[HN Gopher] Aesop in Words of One Syllable
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Aesop in Words of One Syllable
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 29 points
Date : 2025-07-01 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.pgdp.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.pgdp.net)
| cckolon wrote:
| Reminds me of Randall Monroe's obsession with Simple English
|
| https://xkcd.com/547/
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I prefer viewing the referenced book on Archive.org than Project
| Gutenberg:
| https://archive.org/details/aesopsfablesinwo00aeso/page/6/mo...
|
| (Personally, I always hated "the moral" being spelled out at the
| end of each story. Oh well.)
| josefritzishere wrote:
| If you look at the back of that book, there was a whole series of
| "in Words of One Syllable" books. Their revamp of Robinson Crusoe
| required some hyphenation to meet the criteria. All were
| published by the Henry Altemus Company of Philadelphia around the
| year 1900. https://henryaltemus.com/series/series137.htm
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Even this one required hyphenation as pointed out by another
| commenter (search "butch-er").
| pinko wrote:
| Fascinating: the author cheats!
|
| E.g., "butch-ers" appears*, as if hyphenation makes it not a two-
| syllable word!
|
| * https://archive.org/details/aesopsfablesinwo00aeso/page/12/m...
| scandox wrote:
| No but it might help a younger reader and it avoids an absurd
| consistency
| pinko wrote:
| I don't disagree, but I still think it's funny that, not six
| pages in, they compromise the central conceit...
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I don't know what's going on, but that doesn't match https://ww
| w.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/76243/pg76243-images.ht....
|
| Your source has "the dog and the shadow" (which subsequently
| uses "sha-dow") and "the oxen and the butchers" (and note that
| "oxen" is _not_ hyphenated). The Gutenberg edition instead has
| "the child and the brook" in their stead, and "the bear in the
| wood" inserted after the next one.
| vintermann wrote:
| I used to make a game out of that. Use words with just one word
| sound, and see how long it takes them to catch on.
|
| As a tool for kids, I don't buy it. If you slip and use a word
| with two or more word sounds, that won't make it hard. So it's
| not a rule you need to use.
|
| I had not heard of A. L.'s books, though. As word game, it's fun
| (though she cheats!). As school tool, as I said I don't buy it.
| x______________ wrote:
| "..a word with two or more word soun-ds"
|
| > ..a word with more than one sound
|
| Did I win? :)
| tylershuster wrote:
| Most all words have more than one sound. There are big sounds
| and small sounds though. The big parts - "word sounds" --
| that we don't want, the word "sounds" has just one. It needs
| no break. You might say that the word "school" has two but
| that word has just one as well.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| There's a party game called "Poetry for Neanderthals" that's
| exactly that (use only monosyllabic words to describe something
| when prompted). I really like it.
| teraflop wrote:
| Neat. I wonder if this was an inspiration for Guy Steele's famous
| "Growing a Language" talk, or if he came up with the same idea
| independently.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw6TaiXzHAE
| esafak wrote:
| This is a good idea. I am working through the 1912 translation of
| this by V. S. Vernon Jones with my child, and I was taken aback
| by how dense its Victorian English is. This is the translation
| that is currently distributed by Simon & Schuster. Consider THE
| GOODS AND THE ILLS:
|
| "There was a time in the youth of the world when Goods and Ills
| entered equally into the concerns of men, so that the Goods did
| not prevail to make them altogether blessed, nor the Ills to make
| them wholly miserable. But owing to the foolishness of mankind
| the Ills multiplied greatly in number and increased in strength,
| until it seemed as though they would deprive the Goods of all
| share in human affairs, and banish them from the earth. The
| latter, therefore, betook themselves to heaven and complained to
| Jupiter of the treatment they had received, at the same time
| praying him to grant them protection from the Ills, and to advise
| them concerning the manner of their intercourse with men. Jupiter
| granted their request for protection, and decreed that for the
| future they should not go among men openly in a body, and so be
| liable to attack from the hostile Ills, but singly and
| unobserved, and at infrequent and unexpected intervals. Hence it
| is that the earth is full of Ills, for they come and go as they
| please and are never far away; while Goods, alas! come one by one
| only, and have to travel all the way from heaven, so that they
| are very seldom seen."
|
| If Victorian children were really able to parse that, we have
| regressed! I have to rephrase each fable in simpler terms before
| mine understands it. _Alice in Wonderland_ was a similar affair,
| and that was with the abridged version!
|
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/%C3%86sop%27s_Fables_(V._S._V...
| vintagedave wrote:
| Hypotactic sentences! I love them, and feel they're quite
| elegant. I read sentences like this as kid :)
|
| https://www.masterclass.com/articles/parataxis-vs-hypotaxis-...
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| There's a big gap in the market for someone to do for Aesop's
| Fables what was done for the "New Revised Standard Version" of
| the bible. They went back as far as they could to the source
| material and did a high quality modern translation.
| gweinberg wrote:
| I can see the advantage of using common words, but isn't it
| pretty silly to insist on them all being one syllable? The very
| first words (most people) learn are tow syllables (albeit the
| same one repeated), right?
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