I couldn't finish the article because my attention span was too small and the author was going on rambles and tangents. I have no patience. But like the article says, I also noticed while reading history books that people's speech was way more sophisticated and used flowery language in 1900 that we simply do not use today. My lexicon is probably only 25% of people back then. eg Ada Lovelace quote: “I believe myself to possess a most singular combination of qualities exactly fitted to make me pre-eminently a discoverer of the hidden realities of nature.”, in my language: "I think I'm special enough to be a scientist"
I think people often forget about correlations between literacy and class, especially in the past. All of those fancy 19th century high school curricula teaching Latin and Xenophon were for the sons of gentry.
If that "in my language" version is a serious attempt at condensing the meaning of the quote instead of taking a potshot at the author, that illustrates a severe decline in reading comprehension more than any blog post argument.
