You’re just not old enough. Cursive was everywhere when I was a kid. They should still teach it to children because children learn language and writing easier than adults do. We should be able to read cursive. It is part of our language, and our history. Every old document is written in cursive. We shouldn’t end up with a society that can’t even read its original Constitution. That’s just Idiocracy.
On a regular basis? No. Ever? Of course. Shakespeare is written in old English, the original translation of Homer’s The Odyssey, and the King James Bible, to name a few things.
The King James Bible is pretty much modern English. Shakespeare too. They actually sort of standardized modern English. Old English, the language,not just English that is old, looks like Icelandic or weird German and is maybe 500 years older than that, give or take.
Edit: Everyone who down voted your comment is dumb. Being willing to learn new things is a mark of high intelligence. Being grateful for the opportunity to learn is the sign of wisdom. Those who downvote you should instead emulate you. If we punish people for being happy to learn, they won’t want to learn.
I remember an English teacher when I was at school talking about how he was teaching Beowulf to A level students and that it was very difficult for him as well not just the students.
Pretty much only scholars. JRR Tolkien did, for example. The Rohirrim in the LOTR trilogy basically speak a form of Mercian Old English, if I recall correctly.
I grew up in a house with a rotary phone and a meticulously maintained phone book (written in cursive.) If I’m too young to have been able to reliable hone my cursive-parsing skills, what can we expect of younger generations?
The Flynn effect suggests people are generally getting smarter, remembering things better, etc. Something is happening to cause younger generations to be generally better than their ancestors. IQ scores have their problems but it’s still a hopeful sign.
Different circles I guess then. Everyone I knew wrote in cursive when I was younger. Regarding your intelligence comment, it’s not an intelligence issue, just an education and exposure issue. Learning cursive is easier than learning to write all-together, but if you’re never taught, and you’re not exposed to it, then you’re probably not going to learn it. It’s such a simple thing to learn that I don’t understand the aversion everyone on this thread has towards it. It’s pretty nice when you have to write a lot of text, like taking notes or journaling.
The aversion in my case comes from seeing time being wasted on that when teachers could use it to teach much more useful things or making sure that kids learned everything else they’ve been taught.
Language changes. Teaching an entire script to be able to read translated documents when there are practical skills that could be taught instead is silly.
We don’t teach old English anymore, even though there’s a huge amount of our cultural history contained in it.
We don’t even teach people about the eras when we used to use “f” in place if “s”, and that’s right in the middle of the constitution.
Can you read the original magna carta? America would not be unique amongst English speaking nations in having issues dealing with language drift.
You’re just not old enough. Cursive was everywhere when I was a kid. They should still teach it to children because children learn language and writing easier than adults do. We should be able to read cursive. It is part of our language, and our history. Every old document is written in cursive. We shouldn’t end up with a society that can’t even read its original Constitution. That’s just Idiocracy.
Do you read old English?
On a regular basis? No. Ever? Of course. Shakespeare is written in old English, the original translation of Homer’s The Odyssey, and the King James Bible, to name a few things.
Shakespeare is modern English with some old words. This is Old English.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-english-version
Thanks for the example and the correction.
The King James Bible is pretty much modern English. Shakespeare too. They actually sort of standardized modern English. Old English, the language,not just English that is old, looks like Icelandic or weird German and is maybe 500 years older than that, give or take.
Edit: Everyone who down voted your comment is dumb. Being willing to learn new things is a mark of high intelligence. Being grateful for the opportunity to learn is the sign of wisdom. Those who downvote you should instead emulate you. If we punish people for being happy to learn, they won’t want to learn.
I didn’t know that. Thanks for the correction.
We are all constantly learning. Thank you for participating in this group discussion.
Look at you two fucking learning and being civil and shit.
Love it. Appreciate you both.
Hey up yours, pal <3
Beowulf is old English. Shakespeare is nothing like old English.
Who the fuck understands old english??
People who need to or want to out of personal interest, just like it should be with cursive.
I remember an English teacher when I was at school talking about how he was teaching Beowulf to A level students and that it was very difficult for him as well not just the students.
Pretty much only scholars. JRR Tolkien did, for example. The Rohirrim in the LOTR trilogy basically speak a form of Mercian Old English, if I recall correctly.
I grew up in a house with a rotary phone and a meticulously maintained phone book (written in cursive.) If I’m too young to have been able to reliable hone my cursive-parsing skills, what can we expect of younger generations?
The Flynn effect suggests people are generally getting smarter, remembering things better, etc. Something is happening to cause younger generations to be generally better than their ancestors. IQ scores have their problems but it’s still a hopeful sign.
Different circles I guess then. Everyone I knew wrote in cursive when I was younger. Regarding your intelligence comment, it’s not an intelligence issue, just an education and exposure issue. Learning cursive is easier than learning to write all-together, but if you’re never taught, and you’re not exposed to it, then you’re probably not going to learn it. It’s such a simple thing to learn that I don’t understand the aversion everyone on this thread has towards it. It’s pretty nice when you have to write a lot of text, like taking notes or journaling.
The aversion in my case comes from seeing time being wasted on that when teachers could use it to teach much more useful things or making sure that kids learned everything else they’ve been taught.
Language changes. Teaching an entire script to be able to read translated documents when there are practical skills that could be taught instead is silly.
We don’t teach old English anymore, even though there’s a huge amount of our cultural history contained in it.
We don’t even teach people about the eras when we used to use “f” in place if “s”, and that’s right in the middle of the constitution.
Can you read the original magna carta? America would not be unique amongst English speaking nations in having issues dealing with language drift.
lol mixing up language with its orthography system. Classic error