So I haven't posted in a loooong while -- oh the excuses I could list: busy with work, travel, extreme brunching – but why lie? I joined Netflix. I discovered Battlestar. That about sums it up. Yes – I’m a nerd (my instant queue is a veritable cornucopia of intercontinental, multigenerational sci-fi geekdom, I'm counting down the days til Doctor Who comes back in September!) but anyway, that is neither here nor there…. to the point -- a new post! (better late than never.)
Which leads us to: "Better late than never".
This lil phrase comes from Chaucer’s THE CANTERBURY TALES, the original saying (as scribed by Chaucer in Middle English around 1386) being "For bet than never is late".
I was going through THE CANTERBURY TALES in order to give you even more context, but after realizing that the sole purpose of Middle English was to give me a headache and to make the useless letter Y feel special (ride / ryde, made / mayde, lover / lovyere, gift / yift?? (Really, Y? Do you REALLY think you belong in any of these words??)), I figured “screw it”. I told you the source of the phrase. Let’s talk about the migrane-inducer known as Middle English for a second.
So here’s our native tongue – about 700 years ago.
Seriously? Seriously?? Seriously.
You think Middle English is better on the page?
“A man moot nedes love, maugree his heed.
Hey may nat fleen it, thogh he sholde be deed,
Al be she mayde, or widwe, or elles wyf.
And eek it is nat lykly, al thy lyf
To stonden in hir grace; namore shal I”
It’s not.
What I find particularly amusing is if you fast-forward a mere 200 years you get:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate”
English.
Sure sure, times change, sayings, phrases, words etc etc. But you know what happens when you rewind 200 years from today in American English in literature?
“It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered, before the adverse hosts could meet.”
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
So apparently in 15th – 16th Century London the English language was a free for all. The aftermath of the plague, those constantly squabbling Yorks and Lancasters, a king with an unquenchable libido, Lutheranism – this is all meaningless when you can’t stand the look of the word “prys” and feel deep down in your soul that “purtreye” should henceforth be spelled “draw”.
Oh will there ever be another English language free for all? I dream of such a time. I firmly believe that “narf” should enter the American vernacular and think that “awesome” should henceforth be spelled “tardis”.
And get rid of Y altogether. Its fall from grace has already given the poor thing an identity crisis. Put it out of its misery.
