Re: Old Norse (was Re: New to the list)

Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
> I
> see this as the single most annoying, confusing, and intolerable part of the
> language: failure to make a singular-plural distinction in the second person
> pronouns.
I agree.  English is quite irritating about that.

> "You guys" can't always cover the plural, as it's very colloquial
There's also "y'all", "youse", "you-uns" and "you people" in various
dialects.  I can see a time when "you" is restricted solely to singular,
and the plural varies from dialect to dialect.

> One of those things I don't really understand how they
> could happen
Basically, "you" was used to be polite, and later "thou" fell into
disuse, supposedly because of the Quakers who said "thou" to everyone,
whether king or peasant.

> (as well as the overuse of the /-s/ morphophoneme).
:-)  Let's see: there's plural, genitive, genitive plural, third person
singular present indicative, contracted form of is, cont. form of has,
cont. form of us (only in let's), any more?  :-)

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