This is the world we live in.

Until very recently I was an English major. I decided a long time ago that I would major in English because I've always genuinely enjoyed my English classes and I really love grammar. So I was an English major for a while, but I've decided it isn't for me. So, while I no longer have that validation, I still really love grammar and I know a lot about it. I get a weekly grammar tip in my e-mail that I usually enjoy because it's usually about one of those tricky little rules we all know English is just fraught with.

Then I got this one:

Come on, people! Really? There are people out there who don't understand the difference between 'lose' and 'loose'? I just can't comprehend that. I can't. It makes no sense to me. 

Of course, this week's tip was on how to use 'kind' vs. 'kinds,' so, I dunno, maybe they're just running out of topics over there at the Grammar Girl offices. 

I am a Nerd.

I'm sure you figured that out already, but, really, I am. I'm ok with that, though, because, as John Green says, being a nerd really just means that I like things a lot. It's just that the things I like are things other people don't tend to like - like grammar and etymology.
Sometimes, though, my nerdiness makes things difficult for me.
For example: we just finished watching Macbeth in my theater class, so we did a lot of discussion about it and about Shakespeare in general. It was all very interesting and insightful for me until the TEACHER remarked that sometimes Shakespeare is hard to understand because it's written in Old English.

This is not true.
Shakespeare did not write in Old English.
This is Old English:

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum
Si þin nama gehalgod
to becume þin rice
gewurþe ðin willa
on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg
and forgyf us ure gyltas
swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge
ac alys us of yfele soþlice
(That's the Lord's Prayer, in case you are wondering.)

Old English is old. It was spoken by the Anglo-Saxons starting sometime in the mid-5th century. Beowulf is written in Old English. Around the 13th century, Old English became Middle English, which finally, another three hundred years later, became Modern English. 
Yes. Shakespeare's plays are written in Modern English. Specifically, they were written in Early Modern English, which is really only one generation removed (linguistically speaking) from the language we speak. There are some differences, like some of the spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. The vocabulary is also different, but a lot of it was different then, too. Shakespeare invented over 1700 words for his plays and many of them stuck and are still used today (like swagger and gossip and road). He experimented with words and their parts of speech, too; the man was turning nouns into verbs long before we were googling and facebooking. He had a huge impact on the language we speak today and I don't think people realize that because back in English class they were too busy whining about how hard it was to understand, which it isn't, really. It's just different and it requires a little extra thought.

I realize that anyone who reads this will probably not care that much about Shakespeare and the various forms of the English language; not as much as I do, anyway. That doesn't matter, though, because I had a lot of fun researching them and I'm probably going to keep researching because I think the whole thing is fascinating.

And THAT is why I am a nerd.