Lately by 5:25 a.m every morning I’ve found myself finishing up an enjoyable half hour or so of some very good reading on the BBC web site. Travel , culture and arts , there are indeed some beautiful articles to be enjoyed there . The other morning I read an an interesting article about William Shakespeare . Before that reading I never knew how many of our commonly used phrases … even words, originated from the multitudes of plays he wrote in the 1600s. Did you know that William Shakespeare used well in excess of 20,000 different words in the writing of those play’s written over three and a half centuries ago? I didn’t , nor did I know that 1700 words in the English language used to this very day are due to him as are many common sayings the likes of Wild Goose Chase , The World is My Oyster … In a Pickle but that’s, Neither Here Nor There .
While Bill Shakespeare used these 20,000 words and/or phrases in his writings other advanced writers deemed his equal at that time were using a total of about 7,500 words. The average farm worker in England during that period, not having either time or means to attend Shakespeare’s plays, got by in life with the use of approximately 300 words. One would think that communicating with those with such a minimal vocabulary might be difficult .. then as it might be now.
Wife and I did our monthly trek 2 1/2 hours north last weekend deep into the heartland of Florida’s farmlands to attend a swap meet seeking vintage items and old tools . It was made quite obvious to us that the average vocabulary of the farming community , at least here in the United States , has increased quite a bit since Shakespeare’s time some 375 years ago. Probably by at least 75 words , all of which are easy to remember as they are printed on every ones T shirts and hats along with semblances of their favorite firearm. Kind of like the flash cards we remember from school . I’m not exactly sure that I’m understanding all the fear all these Mom’s for Liberty have of what is being read in school when their children are reading all these T shirts, Flags and bumper stickers out in public .
There’s a guy stops by to hang in the garage from time to time to ingest a free beer though not nearly as often as before . He’s actually a published author and there is something about that I find impressive even if not exactly Shakespeare impressive . What is impressive is that he’s accomplished this with a vocabulary seemingly on par numerically with ancient English farm hands . Seems that once he’s left the realm of authorship there is only two things on the mind… baseball and the ” issues” , neither needing much of any wordsmith skills any more . His latest rant is his dismay that the people of Ohio have recently voted to allow abortions again and being a new found pro lifer this he finds abhorrent .
In as few words as I could muster I expressed a thought about how so many people that have suddenly become concerned over unborn fetuses were the same people completely unfazed when body bags were stacked like cord wood in freezer trucks outside N.Y. City hospitals three years ago . I then made mention that perhaps if we had socially distanced a little more there would possibly have been less requests for abortion …. . And that was that, an excuse was made and he had to go home leaving a barely touched beer behind .
I do truly hate to see a wasted beer … and particularly if it’s one I paid for.
