I just tried this new (newish?) toothpaste that's in a shaving gel dispenser. While trying to work out what was so good about it, I noticed that the main ingredient was listed as 'aqua'. Surely, in this enlightened age of advertising transparency it's about time the toiletries business came clean?
If you've worked in the sector (or even if you haven't, but maybe went to the right school) you'll know that aqua is the Latin word for water. Quite why it's acceptable to speak to a British audience in an extinct language beats me - but it doesn't take a genius to work out that aqua sounds a damn sight more expensive than good old tap water.
Yet I can imagine the outcry if food manufacturers started doing this kind of thing. Sal for salt - for starters (it takes one less letter). Is it because we have to ingest the stuff? Not an argument that washes with me - my kids eat toothpaste by the tubeful, not to mention soap and shampoo. And what about all these creams and potions we slap on our skin - 'quickly absorbed, dry in seconds'? Seriously, when you read the list of chemicals that goes into some of these products - ergo (oops) our bodies - it makes you wonder why something isn't being done about this.
Still, when they've finished with Beijing and booze, it'll give the lobbyists something new to get their teeth into. In the meantime, if we've got to have an ancient language on our packaging, I'd like to make the case for Welsh - as Prof Bryan Sykes has demonstrated, if anything is our mother tongue, that's it. Cymru am byth.
