It’s what it is. Latin used to be taught to very educated person and then just to the really educated and now- not so much. It’s still good to learn Latin if you have the time and ability- but most people won’t ever need it and if they REALLY do- just like someday with cursive- you can try and find an acquaintance who can help, pay someone, or just use the internet. Hell- someday we likely will have some kind of “universal translator” type thing- we already have made huge leaps in translation and written text recognition software. So meh. Like many things it may just serve as a way to separate people into an elite and everyone else for awhile before pretty much vanishing.
I also want to point out that the whole "you can't write in cursive" thing is completely unfair. I'm 25 and my cursive handwriting is better that 90% of boomers I know, half of whom can write in cursive but its completely illegible unless you either spend forever deciphering it, or know their specific handwriting well enough to just read it.
I know I am the exception, but still. It's not exactly a useful skill to be able to write in a format that makes it hard to tell what you are writing without making it hard to figure it out if you wanted to take the time.
My cursive was always very neat ( riddle with spell errors). The military required printing for everything, so the cursive writing for me , was gone over 30 years ago,lol. I still hate all the generation bashing and comparisons.
Didn't you say that you are in your forties in another post ? lol. I never really heard much generation bashing until about 2-3 years ago. Seem to me a weak way of not taking personal responsiblity .
Obsolete writing that the older generations were tortured with. Elementary schools had large paper back books that we could write in. Practice writing letters until hands were all cramped up from holding the pencil.
It’s often not called “cursive,” you might know it under one of its aliases. Before it was common for people to have access and affordable use of things like type writers and computer printers- writing that looked like this but was done by hand with pen, pencil, etc. was often called “printed” it “block lettered” and writing that was “cursive” was often called “hand writing,” or sometimes other names. Google will give examples, the United States constitution in its original form is written in cursive. Cursive looks a lot like these letters (mostly) but they have little loops and more curves, and most letters are connected to each other in a long string where your pen rarely leaves the paper. “Cursive” exists in several languages- English, Latin, Russian, etc. most of the time though the dominant language of where you are is just called “Cursive” and not “Latin Cursive” etc. unless there’s a need to specify.
The word cursive comes from Latin roots through Italian then anglicization and is basically just some variant of “to run” or “running.” This is because the letters continue to “run” without having to stop, change directions, or lift pen from page often. This rod not only convenient for the writer but suited older foes of pen well which favored steady and constant strokes to avoid drips and blots and the like. If a writer is without good penmanship it can be difficult or near impossible to read their writing. Cursive also didn’t type set well in analog printing presses as true cursive has subtle changes to letters based on how and if the connect to the letter before and after, and letters are placed on the press as single tiles, with early presses not being able to link letters at all.
Did your teachers make the class all do cursive pratice for misbehavior ? Class is getting to wild, the flickering of the light switch warning didn't always work, so break out the good old writing books, lol As kids , we always hated that punishment the most. Give me the paddle and call it a day lol
Oh right, thank you. I am very old and write everything very neatly in my day book using a pen. That's an Apple Pencil on my iPad which backs up into my PC thereby allowing me to work anywhere in the world as long as I can get a wi-fi signal.....you see I am totally paperless! Trouble is that IT (or "tech" which is a term I hate) is bloody fragile and will let you down at the drop of a hat. Happy days :)
@popsy- lol. Yes. Sometimes they’d warn us ahead and say “if you all behave today we will (have an activity, free time, etc,) but if you act up we will have practice drills.” And sure enough- those drills tended to be cursive! I love that flicking the lights is so wide spread as a behavior of teachers all over. Lol.
@mjlewis104- no worries. And I know what you mean. That’s high technology for you. It tends to mimic “digital” nature- it’s either 100% or 0%. It’ll let you do things you could never otherwise- but if it goes down you can’t do anything at all. There’s always more challenges to life no mater how easy we make it, or so it would seem.
And just to prove my point, I have lost almost a days work today because my PC (or maybe it was Microsoft) decided that it didn't like my profile. Consequently, I have wasted all this afternoon reinstating preferences etc. I do think we are building up a huge problem for ourselves by this over reliance upon technology. God help us if they ever put driver-less cars on the roads....it will be utter carnage!!
Lol. I believe it may be beyond prudent reach to do so anytime soon. We can’t make a decent smart doorbell let alone a car that can see at 60mph. Ever see where there’s this one street or house etc. where you can tell who is using GPS because the GPS MAP data is wrong for that point? Yeah.... ultimately I find self driving cars distasteful but think they will ultimately be a boon- even if that greatly transforms aspects of life we haven’t even considered. Everyone loves the cloud but when the cloud can’t be reached or the server goes down.... baby steps. Redundancy isn’t a huge tool of engineering in the digital age but most people have a laid back attitude that the tech doesn’t have to be so sure. We’d likely see a move to higher standards like medical and aero tech for low level consumer goods and see medieval and aero get to a standard where “oopsie, my Boeing doesn’t work...” isn’t ok.
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· 4 years ago
My mother used to read to me from comics when I was a toddler, with me looking at the comic, so I could read block letters before I was 5 and could read and write block fluently upon my school enrollment in 1970. Cursive not so much. I would fail at learning to write and always mix up cursive and block. It's still that way and when I write something in a hurry, it's pretty much illegible. In school, my grades were ok to fine, but I would always get remarks about my terrible handwriting, However, from 1984/85 I would use a keyboard in front of a monitor one way or the other, so what would I need cursive for? My wife has beautiful handwriting and her cursive is sublime, like a really good font. But that doesn't make her smarter than me. She's smarter than me anyway, but that's not the point here ;-)
damn you got me there.
I know I am the exception, but still. It's not exactly a useful skill to be able to write in a format that makes it hard to tell what you are writing without making it hard to figure it out if you wanted to take the time.