Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad

On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 03:22:37PM +0100, michael poxon wrote:
> I think of Shelley's "Bird thou never wert" but apart from that have never
> come across "wert".
Apparently, "wert" was the subjunctive form.  At least, that's what Mr. Cowan
said, and I have no reason to doubt him. :)

> Isn't the difference between thou and thee one of
> grammar? Thou is subject with ending -(s)t, whereas thee is object.
> Yorkshire dialect regularly has 'sithee' /siDi/ meaning "I'll see you" and
> forms such as 'tha knows' /Da nOz/ for "you know". Forms like "thee are" and
> "thee were" sound weird, at least to me.
True, the pronoun "thee" was indeed originally the object form rather
than the subject form - but then, so was "you"(*). Languages have
this annoying tendency to change. :)

I think the use of "thee" for both subject and object cases is primarily
associated with the Pennsylvania Dutch.

-Mark

(*) Is it generally true that the object form is favored when there's
a subject/object case-collapse in a pronoun?