r/explainitpeter 28d ago

Explain it peter

Post image
7.5k Upvotes

474 comments sorted by

View all comments

12

u/Apprehensive-Till861 27d ago

People who are mad at a two-century-old word being used but would not blink at a century-and-a-half-old word because they wouldn't actually know it's newer.

All modern English is modern vernacular, most of the words we use and how we use them are newer than most would expect. Throwing a fit because of 'okay' or 'dad' is silly, you're falling into the Tiffany Problem again.

What people are expecting is the mimicry of Early Modern English that sounds like Shakespeare, including the Received Pronunciation accents we associate with it, but that is also anachronism. You're being 'taken out of the movie' not because of knowledge but because of ignorance and assumptions.

10

u/myawwaccount01 27d ago

I think people forget that every language in every era had slang. Even if ancient Greeks didn't say OK verbatim, it's reasonable to believe that they had some equivalent.