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This is the Keep Your English Up to Date podcast from BBClearning English.com.

In this week's programme, John Aetto explores the origin meaning and use of the word issue.

When we have to talk about something that may be going wrong, where there's some trouble brewing

or something that might disturb or upset people, we may feel we have to choose our words carefully.

We don't want to add fuel to the flames.

You might think that problem was quite an innocuous word to use in such situations,

but recently it seems people have begun to find it a little too negative,

overstressing the bad side of things, they've been looking

for an alternative way to say problem.

Now where there are matters that need to be addressed, they're often referred to as issues.

Such matters are often difficult, and so people have started to use issue to mean problem. You need to be careful with it, though. It's not a simple one-for-one substitution.

You wouldn't generally talk about solving an issue and you certainly can't say no issue, but you find it in such contexts as that's not an issue, or do you have issues with that, or the issues surrounding nuclear waste management.

And of course if something's a terrible disaster, then problem comes into its own as a calming

word.

When the spacecraft Apollo 13 broke down on its way to the moon in 1970, the crew

coolly radioed back to Earth.

Houston, we have a problem.

That was the Keep Your English Up to Date podcast.

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