Story of the Day 1/7/2010

In Sarah’s English class, they are reading Macbeth.
Sarah has decided that she doesn’t like Shakespeare and that he is a waste of time.

So, today they were working in small groups. There were 4 students in her group. Sarah was aware that the teacher would soon be calling on them to read aloud. She has been in this class long enough to know how the teacher does things, and she realized that soon the teacher would be calling on students to read aloud from each of the groups. She asked the group of anyone wanted to read out loud.
“Oh, yes!” chirped one girl.
Sarah says this girl likes to talk so she figured that she would also like to read aloud.
The boy sitting next to Sarah said, “Not me, because I don’t speak very well in public.”
Sarah said to him, “Neither do I.’
It took him a minute to get it.


When Sarah came home, she asked me several questions about Shakespeare.
She understood that people spoke that way back then, but she wanted to know if all people from that province spoke that way.
I told her that many people were uneducated, so they would have smaller vocabularies and make more mistakes, but, yes, the phrases he used and the manner of speaking were normal back then.
Sarah was stunned.
“That’s ridiculous because then it would be easier to understand poor people’s speech more than educated people’s speech!”
I explained how language has changed and continues to change and that if someone from that time who spoke English was here today he would have a hard time understanding her when she spoke English.
I thought a moment, and then I added, “Of course, so does everyone else.”