Posted on 10/27/2011 9:24:22 PM PDT by traumer
Speaking at the BFI London Film Festival awards in Old Street, London, the actor said that modern language "is being eroded" and blamed "a world of truncated sentences, soundbites and Twitter."
"Our expressiveness and our ease with some words is being diluted so that the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us, and the word of more than two syllables is a problem for us," he said. Fiennes, full name Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, said that students at drama schools were especially suffering thanks to social networking sites.
"I hear it, too, from people at drama schools, who say the younger intake find the density of a Shakespeare text a challenge in a way that, perhaps, (students) a few generations ago maybe wouldn't have."
The actor's directorial debut, Shakespeare's Coriolanus, premiered at the London Film Festival this week. Fiennes questioned whether the playwright was even relevant in a time of dumbed-down English language.
He said: "I think we're living in a time when our ears are attuned to a flattened and truncated sense of our English langyuage, so this always begs the question, is Shakespeare relevant? But I love this language we have and what it can do, and aside from that I think the themese in his plays are always relevant."
Fiennes, who does not use Twitter, is not alone in his theory. JP Davidson, the author of Planet Word and a linguistic expert, talked this week about longer words dying out in favour of shortened text message-style terms. He said: “You only have to look on Twitter to see evidence of the fact that a lot of English words that are used say in Shakespeare’s plays or PG Wodehouse novels — both of them avid inventors of new words
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Your in-laws tell me you're fat on Tuesdays and skinny on Wednesdays--UR? Hell I didn't know. There are too many others out there that are either fat all week or skinny all month. Their bodies just know they're either fat or skinny.
Now let's talk about the multiple apostrophes' curviest nature shall we?
ROTFL!
Not too bad for a Masters' in Creative Writing--in this day in age. Especially given all the politics and no teaching of skills even at higher level education. Now my grammar. Hell I admit to being in and out of even caring many days. Guilty as charged there. LOL.
No, purposefully moving away from phonics and toward word memorization is eroding our reading and writing skills.
Fiennes is a pompous twit.
That said, he happens to be right in this instance.
Stuffy English Actor Alert.
P.S.: Ralph (as in Kramden, not “Rafe” as in stuffy English English), you really sucked in Oedipus Rex.
C'mon now, that's every bit as funny as any "black" name, I've heard.
I wonder if Ralphie got beat up a lot as a kid?
I used to watch his movies just to look at him. LOL
> full name Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes
RNTWF rly hs a pt.
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
That being said, I agree with Ralph Fiennes (who is still handsome without that horrible beard, CaptainK). Another irritating result of Twitter is the increasing number of people who no longer capitalize words including their own names. ["Screen names are not included in this lamentation." - arasina]
No he isn’t. Twitter is a symptom, not the disease. People aren’t becoming stupid and lazy because Twitter is popular. Twitter is popular because people are increasingly stupid and lazy.
Folks here might be interested in the FR Word of the Day posts. I’m on the ping list. There’s a new word each morning. I enjoy it quite a bit. Here’s yesterday’s post:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2798550/posts
It didn’t work entirely but it was so highly ambitious though. It commands respect.
Children who grow up with twitter and texting are certainly being affected by it.
You left off the “r.”
That’s because their parents allow it. It’s de-evolution at work. Our culture is in decline. But that’s not Twitter’s fault. Twitter is just a sign of the times. In short, Twitter isn’t creating the stupid—it’s catering to the stupid.
I just call him "Lord Voldemort."
I saw him do Hamlet when he looked like the younger photo. I hope the beard comes off.
He’s playing Prospero in “The Tempest” in the West End, hence the beard. Yes, I’d like to see the beard come off...along with the pants, shirt, etc...;-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.