Friday, April 24, 2009

What's in a name?


A rose by any other name would smell as sweet...

Or at least that is what someone once said. Anne of Green Gables disagreed, not that she's real or anything.

I have the worst time coming up with names for things. I mean, "Life According to Me" isn't exactly original. We have had several dogs and we have all been allowed to contribute ideas for names for the dogs and mine are NEVER picked. And when I tell people I like the name Jemima people seriously groan and say, "but...all the kids at school will call her AUNT Jemima! You can't name a white baby that!" I mean, for real people! Haven't you seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? The little girl on that show was named Jemima and she was pale as could be and blonde. How did the name become associated with one race or another? Besides, I plan to homeschool my kids so that takes care of the whole "kids at school will make fun" arguement. I also like the name Penelope since watching that movie at the Wiberts and when I said so the person I told groaned at me too. Tsk tsk tsk...

Well, this post isn't supposed to be about names. I only wrote what I wrote above because I can't think of a name for this post. Just skip it all.

Ahem...this post is really about period dramas. Masterpiece Theater is playing Little Dorrit and I saw the end of the fourth installment last Sunday. I watched the first three yesterday when I visited Jacqueline and Olive for the afternoon. Jacqueline has highspeed (lucky!) and we watched it on the computer. Now I can't wait for Sunday so we can watch the final installment and see if Amy gets her man!

The other night Pride and Prejudice was on. The new one. Starring Kiera Knightley and Matthew McFayden. I hate that one! If you have seen the version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle I just don't think you could prefer the new version. I thought that Kiera Knightley and Matthew McFayden and all the other actors and actresses were very dull, didn't have very much enthusiasm or expression and talked too fast. The one with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle is so much like the book, the movie script is practically a word for word match to the book. And in the new movie they speak so fast it's hard to really understand and appreciate the way they speak their lines...

One of my favorite things about these movies is how they talk. I think one of the reasons I enjoyed North and South, Wives and Daughters, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Bleak House and now Little Dorrit is because they usually speak so well. After watching them I think I speak better. I really do! And their vocabularies are so much larger than ours. I think they are able to express themselves more intelligently and keenly than we do now.

I am not saying we should speak just like the people in those stories do, but wouldn't it be kind of neat if we did speak well like that? I wish I spoke better. For goodness sake, 'like' seems to be almost every other word I say. I don't remember when I started doing that or how it crept into my language, but now I say it without thinking about it and I don't like it. I think I need shock therapy, and not the kind used by chiropractors and dentists for muscle pain either. I mean the kind where you get zapped when you do or say something you should not. I wonder how effective that is?

I daresay we would all benefit quite a bit from reading those books and even watching those movies. Yes indeed! If I do say so myself. ;)

1 comment:

Natalie Morris said...

I think, like, that I was toootally born in, like, the super wrong decade. I'd, like, way love all those old dresses and major proper way of living. :-) Oh, yeah, and the talk way cool too...!