so ... i'm trying to do more reading and self-teaching
in celebration of my recent discoveries i'm dedicating this post to one of those new discoveries
a long, long time ago, there used to be a second person singular pronoun which differed from the second person plural. there used to be a difference in speech when referring to 'you' vs. 'you people'. bible readers know what i'm talking about. take, for example, the following table which shows what the Present Simple forms of the verb "be" would have been back in the old days:
| Singular | Plural | |
| 1st Person | I am | We are |
| 2nd Person | Thou art | You are |
| 3rd Person | He/She/It is | They are |
the only reason i read up on this is because i wanted to know why 2nd person was the same for singular and plural. these days 'you' means 'you' - a non-ambiguous reference to one person. can you imagine that kid on the commercial saying, 'hey, thou sunk my battleship!' or Uncle Sam saying, 'i want thou for U.S. Army'? *giggle* it sounds funny. (but then again, these are common expressions: 'holier than thou' and 'fare thee well'.) anywho, language doctors say that the invention of speech for addressing many people at once - a new 2nd person plural, if you will (see list below) - is called leveling by morphological analogy - a legitimate linguistic development. how cool is that?!
- yous
- you guys
- you people
- yall
- yuns
[alphaDictionary Source.][Wikipedia Source.]
5 comments:
Thou hath made me feel stupid..er. :p
For years I have been haunted by what I consider the incorrectness of "the reason why" or “the reason is because.” Isn’t this redundant? Doesn’t the word “reason” imply the “why” or “because.” Since you are on this quest for knowledge, will you please undertake this assignment and report to all of us the proper vernacular. The reason why I’m not doing the research myself is because I’m too lazy.
haven't you already cracked that nut?
taken straight out of my trusty dusty "A Writer's Reference":
reason is because
Use that instead of because. The reason I'm late is that [not because] my car broke down.
reason why
The expression reason why is redundant. The reason [not The reason why] Jones last the election is clear.
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! So many times I HEAR and READ the incorrect uses - in books, articles and in speeches! I’m going to copy and paste your response and keep a supply on hand to mail to the multitudes of offenders!
go getem tiger! hahaha, yeah, you'll find this "rule" "broken" in written and spoken english all over the place! i do it too.
btw, i realized a made a typo. here is correction:
reason why
The expression reason why is redundant. The reason [not The reason why] Jones ~lost~ the election is clear.
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