why are there some many new words for me when reading Wuthering Heights?

Question

very hard to read,what period did the author live? I keep turning to the dictionary.what should I do ?

so many,not "some many"

Answer 1

Wuthering Heights was published in 1847, and our language has evolved quite a bit since that time. Also, we can assume the Bronte household was well educated and well read (three sisters were all authors) and they might have been more likely to use larger words than the general population. Try to determine the meaning of the new words by their context before looking them up, it will save you time in the long run, especially as the dictionary will often give you several definitions and you will use the context to determine the correct one anyway.

Answer 2

I got this too. It got to me at first but you'll pick up the 'idea' and find that the words will take on meaning that way. Like when you go abroad you just pick up what you need to language wise. The author lived in the 1800's in the bleak Midlands of England so not only are you battling a different era of language but a very distinct dialect. If it helps the Bronte's were really nice girls whom felt continuously judged by the society of the time which deemed their achievements as small. There writting is of course in truth a bench mark for a number of reasons primarily the struggle for women's rights.
So while you sit their feeling an idiot for not understanding it, the Bronte's felt idiots for not producing more of it.

Answer 3

Anything written, in English, more than, say, 150 years ago will be in a different form than contemporary English. The idiom of the Victorian Era was much more formal than that spoken now.

Instead of saying, "I'm going out, to visit a friend." even a moderately educated person might have stated "I shall pay a visit a friend who lies ill."

Contractions, such as "aren't," "won't," "isn't" were not used exept for the crudes of persons, and the very young.

In addition, many modern words, part of everyday language, now, did not come into use until recent times. Add to all this, the fact that many classic works of English literature were written in England, for English audiences. We simple don't use words like "moors," or "hounds" when we mean swamps and dogs.

Answer 4

Writers and readers in 19th century had a broader vocabulary than we do and many of the words are no longer commonly used so that's why the extensive dictionary look ups. The dictionary will also provide you with the various shades of meaning in words. You may think that you know what a word means, but when you look it up you see it could have multiple meanings and bring depth to the writing. Once you get into it, reading this stuff is easier and rewarding. That era has the meatiest writing in it.

Answer 5

It's called "Classic Literature," written in the day when Americans were genuinely intelligent and could actually intelligibly articulate with sentences composed of more that 3 grunting syllables, and before the "mass-dumbing" of America by the brainless and directionless offerings of MTV, Beeves and Butt Head, South Park, and Ebonics. It was a time when the United States led the entire world in student aptitude tests, when students actually went to school to eagerly acquire an advance education, willfully. Now the U.S. has plummeted to 126th place in the world in student aptitude tests. German students laugh at their American student counterparts, calling them "stupid". Japanese students go to school for 8 hours per school day, and are some of the smarts people on the face of the earth, prodigies. In America students on average are exposed to about 2.5 hours of instruction per school day, and the rest of the time is nonsensical "filler" and ridiculous diversions; and yet they "complain" and throw "tantrums". American high school graduates, today, cannot name the first three Presidents of the United States; they do not know how many stars and stripes are in the American Flag, or what they symbolize; and the typical American high school graduate reads at the average level of a 7th grader. Pretty dismal, huh? This literally means America's future is in hopeless and drastic peril, because a generation of idiots will soon be in charge.

My advice to you is simple, keep using the dictionary as you read “Withering Heights.” The process is called “learning”, something that is entirely absent from and alien to American schools.

Answer 6

Treat it as an exploration. Some of those words may be useful.

And a moor is not a swamp (at least in words like Exmoor and Dartmoor, which is the use of the word in Wuthering Heights) - it is an elevated grassland.

Answer 7

Wuthering Heights was written like a zillion years ago and they used different words back then. Plus it's British, and they use a lot of words we don't use here in America. If you have to read it for school, just keep trudging through it. If you're reading it for pleasure, maybe just forget it and try another book, because it sounds like a real drag for you.

Take care!

Answer 8

what i do is write a list of the words i didnt know in the chapter and thier page number, then at the end of each chapter find out the word meanings and flip back to it and read it with the context

Answer 9

Read it without the dictionary. If you get the whole idea of a paragraph, then move on.

Answer 10

Keep it up.

Soon you'll know the words and won't have to look them up.