[t2buckeye]

From what I understand, the “formal” language seen in the Coen movie was put in because it is closer to the novel...in reality, it is truer to how people would have spoken at the time...a look at the letters from that time period shows that even the least educated (by today’s standards; they didn’t go beyond 8th grade usually) spoke and wrote MUCH better than most students today.

[fr_freak]

a look at the letters from that time period shows that even the least educated (by today’s standards; they didn’t go beyond 8th grade usually) spoke and wrote MUCH better than most students today.

It is my understanding that, in those days, letter writing, being somewhat uncommon due to the illiteracy rate, was considered a rather formal affair, so when people wrote letters, they did so with the same level of formality that one might write a business letter today. When they spoke, however, it was a different matter, sort of like the difference between what you'd say to your friends on the weekend and what you'd write in your end-of-quarter report at work. This is the mistake that many movies made from the era make, in that they assume that the formality of the letter-writing and the mode of everyday speech were the same. They were not.