Re: English *there*

["Raymond A. Brown" <raybrown@clara.co.uk>]

At 3:41 pm -0400 18/6/99, John Cowan wrote:
>It seems from perusing the Kernu Grammar that English *there* is
>a tad archaic by the standards of *here*, which is not too surprising.
>In particular, "thou" and "thee" have been preserved, though their
>matching verb forms have been assimilated to the regular form:
>"thou were", "thou have", and presumably "thou are".  The collapse
>of "ye" into "you" appears to be complete, however.

Interesting - 'thou' and 'thee' have also been preserved in English *here*
in the colloquial speech of many of our northern dialects, where it used
like French 'tu', Welsh 'ti', German 'du' etc.  But the verb has been
assimilated to the regular 3rd person form.   The past of 'to be', however,
is the invariable 'were' in such dialects (whereas in colloquial speech in
the south 'was' is the invariable form, e.g. 'you was', 'they was').

AFAIK 'ye' & 'you' have no been assimilated everywhere *here* also.

Ray.