Alright! I've been working diligently (cough cough) on getting together sources and contacting people for my research paper. I've decided to look into the grammar aspect of Shakespeare an see how he has affected our linguistics and grammar today.
Interesting topic?
Anyway, I've found a blog and a newspaper article that actually discuss these facets of Shakespeare's works so I thought I'd share them with you!
The first thing I'd like to share is this awesome blog: Languages of the World which posted information on how words were "originally" pronounced during Shakespeare's time. The post talks about how modern American English is actually closer to what was spoken during Shakespeare's time. I'm not sure how reliable this source is, so I'm in the process of contacting the creator of the blog and getting more background information from her.The other thing I have to share is an article by The Huffington Post. This was written just a few weeks ago and it discusses how the grammar of Shakespeare may have been more impactful than just his word creation. I'm also going to see if I can't contact Jonathan Hope, the researcher and professor mentioned in the article and see what his whole research is about. He has a website/blog, http://winedarksea.org/ , that goes into detail about some of his research, but I'd like to get more information from him about this as well and look into all the research they have done and are currently doing on the project.
I'm also reviewing scholarly articles and the references that were given to me early by my e-mail contact. I've got a lot to do!
Sound like a plan guys? I'm pretty excited!
Really cool. I have been wondering about something that probably fits into this category: what are idioms and everyday phrases that we use today that were coined by Shakespeare. I found a book at the library called "Coined by Shakespeare" that gave me a list of basic words by Shakespeare and where he used them. Cool huh?
ReplyDeleteI'm really interested to see if American English is actually closer to Shakespearean English. That would be really funny to see, after believing that the English are more correct and proper my whole life.
You just made me all warm and fuzzy inside. I love my Teaching Grammar/Usage class right now. Today, I tried to tell my coworkers about how the word "parched" acts as a transitive and intransitive verb, but they weren't all that interested. I have no idea why not. I'm glad you're doing this. I will love it.
ReplyDeleteI'm in Modern American Usage right now, and my teacher just mentioned this. We've been talking about different dictionaries. The OED went through Shakespeare and put every word of it into their dictionary, so it may be a little over-represented. He pointed out that a lot of people attribute words and phrases to Shakespeare that may not actually come from him, just because that is the earliest citation of it.
ReplyDeleteI am impressed. I want to hear how this all turns out.
ReplyDelete