Re: OT: My first published hypertext up on BathHouse

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 06:41:07 +0100, Remi Villatel <maxilys@...> wrote:
> A bit of conculture...
>
> The Shaqueans don't say "Hello" or "Good bye". When two Shaqueans meet, they
> usually ask /ri'rja ?/ which literally means "Do/Are/Have thou?" but which
> actually means "Can I speak to thee?" or "What can I do for thee?" depending
> on which one speaks first. It's the way to ask "Can we interact now?" or "Do
> thou allow me to enter thy personal space?".
For me, some of those sentences are ungrammatical, since the "thou"
form takes specific personal endings on the verb -- I would say
"Dost/art/hast thou?" and "Dost thou allow me...".

Saying "Do/are/have thou" is as ungrammatical for me as "do/are/have he".

Incidentally, those old forms make a distinction between "do" as
auxiliary verb and "do" as full verb: as an auxiliary, it's "thou
dost" /dVst/, while as a full verb, it's "thou doest" /du:@st/. (And
in a style that uses "thou", I'd also use the third person singular
ending -th rather than -s, and make the same distinction: "he doth"
/dVT/ vs "he doeth" /du:@T/, and say "he hath", "he speaketh". I might
also make a distinction between "ye" [2pl, subject] and "you" [2pl,
object]. All this is based on the language in the King James Version
of the Bible.)

I'm not sure whether you were aware of these conjugation forms for
"thou", which is why I pointed them out.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Watch the Reply-To!

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