A fellow blogger, Jodie Ambrose, http://jodiambroseblog.com/, complains about our current craze for shortened and misused words. Like cra cra for crazy. As we progress along in our history and technology speeds our world up, we seem to shorten words, including curses. F*** you instead of Thou be a fawning clay-brained dogfish. The 16th century curse is so much more fun in my book.
The real downside to slang is people 200 years from now having no idea what we’re talking about. We describe a beautiful process the future needs to recreate. But they can’t. It’s like the 16th century dance I learned, sort of, at an early music workshop. We bowed, clasped hands, turned to the right, turned to the left and bumped heads. No, wait, what, bumped heads? We just ran into 16th century slang. No clue as to what “bumped heads” really means. A perfectly good 16th century dance primer rendered useless by slang and no pics. It’s true, we didn’t invent slang recently, and it’s been around a long time.
What if 200 years in the future they need to know something important, like how to use the toilet? Instructions such as after you’ve drained the dragon, use the TP, and then flush are not helpful. Its certain to make them cra cra.
The dude who invented the toilet
Fab post!
Thanks!
We have a set of Shakespearean insult magnets on our fridge. They make for fabulous reading each time you pass by. Modern insults can’t hold a candle to them.
I’m going to have to look for some of those magnets. I think I lost my typed up sheet of paper with dozens of Shakespearean insults. I can’t lose magnets so easily.