Anyone else find the language in the classics to be funny?

[spookymulder93]

I'm reading The Brothers Karamazov and I'm liking the book, but I must admit that the language and the attitudes are like a mixture of lame and funny. I've noticed it's kinda the same way with most books written before the 1900's.

example:
Pennyworth- "You sir have lint in your hat"

Moneybags- "Sir! I have never suffered such despicable treatment in all of my life. In front of a respectable woman no less. I hope your wig falls off in public!

Pennyworth- You scoundrel!

LOL. It's funny at first but after a while it just becomes lame. I wonder what someone from that period would have to say about our behavior today?

[JuniperWoolf]

Hahaha, I find the title of this thread to be kind of funny. You're right though; the language used in classics is silly by today's norms, I've just stopped noticing. When I read older books nowadays, my mentality just shifts over to the seventeenth century.

[Emil Miller]

I'm reading The Brothers Karamazov and I'm liking the book, but I must admit that the language and the attitudes are like a mixture of lame and funny. I've noticed it's kinda the same way with most books written before the 1900's.

example:
Pennyworth- "You sir have lint in your hat"

Moneybags- "Sir! I have never suffered such despicable treatment in all of my life. In front of a respectable woman no less. I hope your wig falls off in public!

Pennyworth- You scoundrel!

LOL. It's funny at first but after a while it just becomes lame. I wonder what someone from that period would have to say about our behavior today?

They would probably die of shame. However, it is pointless reading the classics with the attitude of the present in mind, in a hundred years time, people will think our way of writing will be just as quaint as that of today's reading of the great writers of the past.

[loe]

That's just development in language I would say.
As far as me concerns the language of some younsters today seems to be funny as well (and I am not so extremely old).
Different time, different language...
I think this progression becomes faster and faster (maybe caused by a more and more multimedia world?)

Best regards

[kasie]

Language, especially in its written form, was more formal, even fifty years ago so maybe that is why it sounds 'funny' to modern ears.

I've just read a couple of books in which the author has 'borrowed' the character of Porfiry Petrovitch, the examining magistrate/detective who arrests Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and has written new cases for him to detect. The author, R N Morris, has written a pastiche of an older translation of Dostoyevsky and has made quite a good job of it - it took a while to read into the style which is not only formal but tries to convey thoughts and observations in great and exact detail and is quite a different pace from that found in much modern prose.

[billl]

From The Girl On The Boat, by P.G. Wodehouse:

"My gracious goodness!" ejaculated Mr. Peters, and nearly fell over backwards. To a naturally shy man this sudden and wholly unexpected declaration was disconcerting; and the clerk was, moreover, engaged. He blushed violently.

[mal4mac]

I'm guessing your lint example is made up. If so, that's kinda lame. If you are going to attack the language and attitudes of a Karamazov translation, please use actual quotes!

I'm reading Jane Austen's Emma at the moment and am finding some language and attitudes funny, some in the "lint" kinda way. The big question is, are the attitudes funny because Jane Austen wants us to see them as funny, or is she just old fashioned? So far I can only see the former aspect - with authors that great I don't think they do lame and funny *except* when they want to *show* lame and funny. So, if you can find a Dostoevsly example, you need to convince is that "Mr Lint Hat" is not thought of as just as funny to Dostoevsky as to us.

[de Renal]

I think that general problem is in translation - when a book is written in Russian (for example) and then translated to English, the genius of the language may be lost. Of course, the translators are trying to keep it using some of the phrases and expressions which are similar to their language, but it's never the same.
But then, again, there are novels written English which sound so silly to a modern reader, but the language changes over time, and of course it's not the same today as if it were two or more hundred years ago.

[dafydd manton]

I'm reasonably sure that anything written in contemporary GB English, with contemporary speech, would sound utterly ludicrous in about two years, since languages evolve at a phenomonal speed. As a perfect example, the German spoken in the former DDR was wildly different to that in the BRD, immediately before re-unification, but now there are only the usual, minor dialectic differences. It's reasonable to assume that much of the language in the classics, both geographic and social mobility being strictly limited, would have had a localised air. The rhymes in Shakespeare still work in a Black Country accent, yet not in RP English. Thus, they are without doubt different to today's norm, but I wouldn't like to go any further than that.

[spookymulder93]

I'm guessing your lint example is made up. If so, that's kinda lame. If you are going to attack the language and attitudes of a Karamazov translation, please use actual quotes!

I'm reading Jane Austen's Emma at the moment and am finding some language and attitudes funny, some in the "lint" kinda way. The big question is, are the attitudes funny because Jane Austen wants us to see them as funny, or is she just old fashioned? So far I can only see the former aspect - with authors that great I don't think they do lame and funny *except* when they want to *show* lame and funny. So, if you can find a Dostoevsly example, you need to convince is that "Mr Lint Hat" is not thought of as just as funny to Dostoevsky as to us.

I made up an example to show how the language of that period sounds to me. Sorry if I offended you.

LOL

[dfloyd]

funny, or even strange. I would not change a word of Dickens, Hardy, Eliot, or even Dostoevsky. Their language has a certain meter to it which makes their work classic. As far as translations go, I have read most of Dostoevsky in the Garnett translations, and I think I'm none the worse for it. From the posts herein, the detractors seem to be mostly Europeans, who seem to feel that any translation by an American or an Englishman are of lesser quality.

I would suggest that if you find the language funny or strange, it is your age and perhaps your experience which is at fault. I certainly wouldn't want a classic author sounding like a text message.