NO ONE knows how to use thou/thee/thy/thine and i need to see that change if ur going to keep making “talking like a medieval peasant” jokes. /lh
They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.
So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:
“I” → “thou”
“Me” → “thee”
“My” → “thy”
“Mine” → “thine”
Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.
We could first imagine it in the first person-
“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.
And then replace it-
“Thou hast a cow. He gave it to thee. It is thy cow. The cow is thine.”
The thing about a Midwestern politician calling people "weird," isn't just that "weird" means "anti-social" in Midwestern-ese, it's that commenting on behavior at all is a condemnation. Midwesterners turn the most neutral statements into scorching disapproval.
In Appalachia, they will come up with the more colorful, creative metaphor or simile imaginable. In the South, they will use some phrase that has 3-5 different meanings that it's legitimately used in so they have plausible deniability to tell someone else they just read the situation and usage wrong.
But Midwesterners are mostly "keep your eyes on your own paper" people. We can be helpful and kind, but for the most part, we are just not gonna comment on what you are doing for good or ill. Most of us do not take compliments any better than insults. There's a lot of tall poppy syndrome around.
So if Midwesterners comment, that comment means, "I am Noticing what you are doing, and I had damned well better Stop Noticing it right quick."
It's why "weird" means "anti-social." It means, "This stands out, and it stands out so much I'm going to have to say something despite everything in me telling me to mind my own business."
It's why you hear us say things like, "Well, that's different," and "Isn't that something," and "He's doing his best, isn't he?" and, "They're just weird." It is all said with the most skepticism possible.
being bilingual is awesome. just being able to communicate in another language in itself is so cool but one aspect we don't talk about just as much is the access to information. like, right at your fingertips. just looking stuff on google and realizing wait. I could look up the same thing but in english and I'll get different results?? absolutely changed my life. I actually realized that embarrassingly late in my studies but now it's practically become a habit of mine.
looking up that wikipedia page and it's not very detailed? switch the language. looking up an event/phenomenon/whatever for a paper but you can't seem to find much on it? switch the language. world news that haven't be covered in your country? swith the language.
learning a second language has like. expanded my world view and my range of possibilities so much it's incredible. of course not every language has as much documentation available online, and english is very much at an advantage in that field, but there is a community for every culture out there. and realizing you can actually be a small part of it because you speak the language is a feeling like no other.
I wish I knew other languages so I could learn things the english and french speaking worlds are not knowledgeable about. I wish I knew every language, but alas, we only have so much time....
Knut ♤ He/Him ♤ 2005
Profile picture is mine and header is creative commons
this video has been going around for a while but the English subtitles didn't match the energy of the spoken French at all. i had to fix it.
reblog to spread this version