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I agree. Well said!
I'm not a native speaker of English language but I've read P&P in English (original story by Jane Austen) and I understood. So natives should not have a problem with it, should they?
Well done Meg, I suppose. I'm a native speaker and I can't get it at all. The issue isn't merely the words, it's also the social context, the knowledge Austen assumes we have, the numbers, the motivations. The language used is subtly different from any form or field of modern english and is heavily laced with poetic suggestion, much of it specific to the era. People who study literature are always going to have an easier time reading "classic literature" as they are expressly trained to look for allusion and narrative distortion. This sets it apart from even the densest hard sci fi of today -- it's not necessarily abstruse or challenging, it's literally in code.
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Chahrazad
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Sep 24, 2013 01:23PM
I agree. Well said!
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I'm not a native speaker of English language but I've read P&P in English (original story by Jane Austen) and I understood. So natives should not have a problem with it, should they?
Well done Meg, I suppose. I'm a native speaker and I can't get it at all. The issue isn't merely the words, it's also the social context, the knowledge Austen assumes we have, the numbers, the motivations. The language used is subtly different from any form or field of modern english and is heavily laced with poetic suggestion, much of it specific to the era. People who study literature are always going to have an easier time reading "classic literature" as they are expressly trained to look for allusion and narrative distortion. This sets it apart from even the densest hard sci fi of today -- it's not necessarily abstruse or challenging, it's literally in code.
