I am seriously deaf and use close captioning. On this show and many other period shows the characteers say 'Miss' so-and-so where the close captioning says 'Ms.'
There was no such word at the time of the show and I guess from what I have heard the word is pronounced Mzzzzzz like an annoying angry feminist bee humming in your ear. What frightens me is the sheer arrogance of going back and 'correcting' everybody 'politically'. The characters are using the word Miss in the sense in which it was understood in the early 1960's and the Ms. is a LIE. A little lie but a LIE.
Incorrect. Ms. is an abbreviation of Miss. It can be pronounced both Miss and Mizz. There is no "correcting." It's just saving some space on the closed captions.
Seize the moment, 'cause tomorrow you might be dead.
I have checked every grammatical research tool and Ms. is NOT an abbreviation for Miss and NEVER HAS BEEN. It is one thing to argue it is another thing to make your arguments up from whole cloth.
"Ms" or "Ms." (normally /ˈmɪz/, but also appearing as /mᵻz/, /məz/, or /məs/ when unstressed)[1][2] is an English honorific used with the last name or full name of a woman, intended as a default form of address for women regardless of their marital status.[3] Like "Miss" and "Mrs.", the term "Ms." has its origins in the female English title once used for all women, "Mistress". It was invented (and revived/reinvented) in the 20th century."
So Ms. is still correct in the closed captions.
it is another thing to make your arguments up from whole cloth.
Like this?
There was no such word at the time of the show
Why did you make up that argument? Ms. did exist at the time of the show:
The earliest known proposal for the modern revival of "Ms." as a title appeared in The Republican of Springfield, Massachusetts on November 10, 1901:
Seize the moment, 'cause tomorrow you might be dead. reply share
Through that whole giant sh-t storm let me ask you. Do you really think in the early 1960's that ANYONE would have a clue that Ms. meant Miss? I was there and assure you of course not. ms meant.... manuscript. Truth and reality are lost on you. Please don't bother to reply. I have had enough PC bs for one day.
Do you really think in the early 1960's that ANYONE would have a clue that Ms. meant Miss?
Well, yeah. I have faith in the intelligence of the 1960's audiences.
Also, the captions don't say ms. They say (as you pointed out) "Ms." Those are two different words.
Truth and reality are lost on you.
I'm sorry if 21st century technology frightens you. But it sounds like you're the one who can't handle reality. You didn't even know Ms. existed in the 1960s, and you lived that era.
Please don't bother to reply. I have had enough PC bs for one day.
That's cool. Just don't post any archaic, outdated curmudgeony nonsense, and I shan't reply further.
Seize the moment, 'cause tomorrow you might be dead. reply share
Men are referred to as Mr. which indicates nothing about their marital status. Women are addressed as Miss or Mrs. according to their marital status. Some feminists don't feel it is fair to women and came up with Ms. for all women, single or married. I was alive when this began and this did not occur until the 70's.
"Ms." as a substitute for Miss or Mrs. might have existed as far back as the early 20th century, but it was obscure and very rarely used prior to the 1970s when it was popularized by feminists, and complied with by those who feared them. It's unlikely that any of the characters in the world of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" would have used it, or even have heard of it. When they speak on the soundtrack of the show, they're saying "Miss" or "Mrs.". They're not saying "Ms.".
I've found that many times Closed Caption doesn't match up well with what is actually being said.. I mean the JIST is there, but not the word for word text. I was watching an older show once in CC and it was WAY off! I mean things like, "What the hell are you doing here!?" were printed out as, "Yes, uh, can I help you find something?!"
So true, they get the general meaning but it's not word for word. I don't use CC but I have Love Lucy on dvd and I use the Spanish sub-titles sometimes to practice my Spanish.
Sometimes I find myself saying, "Hey that's not what was actually said." Of course it's different when going from one language to another. Some expressions and slang don't translate.
But I notice some political correctness (if you could call it that) when I listen to Lucy with the Spanish dubbing and watch the English subtitles.
When Ricky is angry he sometimes exclaims, "Aye Dios Mio!" or "Por Dios!". Both expressions are common in Spanish, basically "Oh my G-D!"
But the English subtitle will read, "Good heavens" or "My goodness".
And when Lucy says one of those two phrases in English, the Spanish sub-title will usually be "Dios Mio!"
On TV in those days. no one uttered the Lord's name in that manner. But apparently it was okay to do it in Spanish! The censors probably didn't know what Ricky was saying anyway.
One thing I've wondered... In the Spanish dubbed version of Lucy... HOW would they handle the scenes where Ricky rants in Spanish and Lucy doesn't understand him? In the dubbed version Lucy ~as well as everyone~ would also be speaking and understanding Spanish, so how would it make sense.
2 possibilities I thought up were MAYBE Lucy was speaking Spanish like an American who is not very fluent and when Ricky gets mad, maybe he starts speaking it super fast like a native and she can't understand him... ~THAT is how the French dubbed version of European Vacation was done~
Or maybe would Rick speak SOME OTHER language like FRENCH when he gets upset? French is actually spoken in some parts of Cuba, so it would make sense and plus that's how the do it in the French-dubbed version of the Addams' Family... Morticia speaks SPANISH to drive Gomez wild in the French dubbed version.
My completely unnecessary commentary about all this..
I can understand it not feeling fair that women have to be specified, but men don't.
However, can't it ALSO be seen as unfair that men can't be specified according to any status, but just their WORK? (Dr. vs. Mr., for example, but then an engineer would still be just a 'Mr.', no matter how hard they studied - fair?)
As usual, men are only seen as utility, men's value ONLY seen as to what they can PROVIDE FOR WOMEN = their marital status doesn't matter as much as what WORK they do, because work defines their value. Fair?
Wouldn't it be more fair to let men also use an unspecified "Mrrr"? (Funnily shown in 'Sledge Hammer')
I mean, isn't 'Ms.' a bit pretentious and overly-safe? Why avoid a perfectly good "Miss", if it applies and is accurate?
Why did the whole 'Mrs. and Miss'-stuff even begin? Because of PATRIARCHY, or because women wanted to not only show off that they're married, but also for 'eligible bachelors' (= high-status men, i.e. the 0.01% men who have options when it comes to women) that they are 'free', so the high-status men should feel free to seduce them..?
It served a very big function in a woman's life - egoboost for the married, and 'please seduce me, daddy'-message for the high-status men so it's easier for a woman to get a "good man".
Since it's the MAN who always has to do all the seducing, make all the moves, buy all the drinks, provide all the houses, lifestyles food for the women, it used to be a very essential social function for both men and women, for everyone to be able to instantly know whether a woman is 'available' or not - can you imagine the useless toil and effort a man would have to go through just to find out someone is married?
This is why it doesn't matter if a man is married or not, because women don't do any seducing, buy any drinks or do any of the moves, because they don't have to - men are always expected to do ALL. 'Sexual liberation' freed women..
Isn't it funny, how the 'sexual liberation' only freed 50% of the people, and by doing that, drove the budding 'civilization' right into the ground?
Now both sexes are confused and women having so much power, have made a complete pig's breakfast of the whole 'seduction-pairing-relationship'-stuff, they don't even know what they want. First they follow their 'tingles' through all the alpha carousel, and when it turns out that men that have OPTIONS don't really settle for any individual woman, but actually USE those options, women want to change those men.
Then women say they want kind, compassionate, nerdy, intelligent, caring men who text them back and call them and take care of them and blahblah. The women don't MEAN regular men, though. The women don't want the men who ALREADY ARE all those things ( = simps).
This has confused men throughout the ages, how women can say they want a kind and caring man, and then TELL a kind and caring man that SOME OTHER woman will find a treasure in them, and that 'we should just be friends'. It couldn't be more confusing, until you realize women say things that are not rooted in reality, to keep up their image as a 'non-slut', while desiring to ACT as a slut.
Women don't want kind and nice men, they want to TURN thugs, alphas, CEOs, celebrities, outlaw bikers and prisoners INTO 'nice men'. If they ever succeed, they will leave those nice men and start over again with new thugs and so on.
So, there was a time, when this stuff was controlled, and 'Miss' and 'Mrs.' served an informational function in the human world, where everyone could easily know the important things about people. A woman's marital status was as important to know as a man's job. Has anyone noticed this is STILL the first question a woman asks a man, but men are NOT ALLOWED to ask about a woman's body count anymore?
So the whole 'Ms.'-stuff is hypocrite at best, fema-fascist information destruction at worst. Suddenly it's all veiled and shrouded.
I mean, 'Mr./Dr.' vs. 'Miss/Mrs.' WAS a fair system, because both genders got information about both genders, about things that were IMPORTANT for relationships, marriage, pairing and raising a family.
Fema-fascists violently shoved a useless, extra thing in there, that destroyed the whole thing.
Men never needed the marital status-revealing equivalent of 'Miss/Mrs.', because man's marital status is IRRELEVANT and always was.
It's hard to believe in today's world, but some of these things were actually logical.
There's no logic in "Ms.", it just hides the information that made everything work back in the day.
I mean, from a human perspective, I can understand wanting to control what others know about you, and not wanting to reveal your marital status or lack thereof. But to have to INVENT a whole new category just to do that is just pretentious and hypocrite. "Is it Miss?" is a question any woman should've been able to answer "I'd rather not tell" or whatever.
That's the problem with honorifics anyway - at least japanese have always used 'san', so there's a gender-neutral honorific to use (so why couldn't women start using 'Mr.' instead, why did a new one have to be invented? Because women always have to be 'special' and pedestalized to the max.?).
However, even they often destroy this convenience for the sake of gender-obsession, so we often hear 'chan' and 'kun' and whatnot. It's a bit sickening to me, as I only consider gender a trivial thing in the grand scheme of things. Useful for pairing, mating, sexual stuff, etc., but beyond that, we should be able to be more genderless and more focused on humanity instead of 'genderity'. No one should identify fully with a temporary quality like a gender, and everyone should realize we're human beings, first.
In any case, I don't think the OP is really talking as much against the stupidly artificial and illogical, pretentious "Ms.", but the INACCURACY of the subtitles, putting words and agendas into people's and character's mouths, not being able to just translate something without EDITORIALIZING it for 'modern, politically-correct climate'.
It's like taking something someone says in an old show and changing it completely, altering its meaning just so it will FIT the insanity that's called political correctness.
That _IS_ something to complain about, and the OP's point is valid. It seems like a tiny change, but I have noticed this kind of crap done a lot, too, and it pisses me off. Why can't AT LEAST the old shows be what they actually are? Do we have to alter and change everything, so we can never know what was ACTUALLY done and created in history?
Should Laura be digitally altered to be a man, or Dick a woman? Should Dick van Dyke's name be changed, because the word in that name are offensive nowadays?
I mean, when you go down this road, where will it end? We will just stare at a black dot at a black screen, and then be horrified, because it's racist to do that. I mean, there's no entertainment, if we continue down this path. Someone has to point out and stop this madness, and I am glad the original poster had the courage to do so.
Being deaf must be annoying and impractical in ways that 'hearing people' don't even think about, but I must say there has to be at least one good thing about it; noisy neighbours can never wake you up or bother you with their explosive insanity and heelstomping all night long. You don't have to buy earplugs, like I do.. and those earplugs DO let the most annoying sounds through that dig into your mind and start attacking your peace of mind until there are only tiny shreds left.
Just out of curiosity, can you still hear something? I mean, 'seriously deaf' sounds less deaf than 'fully deaf', but I might be misinterpreting things.
I remember when they first started telling people to use "Mizz". Don't know when it was invented, but I would guess in the late 60s or early 70s. This isn't something I'm enraged about, but I agree that if the word wasn't in existence at the time, it shouldn't be retroactively imposed.
Maybe I shouldn't bring this up, but watching the color special tonight, I wondered if some might complain about the title of the first episode, "That's My Boy". I wondered if somewhat might object to the use of the word "boy", considering the nature of the suspected mixup. Not saying anyone SHOULD have objected to it, mind you, but I've seen stranger things.
Well, men are not allowed to be offended anyway, men have no victim status, no one cares what happens to men, or it's just considered funny - men can be insulted all day long and everyone applauds. It's only WOMEN that have the victim status, and it's only women that people get offended about and for. NO one gets offended for men, not even men themselves. But plenty of men get offended for women, so a word like BOY, which can be seen as VERY INSULTING (unlike girl, unless it's aimed at men), is nothing politically-incorrect, and never will be (unless we're talking about some 'transistor' crap).
poetcomic1 was right. Regardless of whether "Ms." existed prior to the late 1960s or 1970s, it did not come into common usage until then, and nobody was using it in the early 1960s. It is incorrect in subtitling episodes of the show because it can clearly be heard that the people in the show are saying "Miss". It's simply a case of arrogant political correctness, ignorance, or deafness on the part of the subtitler.
OK, guys, you've all got a point, but poetcomic1 is essentially correct: The term "Ms." did not come into common use till the 1970s, about a decade after this show was filmed.
It didn't come out of nowhere, however. I remember when a new teacher would introduce herself at the beginning of the school year, and we weren't sure whether she said "Mrs." or "Miss" -- so we'd slur the two together and say "Mizz" till we could find out for sure. And apparently even before that, some secretarial handbooks recommended the use of "Ms." in letters to women of unknown marital status -- I doubt this advice was often followed, however, since I never saw the word in print till the 70s.
So I'd say that poetcomic1 has a perfect right to be annoyed. "Ms." is NOT an abbreviation for "Miss," it's an abbreviation for "Mrs. or Miss," which is not the same thing, any more than "maybe" is the same as "yes" because it means "yes or no." Perhaps the subtitles use it to save space, but it's only one character shorter, so I doubt it.
Please note that the hapless souls who write the subtitles are NOT generally given a copy of the script, they're working from what they hear. So perhaps the use of "Ms." in subtitles hearkens back to my grade-school days, because the transcribers aren't always sure whether a speaker is saying "Miss" or "Mrs." Or, yeah, it could be somebody's attempt to rewrite history.