Yachting

‘We’re not throwing man overboard overboard,’ says the Royal Yachting Association. ‘It’s a universally recognised term that we want people to use in an emergency.’ It has little choice, since man overboard is incorporated in international treaties. So the association recommends its use only when following safety procedures, ‘until this is able to change’. Until that happy day, the RYA has issued a slim volume,  Inclusive Language Guidance, with a sort of phrasebook thrown in. A sample is: ‘Ze went sailing yesterday. Zir boat is green. That boat belongs to zem.’ This indicates not that the speaker is German, or perhaps from Somerset, but that the person being spoken about