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> disliking Shakespeare because his writing is archaic But... his writing is archaic. Not just quaintly archaic, like a novel from the 1800s, but literally req

> disliking Shakespeare because his writing is archaic But... his writing is archaic. Not just quaintly archaic, like a novel from the 1800s, but literally requiring translation archaic. Worse still, the vast, vast majority of people "teaching" Shakespeare pronounce it wrong, which means most of the humour is lost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiblRSqhL04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiblRSqhL04 The jokes don't work any more! The rhymes sound wrong! The whole thing is a farce. Theatre. We all pretend it is great English, whe in fact it isn't even English any more. It's taught because our teachers were taught it. Those teachers... and on. It's like the idiots still formatting cloud SSD virtual disks as-if they are physical RAID controllers with spinning rust. It's like the Hungarian notation identifier style people copied from the NT kernel code, even though the NT kernel people realised it was a mistake and moved on. The Linux kernel code would be crazy bad if it wasn't for tens of thousands of people beating on it until it has become merely mediocre. It will never be perfect, it'll never even be "good" code. It has too much inertia, too much history for that to ever happen.

psd1 3y ago
There's room for conflicting viewpoints of course, but Shakespeare is enjoyed in the original by English speakers in the 21st century, and academic consensus calls his language "Modern English" - as opposed to Middle English, which is a struggle to understand, or Old English, which very few people can grok today. So no, it requires no translation. I disagree completely that the humour is lost. There may be jokes I don't get, but that's more true for Futurama with all its 90s American telly references. Perhaps Chaucer would be a better example?
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  I studied Shakespeare in school from a textbook that had two columns: the original and the modern English translation. Something like this: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/read-shakespeare-side-by-side-in-a-modern-translation/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/read-shakespeare-side-by-side-... > So no, it requires no translation. It does for most students in most schools. Sure, there's some grey-haired academics that insist it doesn't need translation -- but they've spent a career learning Shakespearean English!
kaba0 3y ago
Nitpicking, but Shakespeare is written in Modern English, as in the language is the same we use now. > It's taught because our teachers were taught it. Those teachers... and on That’s bullshit. Greeks are also taught, there are just eternal literary works.

psd1 3y ago

There's room for conflicting viewpoints of course, but Shakespeare is enjoyed in the original by English speakers in the 21st century, and academic consensus calls his language "Modern English" - as opposed to Middle English, which is a struggle to understand, or Old English, which very few people can grok today. So no, it requires no translation. I disagree completely that the humour is lost. There may be jokes I don't get, but that's more true for Futurama with all its 90s American telly references. Perhaps Chaucer would be a better example?

jiggawatts 3y ago
I studied Shakespeare in school from a textbook that had two columns: the original and the modern English translation. Something like this: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/read-shakespeare-side-by-side-in-a-modern-translation/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/read-shakespeare-side-by-side-... > So no, it requires no translation. It does for most students in most schools. Sure, there's some grey-haired academics that insist it doesn't need translation -- but they've spent a career learning Shakespearean English!

kaba0 3y ago

Nitpicking, but Shakespeare is written in Modern English, as in the language is the same we use now. > It's taught because our teachers were taught it. Those teachers... and on That’s bullshit. Greeks are also taught, there are just eternal literary works.