I could not disagree more on the part about watching Shakespeare with
subtitles.
While it's true that Elizabethan English is different in many ways from
Standard American or modern British English, it is still very much *modern*
English, with few variations on anything other than standard sentence
structure.
It's like anything else, experience with it breeds comfort, and if ever
there was an author in any language worth spending a little time with, it's
Willie the Shake. And keeping this mildly on-topic, I defy you to find an
author whose work is more intrinsically hard-boiled and in many cases (the
laughably bad TITUS ANDRONICUS, the devastating KING LEAR, that vehicle for
the ultimate femme fatale MACBETH, and his masterpiece, HAMLET come to mind)
outright noirish.
If it were Middle English (Chaucer) or Old English (BEOWULF) I could see the
appropriateness of subtitles, but with Shakespeare? Nah. You lose
something in subtitles.
All the Best-
Brian
On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Mark R. Harris <brokerharris@gmail.com>wrote:
> I recently compared watching the first half-hour of the 1962 British
> film
> The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner first without, then with
> English-language subtitles. I got so much more out of the film with the
> subtitles, it was amazing. Whenever there are any linguistic issues with an
> English-language film -- thick accents, slang, difficult language
> (Shakespeare) -- I recommend using the English subtitles if they are
> available on the DVD, which they increasingly are.
>
> Mark
>
> On 10/24/08, Kevin Burton Smith <kvnsmith@sbcglobal.net<kvnsmith%40sbcglobal.net>>
> wrote:
> >
> > I speak both American and Canadian, and am working on English.
> >
> > Does that count?
> >
> > (Hey guys! Down here BBC programs often have sub-titles!)
> >
> > Kevin
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Mark R. Harris
> 2122 W. Russet Court #8
> Appleton WI 54914
> (920) 470-9855
> brokerharris@gmail.com <brokerharris%40gmail.com>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 24 Oct 2008 EDT