Very funny rendition of the fairy tale as it might have read if Shakespeare had written it.
But, apart from the humor, one of the interesting and unfortunate facts about our language, as John points out, is that Shakespeare had a working vocabulary of 54,000 words. Today, in the United States, we have a working vocabulary of 3,000 words. It's no wonder we have such a hard time reading and understanding classic literature.
HT: to Jon D. Shimeall for sharing this.
3 comments:
I must point out a mistake in your statistics. The modern vocabulary of teen ager's approaches infinity. You need to understand that rap "artists" make up new words when they can't think of one that rhymes or has enough syllables. This freedom makes communication of meaning impossible but increases the number of words endlessly.
Please be more careful in the future. If you keep this up people might begin to think you write for the LA Times.
Grace and peace.
The word for verification is "lityri" which someday will be used by a rapper.
Pumice,
I don't think the statistic is wrong. I just don't believe that "rappers"speak real English and, if they do, their working vocabulary of real, "English" words is probably far fewer than most third graders.
As for writing for the LA Times, they would never employ me as a writer. I read once where most newspapers are written at a sixth grade reading level so that the majority of their subscribers can understand it.
"Lityri" is a word I have not seen before. I "googled" it and haven't yet found a definition but I am interested in adding it to my vocabulary if it is useful.
Have a good day!
Pumice Rappers don't speak real English. If some of these so-called words are in the dictionary I would be thoroughly interested because If it can't be found in any Dictionary it isn't considered a word. If Rappers sent in all their words to be put into the dictionary i would say yes they have a big vocabulary but until then they have on average a 3,000 word vocabulary.
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