Language is a beautiful and living bridge back in time. As one who enjoys a Renaissance fair, I’ve studied Elizabethan speech in effort to get more into character. I’m not very good at it, but I still love it. During the renaissance period, verbal communication was the main form of entertainment available to people.
“Prithee wait until I fetch it to you anon.” (Wait a sec.)
No wonder Shakespeare wrote so “convolutedly!” It is a hallmark of Elizabethan speech that sentences are long and flowering. You could take your time, look around.
Our words and sentences today are much shorter, and I think they’ll continue to shorten in the future. It will evolve into shorter words and expressions such as totes, prolly, punkin and sammich. Twas and twill will resurface, just because they’re shorthand.
“Goin l8r” “Prolly no i hate thtr” (Will you go tonight? Probably not; I hate the theatre.)
Like the messages in a text or a tweet, there will be an increase in pictorials and shorthand. I fear the comma will disappear entirely, since that’s a needless character on a cell phone screen. And as people type more, their handwriting/penmanship skills decrease. I know this from my sample size of one – me. My handwriting sucks, but I can type 60 words a minute.
7 thoughts on “What do prithee and probably have in common?”