Pylimitics

A “complaint” is a form of the word “complain”, which comes from the Old French word “complaindre”, meaning “to lament”. The word’s roots go all the way back to Proto-Indo-European. Evidently people have been complaining for quite a while. 

One of the things they complain about, at least once they reach a certain age, is younger people. A favorite topic is how young people just don’t know things they should, aren’t taught the right things in school, and doggone it, just have it too easy nowadays! This complaint is an archetype everybody recognizes; it goes on to point out that “back when ‘I’ [the complainer] was that age, things were much better (and so was I, or at least I benefitted from that time).” There’s an interesting inversion inherent in this archetypical complaint: things in the past are often described as worse or more difficult, and having survived those worse conditions makes the complainer superior in some sense to the people (almost invariably younger) being complained about. 

I mentioned one particular gripe, about today’s young people not learning what they should in school. You see this in complaints such as “There is not a single modern schoolboy who can compose verses or write a decent letter.” Sounds like something you’d hear in a Starbucks today, doesn’t it? You probably would, except that this particular quote is a little older. The original was:

“Grammer, the ground of al, bigileth now children:
For is noon of thise newe clerkes—whoso nymeth hede—
That kan versifie faire ne formaliche enditen…”

A more readable translation is: 

“Grammar, the basis of all, now beguiles children:
For there are none of these new university students—of those who take heed—That can versify fairly or write formally…”

It’s from Piers Plowman, written by William Langland in 1386. 

So the next time you hear some old coot (or even a not-so-old coot) saying something like this, just remember that this complaint is centuries old and might be the least original idea around.