[ SECRET POST #2433 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2433 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 073 secrets from Secret Submission Post #348.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I've always found it absurd that literature that is written in essentially another language is put in front of English students who are supposed to be immediately affected by it. I'm not saying the content itself is bad, but I wish we could stop deluding ourselves that English 500 years ago and English now are essentially the same.


(Shakespeare's not the worst of it, though, because my God, Beowulf and the Canterbury Tales. THAT IS NO LONGER ENGLISH AS WE UNDERSTAND IT AND WHY IS READING A TRANSLATION SO EVIL?)

[(Anonymous)]

Beowulf and Chaucer are generally taught at the college level. Why is it so evil to expect grown men and women to learn a little of the history of their own language?

[(Anonymous)]

It's not evil, but Chaucer is written in Middle English and with a few changes to the accent makes sense as a poem--but they generally have to have all the jokes explained because the language has changed its usage and verbage since then in some cases.

Beowulf was written in Old English, which is way more like German than English today and is more or less incomprehensible to a modern day English speaker.

Best play-translation I ever read was Shakespeare put into Cold War terms. I damn near died laughing. Once you understand what's going on it's often hysterical.

[(Anonymous)]

In my British Lit course in college, our professor read us Beowulf in the original while we followed along with the translation and it was MAGICAL. There's something so lovely about the lilt of language that I have never seen a translation capture. It was so perfect.

[ariakas]

I don't suppose you recall who wrote the Shakespeare as Cold War drama? This is relevant to my interests.

[(Anonymous)]

ntayrt and laaaaaaaaaaaaaate but I think they saw this version?

http://www.goldstar.com/events/seattle-wa/henry-v

[(Anonymous)]

Just sayin' I learned Beowulf and Chaucer in my sophomore year of high school.

[(Anonymous)]

Where did you go to school that those aren't taught til college? We did Shakespeare every year, yeah, and Chaucer freshman and senior year and Beowulf senior year.

[ceiling_fan]

The problem is that they are not taught how to read the language, rather the work is shoved under their noses and they are expected to soak it up.

At least when learning classic Chinese, us native speakers are expected to learn how to decode them first.

[(Anonymous)]

Dude, I learned Beowulf and Chaucer in high school [and, frankly, was completely turned off of the former by just how into describing the gore my teacher got. Seriously, it's like the gore was turning her on in front of the class.]

Also, what's so evil about letting people read a translation of something that they probably won't understand too well otherwise? And that's before you even have to consider the fact that there are a ton of cultural references that people won't understand because they aren't references in modern culture.

Also, to put this in, perhaps, some perspective for you - there are places that treat middle and old English as a separate language because that's how different they are. Middle English can be understood to some extent, sure, albeit not easily but old English is out of the question.

[silverau]

1 - I had to deal with both in high school.

2 - Because very few people in the world will ever have any need to understand Old English - and the ones who do can take a separate class for that; no need to deal with it in English class.

[(Anonymous)]

For my English degree we had a compulsory semester of learning Old English. The exam was at least multiple choice, so I managed to squeak past on educated guesses, but it was the worst and most pointless class I ever took (and I still have a teeny bit of rage thinking about it)

[silverau]

Uuuugh that sounds horrible. I like learning languages and linguistics, but even I'd hate to learn a whole semester of Old English.

[(Anonymous)]

lol evil. k picture a 90yr old trying to read 800 words of l33t. same diff. possible but super annoying

[(Anonymous)]

Shakespeare's English and English now are essentially the same. Some of the vocabulary is different, but very little has changed grammatically in 400 years.

Most high school students who read Beowulf or the Canterbury Tales DO read translations -- with Beowulf they'd have to, because Old English actually is a functionally different language; modern English no longer declines nouns, for one thing.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not a different language. It's perfectly comprehensible, the vocabulary is just a little weird (and it's also kind of hard to sort out when it's being read as a text instead of performed sometimes) but we're not deluding ourselves or anything.

[(Anonymous)]

I think certain age groups might take more interest in Shakespeare if there was more focus on all the dirty jokes and toilet humour in his plays (which many people don't notice because of the archaic language).

Let's face it, highschool students love dick jokes.

[scrubber]

I don't remember a lot about the man himself, but my 8th grade English teacher did seriously propose to us that "Shakespeare" was a masturbation joke and I'll be Goddamned if I forget that.

[(Anonymous)]

...oh my god.

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking as someone who's in college - I personally find those the most annoying part of his work. I actually quite like his tragedies (Hamlet, the bits of Henry IV's two parts without Falstaff), but the humour is... well, shit, for lack of a better word.

[erisiansaint]

Shakespeare is essentially modern English with idioms that have fallen out of fashion or we wouldn't be able to understand it. And quite a few of the words Shakespeare wrote are so common that we're not aware he wrote them. These, for instance:
http://www.pathguy.com/shakeswo.htm