Abridgment: Howard Shepherd and Dave Shepherd leave out all the unimportant parts as they talk about abridgment. We feature the masters of abridgment, the Reduced Shakespeare Company.
We’ve been away. While we were gone, the Nerd Number died. But now you can leave an audio message with our MyChingo button. (1:52)
Definitions of “abridge,” plus some related words (4:16)
Music bumper from “Trifle 3″ by Fuzzy Logic (10:16)
In April, Dave interviewed the RSC (that’s the Reduced Shakespeare Company, not that “Royal” bunch). (10:58)
Song: “Left Out” by A Void (19:28)
Rude word of the week: “half-assed” (22:53)
Music bumper from “Make Me Understand” by Matt Thorpe. (25:21)
Intentions and functions of abridgment (26:13)
Music courtesy of The Podsafe Music Network
Theme music by Kick the Cat
time: 32:54
size: 30.2 Mb
rating: PG (Our Rude Word is about as rude as we get this week.)
Puhleaze. Dictionaries are called abridged. Not because they are incomplete lexicons of a language. Rather, they are abridged from the definitive version of the dictionary. There is an ‘Oxford English Dictionary’ – it is 20 volumes or so. It is available in many many abridged versions: “shorter”, “Concise” etc..
Hi, SOOO great you’re back! (I really miss the times when we got one show a week … Just now I’m downloading the whole archive to balance that a little bit.)
But: The link for the Red. Shakespeare-Company doesn’t work. Why?
Greetings (from Germany – I certainly would visit the RSC, if they would come over here!)
Greenangel
RSC: AND the link in iTunes also doesn’t work
And it sounded ever so great in the interview!)
RSC is back – their Homepage AND the possibility to download their podcast. Thanks!
The “half-assed” character in Candide is the old woman, whose buttock was cut off as a sort of humane cannibalism:
“The extremities of famine to which they were reduced, obliged them to eat our two eunuchs, for fear of violating their oath. And at the end of a few days they resolved also to devour the women.
“We had a very pious and humane Iman, who preached an excellent sermon, exhorting them not to kill us all at once.
“‘Only cut off a buttock of each of those ladies,’ said he, ‘and you’ll fare extremely well; if you must go to it again, there will be the same entertainment a few days hence; heaven will accept of so charitable an action, and send you relief.’”
I loved this show. I had never heard of the Reduced Shakespeare Company until I heard this show. I need to check them out sometime. They sound really cool.
I wanted to tell you something I thought was funny, from my College English 152 class, about research papers. Our first paper was on Macbeth. And when our professor was teaching us the Ellipses, he taught us the … and the full line ellipses, which he had a name for i that I forgot, but it’s used to take out a whole bunch of the play that you’re quoting when it’s parts of the line you don’t need. Since no one could think of it, one of the students said “That’s like an ellipses that has morphed into a hero right? Since it’s bigger and has a much stronger usage. So we’ll call it ‘Super Ellipses’.”
I thought that was pretty funny when he said that, and hearing the talk on Ellipses made me think of it.
I enjoyed the show, another 10 out of 10. Keep up the good work. And if you ever run out of ideas, I’m sure your fans, such as myself, can help you out. I know you have hundreds of them you need to get to. I’ll be looking forward to the next one.
Hi guys. Sorry it took so long for your comments to appear. I am now in Salzburg, Austria, and finally in a hotel with reasonably-priced Internet access. (Curse you, T-Online!) I haven’t had Internet since Monday morning.
Simon, I’m not sure why you seem so put off by my comment about “unabridged” as a quasi-lost positive. I don’t know of many general-use dictionaries that overtly call themselves “abridged.” (I could certainly be wrong.)
But I do know of many that call themselves “complete,” “unabridged,” or “complete and unabridged.”
However, a quick search at amazon.com shows only a few dictionaries that actually call themselves “abridged dictionary,” and these are specialized dictionaries. The most prominent examples are Black’s Law Dictionary and the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. I never meant to say that dictionaries are never referred to as unabridged, just that they don’t tend to call themselves that.
Miche, thanks very much for completing the reference to the Candide character for us.
Hi Dave,
welome in Austria – I’m a listener from Austria.
Hi Im Marisa from Brasil and I find this site interesting and I would like to know if I can have the dialogues in text?
thanks from Brasil
Marisa
Might I add,
bitte (please, you’re welcome). It’s always good to be polite, and you get two for the price of one with “bitteâ€.
Bier (beer). Useful if pointing doesn’t work.
Gedankenexperiment (thought experiment). Self-explanatory to any physicist.