3 votes

Wit, unker, git: The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy

Posted by mat
Tags: duplicate post, history, english.old, 12th century, pronouns.personal, pronouns.dual, poetry, wulf and eadwacer, english.middle, 8th century, beowulf, norman conquest, vikings, norse.old, pronouns.gender neutral, 14th century, william and the werewolf, the pardoners prologue, geoffrey chaucer, multilingualism, language, french, author.sophie hardach, source.bbc future
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20260408-the-extinct-english-words-for-just-the-two-of-us

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Authors
Sophie Hardach
Word count
1670 words

5 comments

  1. [2]
    mat
    Link
    Interesting read but also handy to keep around if you find someone complaining about how pronouns aren't what they used to be.

    Which word would you use to refer to yourself? "I", presumably, in the singular. And how about you and a group of people? "We", of course, in the plural.

    But how about you and one other person?

    In modern English, there is no word for that. You would probably just use "we" or "the two of us".

    But more than 1,000 years ago, you would have said: "wit".

    Interesting read but also handy to keep around if you find someone complaining about how pronouns aren't what they used to be.

    1 vote
    1. TaylorSwiftsPickles
      Link Parent
      Reminds me of what I did with one of my conlangs. One of them has no "singular" form, only dual and plural. So if you want to say "I", what you're actually saying is "we (dual, exclusive). When...

      Reminds me of what I did with one of my conlangs.
      One of them has no "singular" form, only dual and plural. So if you want to say "I", what you're actually saying is "we (dual, exclusive). When you say "us two", you're actually saying "we (dual, inclusive)". And then, in plural, there's a "we are ____, yourself included" and a "we are _____, yourself not included".

  2. [3]
    mycketforvirrad
    Link
    Previous discussions can be found here.

    Previous discussions can be found here.

    1. [2]
      mat
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Ah. That's interesting - I searched for the url and got no results so assumed it hadn't been posted. Feel free to delete this post then. edit: is this how I find out that searching for urls isn't...

      Ah. That's interesting - I searched for the url and got no results so assumed it hadn't been posted.

      Feel free to delete this post then.

      edit: is this how I find out that searching for urls isn't how we're supposed to do it?