Engish 2sg/pl

Stone Gordenssen

<My English might be atypical - I learned to speak from television,
picking
<up that mid-west USA accent de rigueur on TV during the 1950s and
1960s.
<Even that has shifted over the years to include in my spoken English
both
<"y'all" [ja:l] (hate English's lacks of a clear 2pl) and "eh" [e:\_R]
as a
<postive tag to questions, plus oddities such as "accent" ["{k.sEnt_d]
and
<"dog" [daG\], and dropping overly obvious prounouns.
<Y'all are coming with, eh?
<[<F>"ja:lar "kVmiN wIT e:\_R]


I also hate the fact that English has difficulties distinguishing
between 2 sg and pl. Especially when writing grammars and you don't have
an exact equivalent! Historically spoken English lacks a 2sg rather than
a 2pl as <you> goes back to the object form of 2pl. In my dialect, or I
should rather say my grandad's, bacause my generation doesn't use it
anymore, the distinction was still in place. In his Lancashire dialect
he used to say "tha" for the familiar singular and "ya"/"you" for the
plural, and when speaking "proper". One still hears older people using
phrases such as "tha knows it, dussen't?", "where 'asta bin" and the
like.

Dan

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