NO ONE knows how to use thou/thee/thy/thine and i need to see that change if ur going to keep making “talking like a medieval peasant” jokes. /lh

They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.

So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:

“I” →  “thou”

“Me” →  “thee”

“My” →  “thy”

“Mine” →  “thine”

Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.

We could first imagine it in the first person-

“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.

And then replace it-

“Thou hast a cow. He gave it to thee. It is thy cow. The cow is thine.”

This is perfect and the only thing missing is that when “thy” comes before a vowel it’s replaced by “thine”, i.e. “thy nose” but “thine eyes.” English used to do this with my and mine too (and still does with a and an).

The second person singular verb ending is -(e)st. In the present tense, it works more or less like the third person singular ending, -s: 

The -(e)st ending is only added to one word in a compound verb. This is where a lot of people make mistakes:

NOT

If you’re not sure, try saying it in the third person and replacing the -(e)st with -s:

In general, if there’s one auxiliary, it takes the -(e)st ending) and the main verb does not. If there are multiple auxiliaries, only one of them takes -(e)st:

You can reduce the full -est ending to -st in poetry, if you need to drop a syllable:

In some common words–mostly auxiliary verbs, or what you might have learned as “helping verbs”–the ending is always reduced:

Sometimes this reduction takes the last consonant of the stem with it:

Or reduces the -st down to -t:

However! UNLIKE the third-person singular -s, the second person -(e)st is ALSO added to PAST TENSE words, either to the past stem in strong (irregular) verbs or AFTER THE -ed in weak (regular) verbs: 

This is different from the third person!

It’s not wrong to add -(e)st to a long Latinate verb in the past tense, but it’s unusual; it’s much more common to use a helping verb instead:

And a couple last things:

1.) Third-person -(e)th is mostly equivalent to and interchangeable with third-person -s:

HOWEVER! Third-person -(e)th, unlike -s but like -(e)st, can, sometimes, go on STRONG past-tense verbs:

This never happens with weak verbs:

And even with strong verbs, from Early Modern (e.g., Shakespearean) English onward, it’s quite rare. But you will see it from time to time.

2.) In contemporary Modern English, we invert the order of subjects and auxiliary verbs in questions:

If there’s no auxiliary, we add one–do–and invert that:

In Early Modern English, this process was optional, and mostly used for emphasis; all verbs could be and were moved to the front of the sentence in questions:

Do-support was also optional for negatives:

3.) Imperative verbs never take endings:

4.) Singular ‘you’–that is, calling a singular person by a plural pronoun–arose as a politeness marker; and ‘thou’ fell out of use because it eventually came to be seen as impolite in almost all contexts. In general, once singular ‘you’ comes into use, it is used for addressing

‘Thou’ is used for

It is safer to ‘you’ someone who doesn’t necessarily warrant ‘you’ than to ‘thou’ someone who does.

5.) And finally, that ‘ye’? That’s the nominative form of you–the one that’s equivalent to ‘I’ or ‘we.’ 

Any time you’re using ‘thou’ for the singular, the second person plural– ‘y’all’– declines like this:

I feel like Seattle replaced San Francisco at some point in the last ten years as a metonym for the gayest American city. San Francisco's got too much other shit going on anymore.

NPI licensing outside a downward-entailing environment! Some dialects have this. Is it everywhere or just in the scope of too much?

Hey OP, would you find this sentence grammatical:

"San Francisco's got a lot of other shit going on anymore"?

How about this one:

"San Francisco's got shit going on anymore"?

As someone who has actually studied the English language there's a common phrase about English that kinda annoys me because while it makes for a funny haha line it's such a gross oversimplification that it actually ceases to be funny. It's the one that goes "The English language is just three languages stacked on top of each other wearing a trenchcoat" or something to that effect.

I'm not going to go into detail as to why that sentence is inaccurate, just take my word for it as a person with a master's in English. I suggest we withdraw this expression from usage and replace it with the much more accurate "The English language is a dirty little slut that loves it when other languages cum big loads in it"

You know what Tumblr, I don't think this one deserves to be found

Alice Te Punga Somerville, Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised - Kupu rere kē

i love that the english language has evolved in such a way that saying “shit fucks” is a positive thing

@transssminecraftklungo EXCELLENT tags

Poem: I lik the form

My naym is pome / and lo my form is fix’d Tho peepel say / that structure is a jail I am my best / when formats are not mix’d Wen poits play / subversions often fail

Stik out their toung / to rebel with no cause At ruls and norms / In ignorance they call: My words are free / Defying lit'rate laws To lik the forms / brings ruin on us all

A sonnet I / the noblest lit'rate verse And ruls me bind / to paths that Shakespeare paved Iambic fot / allusions well dispersed On my behind / I stately sit and wave

You think me tame /   Fenced-in and penned / bespelled I bide my time /   I twist the end / like hell

* “lik” should be read as “lick”, not “like”. In general, the initial section on each line should be read sort of phonetically.

Written for World Poetry Day, March 21, 2018. When I had this idea earlier today, I thought it was the worst, most faux hip pretentious idea for a shallow demonstration of empty wordsmithing skill in poetry ever. So I had to try to write it. I mean, how often do you get to fuse the iambic dimeter of bredlik - one of the newest and most exciting verse forms - with the stately iambic pentameter of the classic sonnet?

BREDLIK SONNET

wait is this one poem or three?

Holy shit this slaps. Hell no, this isn’t pretentious, this is awesome. I love what language can do, and this is showing it off in a cape with glitter and makeup.

[ID: youtube comment from Hal Sawyer:

My favorite relic English still used everywhere is the word “the” used in phrases like: “the more I look at this, the stranger it seems, or “the bigger they come, the harder they fall”. This “the” is not the article of any noun, it is a different word, a conjunction descended from the old English “þā”, pronounced “tha” which means either “when” or “then”. Back in early Middle English the structure “if - then” had not taken over and if you wanted to express an if - then relationship you said “þā whatever, þā whatever”, meaning “when such-and- such, then such-and-such”. “þā” sounds almost the same as “the” and the spelling of the two converged, but the meaning remained totally different. “the more, the merrier” literally means “when more, then merrier” or “if more, then merrier’; same as centuries ago.

end ID]

this is so cool

WHAT THE FUCK!?

why are magic words so satisfying… arcane, tome, enchant, conjure, sorcery, spellbound, cast, charge, grimoire..

Evoke, divination, pentacle, bisexual, ritual, abjuration..

I need more of these

tag your favorite combo, mine’s “poop goblin”

There was a young man from Peru

Whose limericks stopped at line two

There once was a man from Verdun

There once was a man from the sticks Whose limericks stopped at line six. They were fine till line five Then they took quite a dive — But the problem is easy to fix If you just ignore the last line, it doesn't even follow the rhyme scheme oh god I've really lost control of this thing I'm so sorry...

There once was a man

From Cork who got limericks

And haiku confused.

There once was a man from the sticks

Who liked to compose limericks

But he failed at the sport

Because he wrote them too short

@limerickshere

There once was a fellow named Dan, Whose poetry never would scan. When told this was so, He replied, "Yes, I know-- It's because I try to squeeze as many syllables into the last line as I possibly can."

(TERMINOLOGY NOTE: "productive" means it's regularly used to form new words, as opposed to nonproductive suffixes that generally only appear as part of a static set of established words)

It’s weird to think this comic predates the rise of Internet spam, though otherwise it reads like it could’ve been drawn yesterday.

I've been thinking about the phrase "verbing weirds language" for nearly 30 years

hobbes in the last panel deconstructing twitter decades before it’s invention

Casually adding "Well, I'm phasing" to my lexicon.

fun fact about languages: a linguist who was studying aboriginal languages of Australia finally managed to track down a native speaker of the Mbabaram language in the 60s for his research. they talked a bit and he started by asking for the Mbabaram word for basic nouns. They went back and forth before he asked for the word for “dog” The man replied “dog” They had a bit of a “who’s on first” moment before realizing that, by complete coincidence,  Mbabaram and English both have the exact same word for dog.

on a similar note, a traditional Ojibwe greeting is “Nanaboozhoo” so when the French first landed in southern Canada they thought that they were saying “Bonjour!” Which is fucking wild to think about. Imagine crossing the ocean and the first people you meet in months somehow speak French. 

Given that we famously don’t know the origin of the English word “dog”, I have decided to adopt an utterly batshit folk etymology conspiracy theory. As a treat.

PLEASE reblog, I have heard it on a couple of podcasts now and I'm genuinely curious how common it is! Also, if you feel comfortable with it, let me know what your accent normally is (Midwestern, Southern, New Englander, New Yorker, Minnesotan, whatever).

Please reblog for a bigger sample size!

Reblog this post with your nationality and answer, genuinely curious!!

Reblog for bigger sample size 👍

You can't spell advertisements without putting semen between tits

:)