| ▲ | marginalia_nu 4 hours ago |
| A lot of that is just that English along with much of western vernacular wasn't given standardized spelling until fairly recently, as most of the important writing was done in Latin. If you get past the weird spelling it's still fairly understandable. Exception being maybe stuff like Shakespeare, but a huge part of what makes that inaccessible is that his writing is full of references to current events, double entendres, and various 17th century memes. It's a bit like showing South Park's world of warcraft episode to someone from the 2400s. |
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| ▲ | jkestner 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > A lot of that is just that English along with much of western vernacular wasn't given standardized spelling until fairly recently As many of us learned recently from this great article: https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-back-in-time-u... |
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| ▲ | graemep 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Shakespeare is sufficiently close to contemporary English that audiences will watch and enjoy his plays. I have seen plenty of kids and audiences in different countries enjoy them. |
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| ▲ | Broken_Hippo 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | It isn't that it isn't enjoyable, but it just isn't enjoyable in the same way. How often do you view the jokes in shakepear's work as raunchy or sexual? Do you think younger teens get the jokes? Do you think anyone explains it to them? It is more akin to watching television from a different culture. I am American, live in Norway, with my Norwegian spouse. We wind up watching British television from time to time. We find the jokes funny, but we both realize that we are missing references to people and places - but understand the gist of the jokes. The difference between shakespear and modern times is even larger - you don't always know they are jokes because you don't realize they are referencing anything. Still enjoyable, but a different story without as much comedy. | | |
| ▲ | graemep 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sexual and and current affairs references are the hardest to get - euphemisms change, for example In spite of this I do get a lot. Some are pretty obvious ("your tongue in my tail", for example) I am sure I miss many. Some productions try harder to make things obvious than others. Then there is all the stuff you do get so the comedies are still pretty funny overall. I think Your TV analogy is probably pretty accurate. Kids also do not get a lot of sexual references in TV comedy too! | |
| ▲ | shagie 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > It isn't that it isn't enjoyable, but it just isn't enjoyable in the same way. How often do you view the jokes in shakepear's work as raunchy or sexual? Do you think younger teens get the jokes? Do you think anyone explains it to them? Yes... my own recounting of freshman high school English (it was the late 80s) https://everything2.com/node/1207826 |
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| ▲ | simonklitj 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Nah, you’ve got to go to Chaucer to get the really hard to parse but still understandable stuff. |
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| ▲ | Cthulhu_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Or reading Hitchhiker's Guide or Discworld as a non-Brit or non-English speaker. |
