You sound like Shakespeare!
The English language is beautiful.
This is not meant as a chauvinist remark on the quality of my particular language as opposed to other languages; I’m sure that many, if not most languages can, when made use of by one who cares enough about the subtleties and nuances of expression and vocabulary within that language to learn and familiarize themselves with them, are capable of producing sentences and ideas, songs and stories which are in their own unique and varied ways, beautiful. The English language simply happens to be the language I’m most familiar with and which I happen to have devoted myself to. And for my part, and in my experience, it is beautiful.
When I open my mouth to speak, there’s always just a little bit of excitement which accompanies the act, and no less so when I sit down to type one out. I feel like a painter sitting in front of a blank canvas, with a palette of a thousand different colours of paint at one side, and a million brushes laid out for me on the other. The opportunities for expression are nearly limitless. I can produce something wonderful, exciting, memorable, amusing, disgusting, thought-provoking, bizarre or precise. So many options which are available to me! And I love them all. I always say, if you have the opportunity to say something in a manner which is memorable and awesome, and the opportunity to say that same thing in a manner which is dull and plain, why would you ever choose the latter? Who could possibly benefit from further exposure to the ordinary who would not benefit more from exposure to the extraordinary?
And in this modern world, where we have so many literary and oratorical sources to draw upon, so many thoughts and notions, so many dialects and vernaculars, it’s an incredibly heady experience to really contemplate what kind of range of verbosity is available to a student of modern English.
And yet, for a distressingly large portion of the population, any expression of the English language which extends beyond the mundane and banal, no matter how modern it may be, always just sounds to them “like Shakespeare.”
And they are not shy about sharing this observation with you. Indeed, they seem to view it as a solemn obligation that they be the one to inform you of this notion of theirs.
It’s depressing. Shakespeare, as eloquent and as full of wit as he was, was a product of his time, and that’s a time which is four centuries in the past. Is there not a single common touchstone for excellence in the field of expression in the English language in the four centuries since the death of the Bard which has had any lasting or significant impact on the common man? Is there nothing that suggests to them that a person who speaks well and in a thoroughly modern manner might be more reminiscent in their use of the language of a playwright of the 20th or 21st century than one of the 16th?
It’s all the more perplexing when one of these vulgar brutes then decides to start peppering me with “thee”s and “thou”s, as though in imitation of my own speech, seemingly convinced that they’re “ripping me a new one” with their cutting satire, when I can guarantee that I had never done so in their presence.
What does it say about a culture that any significant portion of its population cannot even imagine anyone in the modern day being well-spoken and eloquent, without it being an imitation of someone nearly half a millennium dead? I would almost be prepared to receive it as a compliment if not for the fact that they are so unrelentingly mocking in their tone. They sound no different to me than the kids in high school who would call me “Mister Dictionary”, and discourage me from eloquence by telling me that “using big words makes you sound dumb.” And yet these are often adults themselves, whose adulthood experience with the English language and the culture which surrounds it is so impoverished and so shallow that to them, the act of making good and thorough use of it is somehow worthy of mockery.
I’m long past the point where their mockery hurts me in any way. What It says, though, about the cultural experience that produces these thoughts? That hurts me. That hurts me deeply. Because I know that they have the same opportunities that I do: They have that same blank canvas. They have that palette of a thousand colours. They have those million brushes. And they choose to take a handful of brown and grey paint and smear it haphazardly upon that canvas without a care in the world for the other linguistic tools they have available to them, and find those who do avail themselves of them to be a bizarre anachronism.
Who “talks like Shakespeare.”
This is not meant as a chauvinist remark on the quality of my particular language as opposed to other languages; I’m sure that many, if not most languages can, when made use of by one who cares enough about the subtleties and nuances of expression and vocabulary within that language to learn and familiarize themselves with them, are capable of producing sentences and ideas, songs and stories which are in their own unique and varied ways, beautiful. The English language simply happens to be the language I’m most familiar with and which I happen to have devoted myself to. And for my part, and in my experience, it is beautiful.
When I open my mouth to speak, there’s always just a little bit of excitement which accompanies the act, and no less so when I sit down to type one out. I feel like a painter sitting in front of a blank canvas, with a palette of a thousand different colours of paint at one side, and a million brushes laid out for me on the other. The opportunities for expression are nearly limitless. I can produce something wonderful, exciting, memorable, amusing, disgusting, thought-provoking, bizarre or precise. So many options which are available to me! And I love them all. I always say, if you have the opportunity to say something in a manner which is memorable and awesome, and the opportunity to say that same thing in a manner which is dull and plain, why would you ever choose the latter? Who could possibly benefit from further exposure to the ordinary who would not benefit more from exposure to the extraordinary?
And in this modern world, where we have so many literary and oratorical sources to draw upon, so many thoughts and notions, so many dialects and vernaculars, it’s an incredibly heady experience to really contemplate what kind of range of verbosity is available to a student of modern English.
And yet, for a distressingly large portion of the population, any expression of the English language which extends beyond the mundane and banal, no matter how modern it may be, always just sounds to them “like Shakespeare.”
And they are not shy about sharing this observation with you. Indeed, they seem to view it as a solemn obligation that they be the one to inform you of this notion of theirs.
It’s depressing. Shakespeare, as eloquent and as full of wit as he was, was a product of his time, and that’s a time which is four centuries in the past. Is there not a single common touchstone for excellence in the field of expression in the English language in the four centuries since the death of the Bard which has had any lasting or significant impact on the common man? Is there nothing that suggests to them that a person who speaks well and in a thoroughly modern manner might be more reminiscent in their use of the language of a playwright of the 20th or 21st century than one of the 16th?
It’s all the more perplexing when one of these vulgar brutes then decides to start peppering me with “thee”s and “thou”s, as though in imitation of my own speech, seemingly convinced that they’re “ripping me a new one” with their cutting satire, when I can guarantee that I had never done so in their presence.
What does it say about a culture that any significant portion of its population cannot even imagine anyone in the modern day being well-spoken and eloquent, without it being an imitation of someone nearly half a millennium dead? I would almost be prepared to receive it as a compliment if not for the fact that they are so unrelentingly mocking in their tone. They sound no different to me than the kids in high school who would call me “Mister Dictionary”, and discourage me from eloquence by telling me that “using big words makes you sound dumb.” And yet these are often adults themselves, whose adulthood experience with the English language and the culture which surrounds it is so impoverished and so shallow that to them, the act of making good and thorough use of it is somehow worthy of mockery.
I’m long past the point where their mockery hurts me in any way. What It says, though, about the cultural experience that produces these thoughts? That hurts me. That hurts me deeply. Because I know that they have the same opportunities that I do: They have that same blank canvas. They have that palette of a thousand colours. They have those million brushes. And they choose to take a handful of brown and grey paint and smear it haphazardly upon that canvas without a care in the world for the other linguistic tools they have available to them, and find those who do avail themselves of them to be a bizarre anachronism.
Who “talks like Shakespeare.”