🚀 go-pugleaf

g9rwaigh@cdf.toronto.edu (Rosemary Waigh) writes:
>
>I know no one my age who rejects the semantically singular "they", except
>perhaps in extremely formal writing.  Could we perhaps be seeing a spreading
>of "they" analogous to the replacement of "thou" (singular) by "you" (plural)?

Hm, interesting thought.

I heard once that we have the "ye" in "Ye Olde Coffeee Shoppe" because,
back in Olden Days, a character called the "thorn" was commonly used for
"th."  It looked like "|>":  a vertical line with a triangle stuck to
its side.  When the printing press became common, the story goes,
printers would substitute a "y" for the thorn (don't ask me, er, why).

I also heard once that, back in Olden Days, English did indeed have a
formal/plural "thee" and "thou."  They, the 2nd person plurals, were
used as formal 2nd person singulars, just as German (e.g.) still uses
the 3rd person plural as a formal 2nd person singular.  But when all the
Olden people died, the impolite young'uns dropped the formal.

Does anyone know which, if either, of these apocrypha is correct?

[BTW, this is cross-posted to misc.test so it will actually leave this
site;  un-cross-posted a.u.e articles don't.  Please respect the
followup-to, or you'll unduly annoy all the misc.test readers.  :-]
-- 
 Jamie McCarthy      Internet: k044477@kzoo.edu      AppleLink: j.mccarthy
 "This sounds like a semantico-psychological backwardization of the
  real world image."   - Dave Bloom (bloomda@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu)