Timeline for How do native English speakers know the archaic or domain/time specific words in English literature like The Tale of Two Cities?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
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| S 2 days ago | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
no spaces before colon https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/4862/should-there-be-a-space-before-punctuation
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| 2 days ago | comment | added | Eugene | You also need to consider that the meaning of some of these words will have changed. E.g. these days, a filament is the wire inside of an incandescent light bulb, but I have no clue what it meant in Dicken's days. I could probably work it out from context, working back by analogy from it's modern meaning. Otherwise, for my 2 cents, here's all the ones I have no clue about without looking anything up: fain, lee-dyed, asseveration, compunction, teem(this one's a maybe, if it's the teem in "teeming masses", then I know it), flambeau, trenchant. | |
| 2 days ago | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S 2 days ago | |||||
| Dec 8 at 6:51 | comment | added | user182601 | This answer isn't too helpful. What about those other words you don't know? Addressing those would be much more helpful. | |
| Dec 7 at 18:34 | comment | added | quarague | Your first paragraph also works well if you are a non-native speaker. I have read quite a lot both in English and my native language and I could define maybe a third of these words without any context but maybe 80% look somewhat familiar and I'm reasonably confident I could figure out their meaning if there were used in a sentence. | |
| Dec 7 at 16:54 | comment | added | Lambie | There is no difference between 19th c. British English words you list from Dickens as regards BrE and AmE. None of them would be one or the other. They'd be the same in both. And, many of them, would still be used today. | |
| Dec 7 at 10:18 | comment | added | user16345 | “mahogany: […] Read stories about wealthy people or wealthy life.” – or you can just play Pokémon…<bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Mahogany_Town> | |
| Dec 6 at 23:53 | history | edited | Robert Columbia♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Clarify my dialect
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| Dec 6 at 20:17 | comment | added | Carsten S | I may be wrong, but I think that “stench” is quite common in a figurative meaning. | |
| Dec 6 at 13:41 | comment | added | MiniRagnarok | @CynthiaZ Neither you or Robert have said if you're native American or British English speakers so it's hard to answer your question. I'm a native American English speaker and agree with this answer. The majority of words you listed I have no problem with. I'd expect it to be similar for a native British English speaker. | |
| Dec 6 at 10:10 | comment | added | Chris H | @CynthiaZ a broader reading of 19th and early 20th century authors will provide more context for some of these terms. The slightly more modern themes from works even just a few decades more recent than Dickens might be helpful | |
| Dec 6 at 3:52 | history | edited | Robert Columbia♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 6 at 3:47 | history | edited | Robert Columbia♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 6 at 3:46 | comment | added | Cynthia Z | Thanks so much for your valuable answer. It turns out expanding the reading to broader topics is the only way to handle these words. May I know the words I listed matter with the difference of preference between American vs British English? | |
| Dec 6 at 3:45 | history | edited | Robert Columbia♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 6 at 3:37 | history | answered | Robert Columbia♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |