Reading old vs new style of writing.

[StoneFrog]

I was hoping someone could explain to me the differences between some of the different era's of how people wrote? I am a bit dyslexic, and always had troubles reading and writing, but i noticed that i read old language much easier than more modern language. Texts from say the 17th and 18th century i read quiet well, and understand what is trying to be said much clearer. As i got older my writing skills and reading skills are much better since it was a area i had to keep at.

But when it comes to modern texts i have to keep reading some sections over, before i can understand what is being said still. But with older texts i can read with out hesitation, well besides some words i don't know. At school i loved reading Shakespearian language, about the only thing i did well in English classes.

Why is it like this? Anyone else the same way, since most i find are the opposite?

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

I was hoping someone could explain to me the differences between some of the different era's of how people wrote? I am a bit dyslexic, and always had troubles reading and writing, but i noticed that i read old language much easier than more modern language. Texts from say the 17th and 18th century i read quiet well, and understand what is trying to be said much clearer. As i got older my writing skills and reading skills are much better since it was a area i had to keep at.

But when it comes to modern texts i have to keep reading some sections over, before i can understand what is being said still. But with older texts i can read with out hesitation, well besides some words i don't know. At school i loved reading Shakespearian language, about the only thing i did well in English classes.

Why is it like this? Anyone else the same way, since most i find are the opposite.

How very interesting. You're talking about reading type, not reading an old handwritten manuscript, I assume...

Have you ever studied Latin? Or do you speak or understand German? I'm curious to know.

[StoneFrog]

You assume right, reading type.

Never studied latin, and only know a small amount of German(been a language which has intrigued me and always wanted to learn though). At school they stopped teaching me German because i needed more time to focus on my English reading and writing.

The only other language i've been exposed to is Afrikaans from my parents, and i can make out what they saying just can't speak it.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

Bet you were good at reading poetry as well? Milton, maybe?

The reason I ask is: Latin and German are inflected languages, meaning doesn't depend on the placement of the words but on how the words are ended. So in Latin, to say "the cat ate the mouse" you could write:
catus eatit mousum, eatit catus mousum, moususm catus eatit, etc., it would all mean the same thing.

What does that have to do with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century poetry? Well, because to be literate you had to know Latin, and Latin was considered the language of Truth. So the closer a piece of writing came to the model of Latin, the better it was. This led to an interesting discussion in the mid-eighteenth century about "natural" language and "natural" music, and what their order should be. (Kind of like certain unmentionable "philosophers" on this blog), but no matter.

I'm assuming here that, like many dyslexics, you have trouble with the linear organization of letters, left to right. I once had a friend who was dyslexic. She also was a whiz graduate student in Linguistics. She could write both left-and-right-handed, left-to-right and right-to-left, and boustrophedon as well. Look it up.

[StoneFrog]

Ah nice cheers Hoipolloi Cassidy, you've gotten me interested even more now. I haven't read Milton before, but poetry i do find easy to read. I guess the same as reading old language it has a sort of flow to it.

Do you think it be worth it to try to learn Latin?

IDK if its how letters are organized more how words are, i was told i read the words like a pile of them instead of one after the other. I did have a friend with dyslexia as well, he would read books upside down. I don't know if he ever tried it right to left though. Its interesting, you have definitely sparked my interest.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

Do you think it be worth it to try to learn Latin?

Why not? It's a great mind-game, only don't get stuck with all the proto-fascist literature they stick you with in school. Try to wrap your brains around Catullus, the greatest Latin poet (wild and dirty, and incredibly complex in his language); Medieval Latin is great, too, full of blasphemers and crazy runaway monks.

[MarxSchmarx]

One reason is that concision has become the gold standard for academic parlance today, very much unlike the past. Before, when books and stuff were scarce, authors who could publish were able to afford to be dreadfully repetitive and illustrate their points with copious and even circuitous examples. By contrast, today it is all about whether you can express something however profound as curtly as possible. Sometimes this has been useful. I for example find contemporary history immensely easier, and more pleasurable, to read. But in other areas, such as the natural sciences, critical studies and philosophy, I have my serious doubts about the focus on concision. Of course needless verbiage is undesirable, but if a text is so concise that its meaning can only be inferred by a careful reading, I doubt that it serves any useful communicative purpose (and by their own admissions, journals expect concise articles to facilitate publishing as many articles as they can!)