Wit, unker, Git: The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy
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Yes/No and Yea/Nay used to mean different things too: "Is this correct?" could be answered "Yea, it is correct" whereas "Is this not a mistake?" could be answered "Yes, it is correct" (which you can also parse by taking the 'not' literally).
"Courts martial" and "secretaries general" are examples where the original noun-first word order remains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_and_no#The_Early_English_f...
Yes contradicts the negative question. So "Is this not a mistake?" should be contradicted with "yes, it is a mistake" or affirmed with "no, it is not a mistake".
It's further confusing because we have the idiom of suggesting things politely in a tentative manner such as isn't this a mistake? which has lost its sense of negativity and has come to mean "this is a mistake, I think," as opposed to being parsed literally to mean "this is not-a-mistake, I think".
Modern "Are you happy now?" is said with sarcastic tone, to spoil happiness. Would be archaically "Are you not happy?" As if to dare contradiction. It's loaded, unlike when saying sympathetically "Are you unhappy?"
Others:
"Are you not entertained?" "Are you not the very same Smith that dwelt at Haversham?" "Prick me, do I not bleed?"
But commonly: "Are you not a Christian?" most likely seems direct, but said in a formal sense, "rhetorically", an exhortation to act like one.
From Wikipedia:
> English had a four-form system, comprising the words yea, nay, yes, and no. Yes contradicts a negatively formulated question, No affirms it; Yea affirms a positively formulated question, Nay contradicts it.
> Will they not go? — Yes, they will.
> Will they not go? — No, they will not.
> Will they go? — Yea, they will.
> Will they go? — Nay, they will not.
So, this has obviously simplified. But what I find interesting is that English speakers from the Philippines or from a Russian background chose differently (where SME is standard modern English, and PRE is Philippine/"Russian" English):
Will they not go? — SME: Yes, they will. PRE: No, they will. [Not sure about that one.]
Will they not go? — SME: No, they will not. PRE: Yes, they will not. [I hear this all the time from non-native English speakers.]
Will they go? — SME/PRE: Yes, they will.
Will they go? — SME/PRE: No, they will not.
ETA from Wikipedia :-)
> In December 1993, a witness in a court in Stirlingshire, Scotland, answered "aye" to confirm he was the person summoned, but was told by a sheriff judge that he must answer either yes or no, or else be held in contempt of court. When asked if he understood, he replied "aye" again, and was imprisoned for 90 minutes for contempt of court. On his release he said, "I genuinely thought I was answering him."
(1) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/court-martial-res...
European Portuguese, like many (most?) Romance languages, has the informal/formal second person split. Brazilian Portuguese has dropped the informal second person (tu) and uses only the formal second person (você).
Now, because “thou” is archaic, it sounds overly stiff, and most English speakers assume it was the formal second person, but it was actually the informal form. So both Brazilian Portuguese and English underwent the same process and chose the same way.
The origin for both is more "your lordship" ("domnia ta/voastră") than "your mercy", as well.
Another fun thing is that calling someone you don't know "thou" used to be an intentional insult ("you're not worthy of being called 'you'"), something that might be missed by a modern reader of Shakespeare or other EME texts.
It's interesting that in Viennese German (my German is terrible but I do at least try) it seems like the informal form is the default, in a shop I get asked "Braucht du hilfe?" rather than the formal "Kann ich Ihnen helfen?".
Maybe this is what they mean when they say people in Vienna are rude, but coming from Scotland using informal language even in fairly serious settings just seems comfortable and normal.
My grandma used the formal address when reminiscing about going to the bakery when she was young but in the present she would use the familiar form and even the clerks would use a fake formal at best if they were feeling particularly grateful for having a job that day.
“They” and “their” for my whole lifetime were plurals. Now we’ve pretty much lost the mere clarity of knowing if the pronoun means 1 person or more than 1 person. Was watching “Adolescence” and the police mentioned “they” in regards to the victim of a crime. I was mistakenly under the impression that there weee multiple victims for much of the episode.
I’m very clearly slow to adapt to the new definitions.
I find myself wrong all the time, and I'm glad for the lesson!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_(pronoun)
So maybe we should bring back it, or ignore Chaucer as an authority.
Even people who complain about the singular "they" use it when they're not paying attention. It's a regular part of the English language.
If it's something we're all accustomed to and comfortable with, why even mention that it was being used in the distant past? The article is trying to simultaneously argue "try this new term they, it's easy, everybody's saying it now, it's modern, you'll love it" and "this term is not at all strange and new, you're silly if you feel uncomfortable with it because it has always been used." It's trying to have it both ways in its wrangling.
Do people also casually use it to refer to humans, or is it just me?
The reason why there's any debate at all about the singular they is not because it's new and strange. It's because beginning in the mid-18th century, influential grammar textbooks started discouraging its use and advocating "he" in its place. Many generations of kids have grown up being told in school that the singular "they" is wrong, but despite that, it has remained a very standard part of spoken English.
OK, but they were influential, so they influenced the 1850s and subsequent decades, making this usage currently new and strange, because for a century or more people used he instead. Why deny that? To persuade them with the implication "we never got accustomed to saying he, turns out you didn't ever speak this way, it was just an illusion"?
I'm not sure what matters in persuading people to speak differently, but saying that a term is being revived, rather than being a complete neologism, is ... admittedly a little bit persuasive, but it doesn't much help with the glaring issue that it's still a major change from what we're used to: and there are additional valid complaints, firstly that it removes information, and secondly that it's used less sparingly than it was in the past. It's now commonly written, in formal texts where clarity matters.
Ha, I see there was an 1850 act of parliament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_Act_1850
This was for clarity in the phrasing of legislation.
I've picked up a rumor that this 1652 book encouraged the use of he in gender neutral contexts: https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1641-170... but I can't find where. It might just be an exaggeration based on the part where it says "The Maſculine is more worthy than the Feminine, and the Feminine is more worthy than the Neuter." But there's no doubt that the 17th century, never mind the 19th, was stuffed with sexist bastards in influential positions. So what's the use in pointing at the past, or even at the present, to say that some of the time they used they? Fundamentally you still have to argue for why, or why not.
They only succeeded in influencing formal writing. Singular "they" continued to be a completely normal and heavily used part of spoken English.
> but saying that a term is being revived, rather than being a complete neologism
It's only being "revived" in formal writing. It is style guides that are changing, not the way that normal people speak.
> there are additional valid complaints, firstly that it removes information
It allows you to not specify that information. Sometimes you genuinely have no idea what gender the person you're talking about is. "Someone is knocking on the door. I have no idea who they are."
> Fundamentally you still have to argue for why, or why not.
The argument is that style guides and grammarians artificially banned people from using a completely regular pronoun in formal writing, and that the alternative they offered (gender-neutral "he") is extremely awkward. We already use this pronoun this way in spoken English. We should be able to write it too.
No, usage makes correctness in language, not people trying to invent some weird conlang they wrongly insist is correct English.
All my English teachers from Grades 1-12.
Using "they" as a singular pronoun would bring out the red pen.
"oh, what did they say?"
---
"the wait staff messed up my order"
"how did they do that?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/opinion/sunday/pronouns-q...
Briefly, William Penn refused to take his hat off in the presence of King Charles, due to his Quaker beliefs in egalitarianism. This would have gotten him into very serious trouble for lèse-majesté, except that the king took his own hat off. "Friend Charles," said Penn (who had apparently never heard of the saying that when you're in a hole you should stop digging), "why dost thou not keep on thy hat?" And King Charles II replied, "'Tis the custom of this place that only one person should be covered at a time." Of course, normally it was the king who would keep his crown on. But after Charles said that, nobody in the court could bring a charge of lèse-majesté against William Penn for the incident.
For anyone not wanting to read through it all, the story in the conclusion of the chapter was a particularly good laugh:
> I have referred in a former chapter to the King's partiality for his dogs; one species of which is still celebrated among the fancy as King Charles's breed. On the occasion of an entry into Salisbury, an honest Cavalier pressed forward to see him, and came so near the coach that his Majesty cautioned the poor man not to cling too close to the door lest one of the little black spaniels in the coach should chance to bite him. The loyalist still persisting in being near, a spaniel seized him by the finger, and the sufferer cried with a loud voice, "God bless your Majesty, but G—d d—n your dogs!"
It did made me go through many topics, like dual, exclusive/inclusive group person.
Still in a corner of my head, there is the idea to introduce some more pronouns to handle more subtilty about which first person we are expressing about[2]. The ego is not the present attention, nor they are that thing intertwined with the rest of the world without which nothing exists.
[1] https://fr.wikiversity.org/wiki/Recherche:Sur_l%E2%80%99exte...
[2] The project does provide an homogenized extended set of pronouns with 6 more than the two regular ones found in any primary school book. And completing all cases for all nouns is the biggest chunk that need to be completed, though it’s already done by now for the most frequent paradigms.
Somehow that just doesn't land the same.
I fear that a modern colloquial rendering would disappoint yet further:
our besties tune"Our secret song"
"Our shared song" is looser, though context helps.
"They're playing our song" still captures the timeless feeling. But is wrong for the poem.
I’m surprised how much I’m enjoying it. And I can’t believe I have 195 episodes left.
Same number of syllables.
Maybe “Song of just us two”
Like it’s common to hear “You two better stay out of trouble”
Or “it was us two in the apartment alone…”
Or “them two are pretty good together ”
"n̥-s-ero-" is sort of < "not" next-is-plural "mine" >.
So, plural-(invert mine). Or roughly close to "we".
"n̥-h-ero-" is sort of < "not" next-is-inclusive-plural "mine" >.
So, plural-(group (invert mine)). Or roughly close to "us".
But both are pretty close to the same meaning. High German maintained a lot of PIE, and is very close in a lot of ways. Though... Welsh is closer.
"From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic", Ringe.
And the simpler "Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln und Pronominalstämme", Dunkel.
Both use "n̥-s-ero-", though in the more traditional /ˈun.se.rɑz/ form.
Edit: Check out the Proto-Germanic personal pronouns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Proto-Germanic_person...
I have no idea how to say that idiomatically in German, but it struck me that those are both “true” friends.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingvaeonic_nasal_spirant_law
Another 100+ years, and this'll be some solid grammar.
I struggled with this when I was a school teacher. English lacks a good way to clarify you are addressing a group vs one person, which comes up a lot in a classroom. “Class, you…” is clunky, “You guys…” has obvious issues, and y’all or any other contraction is generally considered bad grammar. I generally went with y’all. Kids would laugh about it, but that seemed to help get their attention.
Yes, this is a case where you aren't forced to use "you" ambiguously in that context.
No, because "you in the back" could refer to just one person in the back, instead of several.
If you meant to address one person, you'd have said that one person's name, instead of voluntarily introducing ambiguity to the situation. Context & body language also makes this obvious. If you meant one person, you'd be making eye contact with one person instead of a group of people, etc. Students also know if they're paying attention or not. "The back" is not a specific area.
I grew up in Houston saying all that in the 80s
"W'all" would be nice to have. I guess it's not a thing because it sounds too much like the things that separate rooms.
When southern people say y'all to one person, they're really addressing you and your family (even though you might be the only one there.) If I ask "how y'all doing?" I want to know how you and yours are doing.
I just want people to stop asking me how I'm doing if they don't care.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that "How's it going" is a greeting, not an interrogative, and I want that change undone forever.
I just use "Howdy".
That's something those western southerners told me. I don't know if a linguist would agree, but that seems to be the understanding of some actual language users...
All I know is that there is a second boundary somewhere through TX, NM, and AZ, because I've never met a native Californian who would say "y'all" non ironically.
I do prefer "y'all", though. I think it's the best one we've got, of the options ("yous" being another big one, and ew, gross)
I also love the nuance of "y'all" and "all y'all".
You two commit
You two push
Is that significant? I have no idea. Is there a language with special case for exactly 2 with another case for a “few” and with yet another for “a lot”? Interesting to compare different cultures.
Russian distinguishes paucal (few) from plural (many). It’s not super common but there are some other languages that do it.
The system used for small numbers is probably a broad extension of an earlier dual number for nouns, i.e. something like a plural but just for two things. For (some) male nouns, the nominative dual ending was the same as the genitive singular, which was then extended to all other nouns even when this correspondence didn't hold, and from just 2 things to 3 and 4 as well. Nowadays the dual has been completely forgotten for nouns, and the only interpretation of the rule is that it's a genitive singular.
git means You two.
“modern British English slang, a git (/ɡɪt/) is a term of insult used to describe someone—usually a man—who is considered stupid, incompetent, annoying, unpleasant, or silly.“.
And “ Git is a popular open-source software for version control created by Linus Torvalds. Torvalds jokingly named it "git" after the slang term, later defining it as "the stupid content tracker".”
I think the better Torvalds quote was when he said "I name all my projects after myself"
"Git should get a room!"
/s I'm being silly, which is not entirely appropriate on this site. Maybe folks will let this one go because it's on point. If not, apologies.
So you'd expect to see languages from western Europe to south Asia that either have the dual concept, or have an attested ancestor that did.
Interestingly, to say one-handed you'd say "leath-lámh", where _leath_ means half, so half the <thing that's usually one of a pair>.
It's interesting that we notice a similar pattern of losing the dual in many languages. And it would be very interesting to find the opposite pattern: a language where the dual newly develops out of nowhere. However, I do not know of such language.
(To clarify this was in Hokkien, not Anglo-Saxon).
But if you think about it seems normal... "we went to the city" is not really mean.