Can Parent and Daughter co-exist?

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>stevegus at aye.net writes:

>Similarly, contemporary English speakers may be able to follow familiar
>texts read from the Declaration of Independence or the King James Bible;
>but new texts in similar styles may be much harder for them to grasp.

-- are we talking about contemporary written English, or documents from 500
years ago?  These are separate questions.  Both the spoken and written forms
of English have changed a good deal in the past five centuries.  The written
less than the spoken, because of the early date at which the conventional
spelling was fixed, of course.

>I know that when I sit down to watch Shakespeare performed, it takes me
>about fifteen minutes or so before I am able to follow what is being said.
>Before I have readjusted my set, spoken Shakespeare sounds like gibberish.

-- that's odd; I've never had any problem with it.

The current film "Shakeseare In Love" uses large chunks of text taken
straight from "Romeo and Juliet", and the audiences -- few of them familiar
with Shakespeare in these degenerate days -- don't have any problem with it
either.