Costentin Cornomorus scripsit:
> English never did the politeness thing properly
> (we did it sort of half assed for a while and
> kind of gave up) yet most dialects still lost the
> distinction.
That's because the distinction (though not the actual words) was
borrowed from French: OE shows no trace of it.
--
John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com
"In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
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--Gerald Holton