Transcript
[A dog is walked by an old lady wrapped in a blanket siting in a wheelchair] Old Lady: A doggo! [Close up of the old lady’s happy, yet not all there expression] Old Lady: A heccin good pupper. [A Nurse rushes to the Old Lady’s chair. The dog stairs at the Old Lady, the owner off screen] Old Lady: 13/10 good boi. Dog Owner: huh? [The nurse wheels the Old Lady away] Nurse: Don’t worry no one understands her- Old Lady: Could be a fren.
I make jokes about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIFF_(Usenet) and /. and no one already understands me.
This is what I love about any movie/tv show/book/novel/short story about the future … it’s all spoken in the same language that we all understand now.
But if we could listen to regular everyday English spoken in North America 100 years ago, it would sound a bit off and unusual. Listen to English as it was spoken in England 300 years ago and it would probably sound very strange and unsual, go back to 500 years ago and we would probably have a hard time understanding.
The same thing is going to happen in the future (IF there is any kind of future and we don’t blow ourselves up or kill ourselves off in some unusual, creative and complicated way) … historians will listen to recordings of how we talk today and think of us in the same way we think about someone from 1800. Go even far into the future about 500 years and someone from 2526 will probably not be able to understand anything we’re saying unless they use a translator of some kind. Those people 500 years from now will probably look back us like we’re making grunting sounds like some cave people from prehistory.
How far back in time can you understand English. A fairly long but facinating read.
That is interesting … but that’s the written language. Up until about 1950, literacy was only reserved for those who could actually afford a decent education. A hundred years ago, it was only a very small percentage of the population who could actually read or write. The vast majority of speakers spoke only a common language that was particular to their location and history … so the English they spoke was probably very different than what was being written by a nobleman from their time period.
Another fascinating read is just basic Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain … one of the reasons his writing became so famous was the fact that he wrote his characters speaking in every day language that people spoke … not a polished aristocratic uptight proper English that only the most wealthiest and properly educated people could appreciate.
The excerpts in that blog post are interesting but they would only represent the language of the most wealthiest people of their particular time. If you spoke and listened to a common worker from their same time period, you’d probably hear an entirely different language being spoken … and the difference would be even more pronounced the further back in time you went.
To play devil’s advocate since sound recording modern English has only gotten more succinct. Also everyone speaks their own variation of English they know. Besides actors
390 years ago i doubt you’d understanf anything tbh
Sure you could. That’s basically Shakespeare. Reading it is a little tough but you can make it out. Hearing it is probably just a matter of getting used to a different accent. But it’s modern English.
Did you really intend to write 390 years, or is 9 a typo like the end of understanf?
Wow. Such True. Many Funny.
ERMAGERD
5/7 perfect score.
5/7 with rice!
11/7 with rice.
“This adulting thing is hard. I guess I’ll die.”
My least favorite term is “adulting”.
When I hear it, I want to respond with, you mean taking care of shit on your own? Because you’re not living at home?
Early 20’s it’s cringey. When someone is pushing 35, I want to vomit on them.
“I don’t like it when people say ‘life is hard’ in ways that I disagree with. When I hear it I say ‘you mean exact synonyms that take longer to say?’”
When someone is pushing 35, I want to vomit on them.
Out of context that’s quite a statement.
It’s a weird kink, but I’ll own it.
I think there’s a brief window of time that it fits, like college-age when young people are learning how to do a bunch of stuff for the first time.
After that, it just sounds like arrested development (as in “perpetual adolescence”, not the show).
Does this mean that people will return to speaking normal English in the future?
Of course!
Here’s the start of a really good series, all in normal English:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licóur Of which vertú engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye, So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages, Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; And specially, from every shires ende Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende, The hooly blisful martir for to see, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke
Ugh, this gives me PTSD from junior year high school English class, we had to memorize & recite that Chaucer’s Canterbury tales 🤮
All I understood was “longing folk to goon on pilgrimages”. That thing never changed!
Middle English, yeah, that’s Chaucer from 700 years ago. Hearing someone read this is a treat, though. It is an amazingly musical language, I feel much more so than Modern English.
To be fair, survival bias. This is the poetry that was so beautiful and engaging it was repeated and preserved for 500+ years. I’m sure there were vassals trading japes in Middle English who didn’t rise above the erudition and imagery of your average teenage wastrel shooting the shit in Modern English.
And there is still plenty of good poetry being created, which I can’t always appreciate fully because I don’t get the references or even some of the words. Which will last? Let’s check back in 500 years.
This is just translated to today’s standard English. Future English obviously will become a tonal language, where all expression is based on different intonations of the word “skibidi”.
“normal” is relative.
In other words, no.
Apropos of nothing, the term “doggy” or “doggo” is possibly going back to the roots of the word; the Middle English word “dogge” kind of came out of nowhere and it’s hypothesized that it might have been a diminutive slang word (like “doggy” or “bunny”) that ended up becoming the standard term for the animal, supplanting “hound”.
Unrelated but I think it’s funny when people pronounce doge like doje instead of doggy.
Aw shit am I outing my age when I say “pupper” god damn it.
Don’t worry, the smol puppers and doggo frens don’t care, and theirs is the only opinion that matters.
Idc I love my lil pupperoni and cheese!
Badgerbadgerbadgernbadger
Rare pupper
pupperino
Maybe the elders who are “far gone” these days are just using ancient meme language that nobody understands anymore.
What’s 13/10?
I love pets a lot but all the weird words like heckin pupper boi doggo is so fucking stupid.
Cringe.
Less “millenial” and more “people who still don’t realize it was lame from moment one”.
![Aging Millennial Humor [Sarah Scribbles]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7eef1682-ad36-4a23-bc2d-d88a6681fa49.jpeg){kind=link}