(no subject)

[nibot]

Acquired for myself a copy of Beowulf. Now, let the enlightenment commence. If only I could read Anglo-Saxon... Not much else is new.. Gradually figuring out how the space groups work.. contemplating the removal of the top 20% of the tree (California Live Oak?) which is the sole object occluding the view from my room (from my bed noless) of the Golden Gate Bridge. Noting that it's nice to study long into the night, in the quiet and whilst watching the glittering lights of the East Bay. Oh yes, I bought a Portugese Grammar book for $3 at Moe's today and it lists "thou" as the English singular second-person ("you") pronoun and "ye" as the plural version. So perhaps English did Once Upon A Time differentiate between you(singular) and you(plural). Also, I speculate that "thee" would be the accusative singular second-person pronoun. Hmmm. (I see that UCB offers English 105: Old English / Anglo-Saxon, but unfortunately not this semester.) Additionally I got an email today from Sergei saying that I got "the highest grade available" on my paper on colorings of symmetry groups. Yay!

Comments

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

I had a friend from Newfoundland at mathcamp once, and she definitely distinguished between "you" singular and "ye" plural. And plenty of American Englishes have reintroduced the singular/plural distinction in second person, with "y'all", "you guys", "youse", and probably others. (Though I hear some versions of southern english have recollapsed the distinction, with "y'all" sometimes being appropriate for singular as well now.)

I always thought that "thou" and "you" were nominative, and "thee" and "ye" were accustive. I suppose the vowel parallels can't continue for "thy" and "your" though.