Line #35 Analysis/YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe


1	Works use "old English" (i.e., to use a less ambiguous term, Early Modern English) incorrectly all the time. There's actually a lot to unpack from just the name of the trope:
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3	!!"Ye" is just "the" with a funny letter
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5	As stated in the main page, the "ye" derives from an attempt to render "þe" without having the benefit of the "þ" character (sometimes called the ''thorn''), because imported printing type came from Germany and the Netherlands, which didn't have the letter. In Old and Middle English, it stood for both of the sounds the digraph "th" is used for today, representing both the voiceless "th" in "thin" and the voiced one of "that". In modern-day Icelandic, which isn't ''too'' different from Early Modern English (as you can see in our article on the UsefulNotes/HistoryOfEnglish), you still see "þ" (though in Icelandic that strictly stands for the voiceless "thin" sound; the voiced "that" sound is represented by "ð"[[note]]Which itself was used in Old English interchangeably with þ to represent both the voiced and voiceless sounds; whether you used þ, ð or "th" in a word was largely a matter of convention, tradition, and personal preference. However, it fell out of favor much earlier in England, during the early Middle English period.[[/note]]).
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7	In fact, the "þ" had already been falling out of favour as early as the period of Early Modern English, being replaced with the familiar "th", and for the most part it was only used in the word "the" as a sort of shorthand. But printers at the time still wanted to be able to use the shorthand, and in the common [[UsefulNotes/{{Fonts}} blackletter font]] of the time, the "y" looked as close to the "þ" as any other letter (regardless of how it looks nowadays). In any event, no speaker of Early Modern English would ever ''pronounce'' the word as if it started with a "y".
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9	The "ſ" (not pronounced "f") is also more than just a fancy "s" -- there are rules on where to put it. Until the early 19th century, this was how to render an "s" at the beginning and middle of a syllable. This is why they don't double up -- a word ending in "ss" would be rendered with "ſs" (''e.g.'' succeſs). It also comes from German, which calls the character an ''Eszett'' or sharp "s", which was also sometimes written with a second "z" instead of an "s" -- in fact, "ſz" was made into another funny-letter ligature seen in modern German, "ß" (not pronounced "b").[[note]]"ſ" is also not to be confused with "ʃ", a similar-looking letter used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to reference the "sh" sound.[[/note]]
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11	!!Get your thees and thous right
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13	English of the time preserved what linguists call the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_distinction T-V distinction]]", with different second-person pronouns for singular and plural, with the plural also being used in formal circumstances. "You" was the plural version, whereas "thou" and "thee" were the second-person singular "you". The distinction is very much preserved in many other modern European languages, like French (''tu'' for singular, ''vous'' for plural), German (''du'' for singular, ''ihr'' for plural), and Spanish (''tú'' for singular, ''vosotros'' for plural). But other European languages might fudge these for reasons of formality as well -- in French, ''vous'' is also a singular second-person formal pronoun, whereas German has its own separate word (''Sie''), as does Spanish (''usted'', with some additional complications)[[note]]Spanish is weird here because of [[UsefulNotes/SeparatedByACommonLanguage the differences between European and Latin American Spanish]]. The key points here are that (1) ''usted'' has its own plural form, ''ustedes'', in all dialects and (2) Latin American Spanish does not use ''vosotros'' at all. The effect of this is that in European Spanish ''vosotros'' is the plural equivalent of ''tú'' while ''ustedes'' is the plural equivalent of ''usted'', but in Latin America ''all'' second-person plural is ''ustedes'' regardless of formality. To clarify: A Spaniard coming back to their hometown and asking their siblings "Hey, which restaurant did y'all pick to surprise Mami and Papi for their 40th anniversary?" would use ''vosotros'' for "y'all", but a Mexican asking the same question would use ''ustedes''.[[/note]] This causes a bit of confusion regarding where exactly the dichotomy lies with the Middle English "you", which started out as just an all-purpose second-person plural pronoun but picked up the singular-formal version after the Normans invaded England -- and brought their silly French distinctions with them. You can also tell how English started out as a Germanic language by the similar-sounding "thou" and "du" likely coming from the same place.
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15	Part of the problem with modern-day common usage of "thou" and "thee" is that people understand the T-V distinction, but mistakenly think that "thou" is the formal version, when it's actually the ''informal'' version. This might come from misunderstanding of the [[Literature/TheBible King James Bible]], which used "thou" to refer to God and a lot of other important religious figures. However, this is just because the writers of the King James Bible wanted to preserve the singular-plural distinction present in the original Hebrew pronouns and thus used "thou" for all second-person singular pronouns. And furthermore, there's also a longstanding tradition of using the more informal "thou" when speaking to God in many European languages (''e.g.'' using ''tu'' in French or ''tú'' in Spanish), meant to denote a familiarity with one's God and an ability to speak more openly with said God. (Quakers took it a step further and did this with ''everyone'', which wasn't particularly good for their reputation.) But the mystique of the King James Bible, which is one of the best-known English-language literary works of the era, gives it a sort of greater gravity which gives its use of "thou" an added layer of distinction (and also gave us the other HollywoodApocrypha trope variants).
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17	"Ye" is a little problematic in this sense -- it was an ''actual'' word at the time, being the second-person plural nominative case -- it was to "you" as "thou" is to "thee" and "I" is to "me". People also kind of struggle with this distinction between "thou" and "thee", as well as possessives "thy" and "thine" (which should be used the same as "my" and "mine", respectively). But there's a twist with the possessives -- it's "thine" before a word starting with a vowel (''e.g.'' "thine eyes"), but the same applies to "mine" (''e.g.'' "[[EyeScream Mine eyes!]]"), which is another one of those "archaic" English things that Hollywood doesn't always get right.[[note]]"None" for "no" is another one of these vowel things -- by Shakespeare's time it had already fallen out of use, but the King James Bible still used it on occasion, ''e.g.'' "none effect".[[/note]]
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19	This being said, "ye" and "you" were occasionally used interchangeably, or at least much more fluidly than pronouns like "I" and "me", and Shakespeare had a habit of using "you" for both nominative and objective purposes. The King James Bible, though, exclusively uses "ye" for nominative and "you" for objective.
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21	!!Spellynge is harde
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23	The silent "e" is somewhat TruthInTelevision, as before the mid-18th century, there had been no official spelling anywhere in the English language. People could -- and did -- spell words however they damn well pleased, which is how we get quotes like [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equals_sign#History "…bicauſe noe .2. thynges, can be moare equalle."]] Medieval writers were also just as prone to spelling mistakes as modern writers, but they didn't have the means to restart the entire page just to fix a typo -- and because there was no standardized spelling, copyists wouldn't necessarily see it as a mistake and would preserve the error. There had also been a [[UsefulNotes/HistoryOfEnglish Great Vowel Shift]] in the Middle Ages, and a word's spelling no longer gave much indication as to its pronunciation.
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25	In fact, this creates some issues in pronouncing words in the past tense ending in "-ed" -- in the old days, the vowel in "-ed" was pronounced, something you still hear in modern words like "crooked" or "learned" (as in "learned society"). If you see things like "learn'd" in old poetry; this was meant to indicate that the vowel was to be contracted (and thus pronounced much like we do today). Nowadays, some texts will do the opposite and use an accent to indicate that the vowel ''is'' pronounced (''e.g.'' "learnèd").
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27	!!Conjugation doth be harder
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29	Works like to throw in archaic conjugations like "doth" and "hast" and putting "-eth" at the end of every sentence. It makes one wonder the state of the education system when they aren't sure how conjugation works, exactly.
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31	See, English is actually a pretty easy language for verb conjugation, because the vast majority of words only change in the third-person singular (''e.g.'' he[=/=]she[=/=]it love'''s''', but just I/you/we/they love). But basically every other European language has five or six different such forms, including German (ich liebe, du liebst, er[=/=]sie[=/=]es liebt, wie lieben, ihr liebt, sie lieben). And if you can see how the German works, you can see how older English conjugation works -- "du liebst" becomes "thou lovest", and "er liebt" becomes "he loveth". Even with the irregular conjugations it can be obvious -- ''e.g.'' "du hast" becomes "thou hast", and "du würdest" becomes "thou wouldst". You're starting to see a trend -- it helps if you know German.
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33	It's therefore not so simple to put "eth" at the end of everything -- it only applies to third-person singular. "Thou loveth" is incorrect conjugation, and it's just as "archaic" to use the correct "thou lovest". Think of it as just a replacement for "-s", so you shouldn't use it where "-s" wouldn't be used today. For example, it shouldn't be used in the imperative (''e.g.'' not "loveth me!", because that would be like saying "loves me!") or where it is not the main verb (''e.g.'' not "dost thou lovest me?", because that would be like "do you loves me?").
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35	The verb "to be" has the most irregular conjugation, in both modern and Early Modern English, so it's again not so simple to just say "he beest" or "he art" -- it actually hasn't changed much from back in the day, and you can see how different the words are from each other (I am, you are, he[=/=]she[=/=]it is, we are, they are). The main addition is "thou", which as you'll know is "thou art". "He art" or anything like that is again incorrect. There was an old subjunctive form "beest" (albeit already out of use by the time of the King James Bible or Creator/WilliamShakespeare), and the past tense "wast" (and occasional subjunctive variant "wert") could be seen as well.
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37	The "-en" ending for the plural also existed in very old English (''e.g.'' "we asken thee"), much as it exists in modern German[[note]]but only for the first and third person plural[[/note]] and Dutch. You see this ''occasionally'' in Shakespeare and his contemporaries, but that was designed to be archaic -- ''i.e.'' Shakespeare [[JustForFun/TheZerothLawOfTropeExamples did it first]].[[note]]Ben Jonson noted in his grammar that it had died out by the reign of King Henry VIII -- which he complained about, because he liked the disambiguity of it and thought that its disuse would be "a great blemish to our tongue."[[/note]] Shakespeare also occasionally used "-s" (and even "-eth") with a plural subject, which was mostly considered by later grammarians and editors as either outright mistakes or hammering the words in to fit the rhythm or rhyme.
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39	!!Wherefore dost thou use incorrect pronouns?
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41	"Archaic" English also made use of fancy pronouns, which not everyone used correctly. For example, "wherefore" isn't a fancy way of saying "where", but rather asking ''why'' -- so when [[Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet Juliet asks]], "Wherefore art thou Romeo?", she's not wondering where he is, she's wondering [[StarCrossedLovers why he has to be who he is]]. Modern English still uses "therefore", which is similar to "because" -- if you think of it meaning "because of that", "wherefore" means "because of what" -- ''i.e.'' "why".
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43	Similarly, we have words like "whence", "thence", and "hence", which mean "from where", "from there", and "from here", respectively. You may see people snarkily observe that "from whence" is redundant, but it was nonetheless correct; it's another type of grammatical agreement, just like how "thou dost" marks the second person on both the pronoun and the verb. There's also "whither", "thither", and "hither", respectively meaning "to where", "to there", and "to here", respectively. "Where", "there", and "here" were generally only used to refer to a location and not a goal or a source. This means that "the road there", "the road thither", and "the road thence" mean completely different things.
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45	"Yon" is a sort of [[TakeAThirdOption third option]] to "this/here" and "that/there", for things and places far away from both the speaker and the addressee, ''i.e.'' "over there". As alternative forms, it has "yond" (which we can see in "beyond") and "yonder", which also goes with "hither" and "thither" (''e.g.'' being [[ReassignedToAntarctica reassigned yonder]]). "Yon" and these alternatives could also be used as a determiner, and they didn't have a plural form; while you would say "this house" and "these houses", it's "yon house" and "yon houses".
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47	!![[StrangeSyntaxSpeaker Speak Old English]] [[Characters/StarWars Yoda]] did not
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49	Another way for writers to give an "archaic" feel is to change the order of the words around. This only works in certain situations:
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51	Early Modern English and Modern English reverse the word order in questions in different ways. While a modern English speaker would say, "Where did he see it?", in Early Modern English that wouldn't have been wrong, but you'd be more likely to say, "Where saw he it?" This is actually simpler than how modern English does it -- it just moves the subject on the other side of the verb, not having to use an extra auxiliary verb (in this case "did" or "do"). You still see this sometimes in modern English with the verbs "be" or "have", but it's seen as excessively formal or old-fashioned (''e.g.'' "Have you any money to spare?").
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53	Negatives worked the same way -- whereas a modern English speaker would say, "I do not know", Early Modern English would be more likely to drop the "do" and simply say, "I know not." It's a bit more complicated with a direct object, as it's equally valid in Early Modern English to say, "he loves not me" and "he loves me not" (the latter is what German would do). And again, there are remnants of this in modern English with certain verbs (''e.g.'' "I haven't the foggiest idea").
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55	Speaking of "haven't", contractions were slightly different in Early Modern English as well -- they tended to do it more often. Early Modern English preferred to attach contractions to the pronoun than the verb -- ''e.g.'' while you could say "I wouldn't", it would be more common to say "I'd not". You also see things like "e'en" for "even", "th'" for "the", "'t" for "it", and "o'er" for "over". And instead of "it's", you may see "'tis", like in "[[Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail 'tis but a scratch]]".
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57	!!IfIHadANickel for every misuse of the subjunctive, I could buy all of Hollywood
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59	The use of grammatical ''mood'' in Early Modern English was somewhat stricter than we see today. You know the indicative mood (''i.e.'' most sentences), and you know the imperative mood (which is why you say "{{get out}}" instead of "gets out"). But then there's the subjunctive mood, which is usually used for conditionals -- ''e.g.'' "{{if I had a nickel}}" instead of "if I have a nickel". There's a certain distinction to these two sentences -- the latter implies that you don't know if you have a nickel, while the former implies that you know you don't have a nickel, you're just thinking about what you'd do if you did. Unfortunately, writers tend to think of the subjunctive as a fancy way of speaking in Early Modern English and use it for the indicative mood -- some medieval peasant would say "had I a gold coin" whether or not he knew he had a gold coin. Consider also the difference between "though he slay men" and "though he slays men" -- because the former implies doubt that he actually ''does'' slay men, so "though" should really mean "even if". It's admittedly a bit tricky.
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61	One form of the subjunctive looks like the past tense, but shouldn't be confused with it: [[Theatre/FiddlerOnTheRoof "If I were a rich man"]] is ''present'' subjunctive. (The corresponding past subjunctive would be "If I ''had been'' a rich man".)
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63	The subjunctive's wider use in the old days can also be seen in time clauses (''e.g.'' "Leave before my master find thee", because the finding hasn't happened yet and may never happen) and purpose clauses (''e.g.'' "See to it that they be given treasure", because the treasure hasn't been given yet and may never happen -- although were that to happen, it would be a real dick move). This kind of construction can still be seen today in "lest" clauses (''e.g.'' "Leave lest he catch you").

Context Analysis / YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe