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Old forms of the English language?
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| Chimney |
Posting this here since it's the only place where I can come into contact with native English speakers; Was reading Wilde's "Portrait of Dorian Gray" in English and came across something curious: In several passages, the words "tomorrow" and "today" are written "to-morrow" / "to-day".
Was this some fluke or did these nouns really spell like this in the past? The novel was written at the turn of the century, but I reckon the language itself did not go through such extensive changes in the spawn of such a short period of time. It is the first time I ever encounter these forms. |
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| Dykes_on_Jay |
| To-day, to-morrow and to-night, where quite common in previous centuries. They would be accepted as wrong today, but chalk it up to linguistics being an ever changing beast. Read some Jane Eyre (don't), you'll see these pop up as well. It is nothing special. |
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| Dykes_on_Jay |
And, the English language has changed in the last 20 years, more than it most likely has in the last 200 ,(same goes for French) due to internet culture making people stupid.
It's been dumbed down a bit. |
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| Vector A |
Yes, they were. In fact at one point even further back they were written as completely separate words, as in "to day," "to night," and "to morrow."
Something similar happened with the French word for "today," "au jour de hui" = "aujourd'hui." "Hui," a word from archaic French, originally had the same meaning -- "today" -- as the cognate "hoy" of Spanish. Literally "aujourd'hui" would translate as "on the day of today," which sounds kind of ridiculous, but now it simply means "today." And some people even say "au jour d'aujourd'hui." |
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| Moral Hazard |
| As Jay noted, these variations were common place a couple of hundred years ago, as were the current variants. English, as with many languages, was far less cohesive in centuries past with pretty significant variations both spoken and printed from one area to another. These should not be considered older forms of English though, as these are still part of the modern-English language, as opposed to the true older forms of middle-English and Old English... middle English being largely recognizable to current native English speakers and old English being a total cluster- of crazy German and Norse sounding words ( you anonymous author of Beowolf). |
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| OrangestO |
| I didn't know that. Cool. |
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| Chimney |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dykes_on_Jay
Read some Jane Eyre (don't) |
:stongue:
Ok, thanks for clearing it up! |
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| DJ RANN |
What everyone else said but around the same time, you'll also find examples of using the older "on the morrow" (morrow meaning the "the day after") which gradually lost favour due to "to morrow" being an easier and quicker form.
It's actually amazing how much the language has changed over the last 100 years.
Some words have completely disappeared but many others became far more specific.
For instance in Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle) you'll find the word Ejaculate no less than 23 instances and the context it's used in is to shout or impulsively express something.
At one point a woman ejactulates from a forth story balcony :wtf:
Now it's virtually exclusively used to describe that Jay is producing some Ebola. |
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| OrangestO |
| quote: | Originally posted by OrangestO
I didn't know that. Cool. |
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| Vector A |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
Some words have completely disappeared but many others became far more specific.
For instance in Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle) you'll find the word Ejaculate no less than 23 instances and the context it's used in is to shout or impulsively express something.
At one point a woman ejaculates from a forth story balcony. |
Indeed, much like people might take it the wrong way if you said, "I feel gayer than I've felt in a long time!" |
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| Chimney |
| quote: | Originally posted by Vector A
Indeed, much like people might take it the wrong way if you said, "I feel gayer than I've felt in a long time!" |
Haha, I actually spoke to an Englishman a while back about this. Told him that for me, hearing the word 'fag' in a non-homosexual context (he used to say he ägoes out for a fagä) felt weird. |
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| Lira |
| Dammit, I came too late for this discussion :p |
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