possible split, too negative for some uses: Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe

As discussed in the TRS thread about Pardon Me Stewardess, I Speak Iambic Pentameter, the trope Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe is rather negative, both in name and in tone, and it really has two tropes: one about butchered(e) English, and one about, well, not-so-butchered versions. Flowery Elizabethan Speech, you might say.

In fact, Pardon Me Stewardess, I Speak Iambic Pentameter was originally intended to be that other trope, more or less. (See the linked thread for details). However, it's being renamed and repurposed to be about characters who speak in verse, since almost 100% of its examples misused it that way.

That leaves us with an active need for a less negative trope.

Note that Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe is already soft-split, so that may help matters. And yes, I'm proposing Flowery Elizabethan Speech as the name of the split-off trope, though that is obviously up for debate.

Also note that Pardon Me Stewardess, I Speak Iambic Pentameter has a description that may actually fit our new trope fairly well (although it happens to be written in Iambic Pentameter). The renamed version of that trope is going to need a new description in any case, so we're free to steal the current one if we want.

edit: I should also mention that Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe reads like it was supposed to be part of the old "You Fail X Forever" series of articles, but since it didn't follow the snowclone, it wasn't caught in the cleanup and rename of those tropes.

edited 23rd Aug '11 12:54:15 AM by Xtifr

Supporting a split.

The new trope should be about gratuitous but correct uses of Elizabethan English (i.e. in the modern day, or in settings where other characters use modern English, such as in The Belgariad or The Elenium).

More-or-less correct uses. I don't think we want to have to hire an Elizabethan scholar to audit works before they're allowed into the new trope. :)

Basically, unless they're (deliberately or accidentally) really terrible — like, butchered — I don't think they need to be called butchered. This goes double, of course, for examples where the author actually researched the hell out of it and shows his work.

There are still tons of examples that are deliberately butchered, of course. It's a common thing to do for Rule of Funny.

I'm okay with splitting for comedy and realism.

Please forgive me, I couldn't help myself:

The words of William Shakespeare, called "The Bard",
And King James' version of the good Lord's word
Inspire writers near and far today —
For writers with their words do like to play.

"Forsooth", they cry, "the lady doth protest
Too much!" — though this time written just in jest.
Prithee, sirrah, what wouldst thou have me do?
The style is much too pretty to eschew.

I wrote the thing, and I support Flowery Elizabethan Speech for the non-butchered variety. I don't see what's overly negative about pointing out things that are used explicitly incorrectly, though, especially when it's done as a gag.

The complaint is not that Y.O.B.E. is too negative, period. It's that it's too negative to use in cases that aren't butcherede. I certainly see no reason to change Y.O.B.E.

edit: I don't seem to be able to change the thread description, except for the article link. Maybe a mod can change it to "possible split, too negative for some uses". Thanks.

edited 23rd Aug '11 11:30:01 AM by Xtifr

Ok, the basic concept appeared to be utterly non-controversial, so I started the YKTTW here.

Once that launches, we probably want to do an example cleanup for YOBE, moving over the examples that better fit the new trope.

Saw the YKTTW for the proposed reboot of PMSISIP and was astounded at how it got misused. I suspect the existence of this trope may have contributed to that confusion.

I think part of the reason this trope was never part of the You Fail X Forever series was because it (and PMSISIP) actually predate that snowclone. In fact, I think both are among the few pages that predate my involvement on the wiki.

Premenstrual Syndrome is Internet Protocol? SCNR.

Pardon Me Stewardess, I Speak Iambic Pentameter (which is on-topic here, since it was originally intended to be the trope we're talking about splitting off here) had, in all its years, only managed to gather eight on-page examples that matched its intended meaning, out of nearly fifty. The wicks were even worse.

PMSISIP was misleading for three reasons: 1) the name only mentioned iambic pentameter, 2) the description was written in iambic pentameter and wasn't very clear (to put it mildly), and 3) it was listed as a self-demonstrating trope, when the only thing it demonstrated was iambic pentameter. The existence of Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe may have contributed to the problem, but probably only slightly.

Anyway, we are where we are, so we need this split, and we more examples for the new YKTTW discussion. I'm up to ten, which is already better than the old version ever did, but still not spectacular. :)

Isn't this just the Done Well version of Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe? I don't think we need multiple tropes just to cover correct and incorrect usages of the same trope. Even ignoring the difficulties of policing that (we have a resident linguist monitor both tropes?), it's just not our policy. I suppose deliberate misuse could be separate trope, but that's not how the examples are currently sorted.

edited 2nd Sep '11 3:58:08 PM by Clarste

It's not correct vs. incorrect. Examples set in Elizabethan England might count as Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe if the language they spoke was (deliberately or accidentally) butcherede, but could never be the new trope, because there's nothing particularly flowery about speaking normally, which is what they'd be doing.

edited 2nd Sep '11 4:27:20 PM by Xtifr

Well, if the author is just misspelling words, then it's not a trope. If the words are being used correctly in-setting, then it's not a trope (or not much of one). This only seems to be trope worthy under two situations. 1) The Butcherede English is used in the correct setting, but is of the historically incorrect variety. 2) It's used out of setting, to be fancy, whether or not it's the correct form.

The butcherede kind can be used in or out of the correct setting (so examples can overlap in some cases), but otherwise yes, that's exactly the split being proposed.

The name is great. What are you actually trying to fix?

The fact that the current trope has both butchered(e) and non-. I opened this basically just to test the air. The consensus seems to support that split, and the new trope is at YKTTW, so we could probably close this, unless we want to wait for the new trope to launch.

I'm about to launch the new trope (finally got five hats), so there's absolutely no reason to keep this open one second longer. Calling for a lock.