My biggest side project is about grammatical gender in French, published as a research project on wikiversity[1].
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.
[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.
I found this article quite interesting, and couldn't help but feel there's something that's emotionally lost when we got rid of the dual-forms. The example from Wulf and Eadwacer where "uncer giedd" was translated to "the song of the two of us".
Boy that unc/uncer looks tantalisingly close to modern German uns/unser. Wiktionary seems to have it descending from a different PIE root, n̥s vs n̥h -- I'm not at all familiar with PIE though.
n̥ is just the "not" prefix. The "ero" is the real root. The prefix applies to the root first, and then the other pieces have their meanings, usually. (Its a reconstructed language. There are both exceptions and things we don't know.)
"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.
That was my first thought too! So many things in old-english are very very close to modern German, so it's sometimes surprising to see these false-friends.
Also sad is the fact that “you” is now used for “thee” and “thou” and such. The older variants could distinguish between “you” plural and “you” singular
You, y'all (small close group), y'all all (larger, further group), and "all y'all" — Southeast Texas (coastal) dialect form that showed up about 25 yrs ago. I suspect it might've been there all along, but only became acceptable at that point?
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.
Forms of it persists in regional dialects, its not super common anymore but in Yorkshire I still here "dees" and "thas", "yous" also persist as another form of the plural you.
I wonder how it evolved into the modern British slang of “git”. To quote Wikipedia [0]
“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".”
My biggest side project is about grammatical gender in French, published as a research project on wikiversity[1].
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.
I found this article quite interesting, and couldn't help but feel there's something that's emotionally lost when we got rid of the dual-forms. The example from Wulf and Eadwacer where "uncer giedd" was translated to "the song of the two of us".
Somehow that just doesn't land the same.
> Somehow that just doesn't land the same.
I fear that a modern colloquial rendering would disappoint yet further:
If you found this interesting, you might want to check out The History of the English Language podcast.
I’m surprised how much I’m enjoying it. And I can’t believe I have 195 episodes left.
If you are interested in Wulf and Eadwacer it is beautifully sung here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6-QagSE7sFY
Boy that unc/uncer looks tantalisingly close to modern German uns/unser. Wiktionary seems to have it descending from a different PIE root, n̥s vs n̥h -- I'm not at all familiar with PIE though.
n̥ is just the "not" prefix. The "ero" is the real root. The prefix applies to the root first, and then the other pieces have their meanings, usually. (Its a reconstructed language. There are both exceptions and things we don't know.)
"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.
I've never heard of it being based on that root before. Do you have a source?
That was my first thought too! So many things in old-english are very very close to modern German, so it's sometimes surprising to see these false-friends.
Also sad is the fact that “you” is now used for “thee” and “thou” and such. The older variants could distinguish between “you” plural and “you” singular
W'all have got y'all for plural you.
You, y'all (small close group), y'all all (larger, further group), and "all y'all" — Southeast Texas (coastal) dialect form that showed up about 25 yrs ago. I suspect it might've been there all along, but only became acceptable at that point?
Another 100+ years, and this'll be some solid grammar.
Don’t forget you’uns or yinz!
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.
That has to be more than 25 years
I grew up in Houston saying all that in the 80s
Forms of it persists in regional dialects, its not super common anymore but in Yorkshire I still here "dees" and "thas", "yous" also persist as another form of the plural you.
You two add
You two commit
You two push
u2 add u2 commit u2 push
Us3
If you're interested in history of English, I'd highly recommend the History of English podcast. https://historyofenglishpodcast.com
For anyone curious as me:
git means You two.
I wonder how it evolved into the modern British slang of “git”. To quote Wikipedia [0]
“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".”
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(slang)
> 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"
There appears to be nothing linking Old English "git" with Modern English "git". Also, OEng "git" would've been pronounced more like "yit".
"Listen baby, they're playing uncer song..."
"Git should get a room!"
Of course. It's distributed.
Another fun pronoun distinction I have seen is having two forms of "we" - one including the person you are talking to, and one excluding them.
(To clarify this was in Hokkien, not Anglo-Saxon).
Like "us but not you"? That's mean.
Yeah it iw called the exclusive form lol.
But if you think about it seems normal... "we went to the city" is not really mean.