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Article:
English Has Come A Long, Long Way... by: David Leonhardt I often wonder what would happen if Shakespeare were to be transported in a time machine to our world today. What would he think? How would he react? Yes, Willie would probably tell me 'thou hast too much time on thy hands if thou spendeth it wondering about such flights of fancy.' But only after he found his feet. You see, Willie would be blown away by some of the comforts we take for granted. For instance, that box we walk into. The doors close all by themselves...just like magic. When they open, we are magically in a different place. 'What callest thou this contraption?' Willie would ask in utter amazement. An elevator. You would think nothing would phase a man who just landed his time machine 400 years into the future. 'Ah, I see. It was not magic after all. It elevated us, because it is an elevator.' This Willie guy is pretty handy with his English, isn't he? But that won't get him far these days. A hundred years ago, even fifty, he could have figured out just about every new word by tracing its roots (often to Greek or Latin). But not today. 'What are those...those...those, things?' Why that's a TV, with a VCR and a DVD player. Over there, it's a CD player, an AM and FM radio and an amp. This is a PC, with CDRW and floppy drives, a powerful CPU, A and C drive, and more RAM than a MAC. 'What? Thy alphabet seems a bit confusing.' Once upon a time, the meaning of a word could always be guessed by simply tracing the entomology of the word back to its lowest roots. 'Thou meanest 'etymology
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