What goes around, comes around.
My grandmother, Helen Richardson at 18– the year before she married Harry Espy in 1897
At our Friday Night gathering, the conversation drifted around to language and how our use of it is changing. We lamented that the kids of today who aren’t learning cursive will never get to read the love letters of their grandparents.
“WHAT??? WOULD YOU WANT THEM TO?” came from Fred. And, since I have no grandchildren, I couldn’t answer with complete honesty. I could only say that I learned a lot about the 1890s by reading the letters my own grandparents exchanged during their courtship in the San Francisco Bay Area. I think Fred would find them pretty tame!
We then segued into a discussion about the breakdown of vocabulary — using letters to represent words, like BTW and WTF and a host of other increasingly used shortcuts to writing (and speaking.) But, I’m here to tell you that P.G. Wodehouse was using similar “shorthand” in his books written in the 1920s and ’30s and I don’t see that our vocabulary has suffered unduly in the last hundred years. In fact, it has no doubt expanded the possibilities.
From Wikipedia: Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (/wodhaos/WOOD-howss;; 15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves…
I am just re-reading Wodehouse’s 1934 novel, The Code of the Woosters and came upon these (somewhat subtle) examples of the Wodehouse minimalism:
I spoke with satirical bitterness, and I should have thought that anyone could have seen that satirical bitterness was what I was speaking with, but she Merely looked at me with admiration and approval.
“You are clever, Bertie. That’s exactly it. Of course, you needn’t wear a mask”
“You don’t think it would help me throw myself into the part?” I said, with sb., as before.
So there you have it! I can’t really think that Wodehouse limited our expansion of English language. But that’s just IMHO.
I should have known that you are a Wodehouse fan!! I have all but 4 of his books. The Best!!
Last week one of my granddaughters (age 23) asked if she could read my love letters to her grandmother. I said something like “sure, she told me they are somewhere in that desk.” She found them, and I read some with her, from almost 60 years ago. What an interesting experience — me 60 years ago is not a whole lot like me now.
Which parts of “Bruce Then” do you wish you’d hung onto? Or are you pleased with the way you turned out?
Sydney
Whenever I’m out of reading material, Wodehouse is my “go to” author. So silly. So fun. So clever.
S.