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With regard to your point about the meaning or use of English words changing, after trying but failing to read Ulysses a few years ago I asked my Grandfather wh
by anonymousDan 12y ago
With regard to your point about the meaning or use of English words changing, after trying but failing to read Ulysses a few years ago I asked my Grandfather whether he had ever read it (he was born in 1914 and grew up in Dublin). He said he had read it a few times and didn't find it difficult to understand at all since most of the phrases and slang were things people said when he was growing up.
- wjnc 12y agoI have the same experience in trying to read the classic English philosophers. The language feels the same, but isn't. Funny thing is that you can find 'the Greeks / Germans / ..' in a side by side translation to modern English with notes, but that it doesn't exist for many of the classics. It's easier to get to understand Biggie than Thomas More (which I own in an ancient English translation of the Latin original, kind of my point...).
- cafard 12y ago"Sure I am that the signification of words in all languages, depending very much on the thoughts, notions, and ideas of him that uses them, must unavoidably be of great uncertainty to men of the same language and country. This is so evident in the Greek authors, that he that shall peruse their writings will find in almost every one of them, a distinct language, though the same words." John Locke, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Book II (On Words), Ch. IX, section 22