprimand on their books to have any chance.

Anonymous said...

Gut instinct - story is untrue.
But if true - hilarious.
Either way the guy has done his job - driven media exposure for the business - shame it took his firing to work.

Stan B said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Stan B said...

The interview with the claimant is here:

Fox13: Man Claims Termination over Homophone Usage

Use the Name, Luke said...

Why would they delete the homophones post if the homophones=homosexual idiocy wasn't true? While it's possible that he was fired for a different reason, it does not seem likely.

Bottom line: If you want to learn English, avoid the Nomen Global Language Center at all costs!

Anonymous said...

maybe this ahole should go back to school and lean to read properly. just because it has 'homo' in it doesn't mean it related to homosexuality.

While i don't agree with the gay agenda this is just ridiculous!

Bird of Paradise said...

Liberals all need to start reading the U.S Constitution instead of this Pledge to the Earth nonsense