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English Has Come A Long, Long Way...
I often wonder what would happen if Shakespeare were to be
transported in a time machine to our world today. What would he
think? How would he react?
Yes, Willie would probably tell me "thou hast too much time on
thy hands if thou spendeth it wondering about such flights of
fancy." But only after he found his feet.
You see, Willie would be blown away by some of the comforts we
take for granted. For instance, that box we walk into. The doors
close all by themselves...just like magic. When they open, we are
magically in a different place.
"What callest thou this contraption?" Willie would ask in
utter amazement.
An elevator. You would think nothing would phase a man who
just landed his time machine 400 years into the future.
"Ah, I see. It was not magic after all. It elevated us,
because it is an elevator."
This Willie guy is pretty handy with his English, isn't he?
But that won't get him far these days. A hundred years ago, even
fifty, he could have figured out just about every new word by
tracing its roots (often to Greek or Latin). But not today.
"What are those...those...those, things?"
Why that's a TV, with a VCR and a DVD player. Over there, it's
a CD player, an AM and FM radio and an amp. This is a PC, with
CDRW and floppy drives, a powerful CPU, A and C drive, and more
RAM than a MAC.
"What? Thy alphabet seems a bit confusing."
Once upon a time, the meaning of a word could always be
guessed by simply tracing the entomology of the word back to its
lowest roots.
"Thou meanest 'etymology', dost thou not? Entomology is the
study of insects and bugs."
I knew that.
I took out a 'Kleenex' because my nose was running.
"But how dost thy nose run?"
I suppose the same way I drivest on a parkway and parkest in
the driveway. Or how it doesn't matter whether we fill in a form
or fill out a form...either way, the taxman gets the last
laugh.
I offered to take Willie for a ride.
"That is more like it. There is nothing quite like a horse
under one's bottom.'
No, no, no. We don't ride horses anymore. That is a barbaric
way to treat such majestic beasts. Now we drive cars...and kill
the horses off with the exhaust.
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
Just have a seat in the BMW, Willie, while I turn on the AC
and rev up the RPMs on this old V6. Before you know it, we'll be
doing 100 mph down the 102.
"More letters and numbers. Have words become redundant in the
future?"
Pretty much. As life got more and more complicated, words got
more and more complicated. Pretty soon it was taking several
minutes just to pronounce a single government department. So real
word groups had to be replaced by acronyms - the first letter of
each word. Pass me a CANDY.
"What does CANDY stand for?"
Candy, actually. But maybe I should just leave old Willie
guessing. After all, there is just so much to discover in this
brave new world. Like why there are so few sundials around. And
why some people sleep on the street, while other climb 34 stories
to an office tower above to sleep at their desks. And just how do
they shrink those liquor bottles for the airlines.
"What is an RSVP? And ASAP? And TLC?"
I had to find just the right way to explain to him that all
these crazy letters actually made some kind of sense.
Internal Department of Income Overhaul Transfer Systems.
"Ah, IDIOTS. Now, that I understand!"
About The Author
Like Shakespeare, David Leonhardt is a writer: He is author
of:
Inspiration & Motivation To Go: http://www.thehappyguy.com/l/daily-motivation-inspiration.php
The Get Happy Workbook: http://www.thehappyguy.com/happiness-work-book.html
and Climb Your Stairway to Heaven: the 9 habits of maximum
happiness: http://www.thehappyguy.com/happiness-self-help-book.html
To write your website copy, newsletter or anything else, email
him at: info@thehappyguy.com
Info@thehappyguy.com
MORE RESOURCES:
Johnson, crew chief thrive on 'goofy language'guardian.co.uk, UK - 4 hours agoBy Larry Fine NEW YORK, Dec 4 (Reuters) - NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson says being on the same wave length as his crew chief with "goofy language" is the ... |
Man in Search Of LanguageForward, NY - 5 hours agoBy Joel Streicker Readers expecting a grand symphony on how Hebrew was revived as a living language beginning in the late 19th century will be disappointed ... |
Language - Google News
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