Kara’s dad is loosely based on a teacher I knew a long time ago. I probably didn’t understand him at all, but what I decided way back then about him works pretty well as a cartoon character. Who I was at the time would work pretty well as a cartoon character, too, now that I think of it.
The title of today’s cartoon (Pride goeth before the smack) has a funny feature.
Middle English.
I don’t speak it. Neither do you. In fact, nobody speaks Middle English with a possible exception of academics who don’t study anything else and have like-minded colleagues sitting around the faculty room at their university.
But we can parrot the heck out of tiny, tiny pieces of it. Mostly when we’re at churches where the King James version is still used or when we’re pretending to be King Arthur or one of his contemporaries (who, assuming they were really running around a thousand years ago, didn’t live in an area where Middle English was spoken.) “Goeth” is one of those words that sounds best when swinging a cardboard sword at your brother who’s wearing cardboard armor and saying “It’s only a flesh wound.”
Want proof that Middle English isn’t just English with ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ thrown in? Read some Chaucer. Woo. No, Middle English is foreign.
Or (more entertaining and intelligible) read Bill Bryson’s ‘Mother Tongue- English and how it got that way” Delightful book.
Remember when you were a kid? And when your mom was yelling it was really bad… and when she got quiet, that was the worst it could get.
Wow. Ya nearly didn’t get an update this morning. It’s been a long day!
Would any of you dyed-in-the-wool patrons of the strip like to explain to any new readers about where the nickname ‘Karabug’ comes from?
I used to assume no one would necessarily remember, but you guys know more about this strip than I do…
Well, here we are, back at the Outdoor Galore Store. Where, O where, shall we go from here?
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