Month: January 2016

there was a Brutus once that would have brook’d Th-eternal devil to keep his state in Rome As easy as a King

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him”.
Quote (Act III, Scene  II).

“But, for my own part, it was Greek to me”. Julius  Caesar Quote (Act I, Scene II).

Shakespeare shows us that love and hate are used together. Brutus’s decision to stab Caesar in the back isn’t Was what I believe, a difficult choice for Brutus. He has to choose between his loyalty to Rome and his loyalty to his friend, who seems like he could become a tyrant if he becomes king. When Brutus hears how the commoners are treating Caesar like a king already. he’s worried for Rome.

Even though Brutus loves Caesar well, he also fears that his friend will be crowned king, which goes against the ideals of Rome

After killing Caesar and washing his hands in his blood, Brutus defends his actions:

If there be any in this assembly, any dear
friend of Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love
to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend
demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my
answer: not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved
Rome more.

Within  Porphyria’s Lover, Robert Browning shows love as something to be feared in this dramatic monologue. In the start of the poem, the speaker goes out of his way to describe the setting.  We are told ‘the sullen wind was soon awake it tore the elm tops down for spite and did its worst to vex the lake.’ in this Browning personifies hate by describing the weather with word such as tore, spite and vex which could be used to describe how he is feeling in the story.  but has used love in a way that he can’t handle. The words used for hate are very viscous  and aggressive, this is showing the point of view of someone who can watch from a distance and actually see what it’s doing . Love is seen as very warm and romantic. In this monologue love is said to describe a woman by the name of Porphyria who has blonde hair and blue eyes. This love doesn’t last long because it slowly develops into a more strange form of love this is because he uses her hair to strangle her to death.

Julius Caesar                                                                                                                                                                                                            BRUTUS :It must be by his death, and for my part I know no personal cause to spurn at him But for the general. He would be crowned. How that might change his nature, there’s the question. It is the bright day that brings forth the adder And that craves wary walking. Crown him that,And then I grant we put a sting in him That at his will he may do danger with.                             Act 2 Scene 1

Dear John Humphrys,

I have read your article in the Daily Mail and I am completely against your point of view. I believe that your idea of text messages ruining the English language is false. The English language isn’t being ruined by technology; how can you argue that a powerful new form of communication can ruin a language? What you should really be saying is that language is being ruined by the people in possession of these devices. This opinion is also false. Technology crosses all sorts of geographical and physical barriers: it gives you the opportunity to never miss-spell anything again with auto-correct: there is now predictive text which speeds communication massively you can communicate in real-time, whereas in the past you would have to wait for a couple of days to receive a letter (or a week to receive one by pigeon).

You say you don’t like the way  technology is moving: ‘my own outgoing messages asks callers to be very brief, ideally just name and number, but that doesn’t stop some callers burbling on for ten minutes and always, always ending by saying: “Ooh sorry I went on for so long!”‘. As far as voice mail is concerned, I don’t really know anyone apart from my grandmother who uses it – it’s certainly not a common thing for me to receive, in fact I can’t remember the last time I have received one. The reason why people don’t use it is probably because it’s a lot easier to just send a text message rather than send a voicemail that you can barely understand. As for emojis, I can’t really remember the last person who has used one for a serious reason; they’re a way of having fun texting someone a message instead of typing plain black text.

‘It is the relentless onward march of the ‘texters’, the SMS (short message service) vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his to his neighbours eight hundred years ago’. I think that your views here are very old-fashioned. It seems that you could have more in common with Genghis Khan: “It began with some fairly obvious and relatively inoffensive abbreviations: ‘tks’ for ‘thanks’; ‘u’ for ‘you’; 4 for ‘for'”. You are so out of touch, and when it comes to abbreviated words you are extremely out of date. No one uses ‘tks’ for thanks or ‘4’ for four. You cannot exactly criticise the ‘SMS vandals’ for using abbreviations, when you yourself are an employee of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). No one really wants to say that when it’s such a mouthful, so what’s the problem with SMS? Abbreviations like these are easier to say and less longwinded   (sorry long-winded) – unlike your article. You describe searching through a paperback OED (Oxford English Dictionary) as a “voyage of discovery”. But online dictionaries are so much quicker. Looking up a word online gives a really fast response, plus you can discover more about a word e.g multiple definitions and the history of that word; not only can you find out more about it, you can learn that word in multiple languages and their origins.

‘It is interesting in a masochistic sort of way, to look at how text language has changed over the years’. I don’t understand that you have the need to point this out. The English language owes a great debt to Shakespeare. The words that you are using are extremely over exaggerated; with words like ‘masochistic’ and ‘grotesque’ you are putting (who I guess is your hero) William Shakespeare’s innovative use of language to shame. In his time he invented over 1700 new words ranging from ‘amazement’ to ‘worthless’. He played around with language and broke all grammar rules by changing nouns into verbs, joining words together and making up completely new ones. Surely what everyone enjoys about language is that it is constantly changing? What you are doing, John, is trying to preserve it forever and in the end that would kill it.

Urs Sterling Oldroyd