Answer: What Are the Rules for Archaic Declension and Conjugation?
Reader garonne asked us "What are the rules for archaic declension and conjugation? (thou, art, etc.)" Although we can't present all the details of Early Modern English in the scope of a Fandom Grammar article, we'll take look at some of the most characteristic features of this romantic-sounding ancestor of the language that we use here today.
English is a Germanic language, which means that it's related to the modern languages German and Dutch, among others. Older forms of English were heavily inflected, which means that most words had a number of different forms to indicate their functions within a sentence or exclamation. Some of our most commonly used words in English still retain these forms. For example, the first person singular pronoun is I when it's the subject of a sentence, but me when it's it's the direct or indirect object:
The huntsman knelt at the Queen's feet. "Look at me," she commanded.
He looked up reluctantly. The Queen smiled. Her expression was chilling. "I want you to bring me the lungs and liver of my stepdaughter, Snow White."
With time, many of the other forms have vanished from Modern English. During the period that garonne seems to reference, however, a number of these older forms were still present. This is the form of the language used by playwright William Shakespeare, among others, and because these works are still read and performed, these variations have been preserved. They are often used incorrectly in historical fiction, in a way that is sometimes labeled with the derisive term "speaking forsoothly." Let's take a look at some of the basics of Early Modern English so that our characters can speak something resembling the actual langage of the time, instead.
How Now, Thou!
In Modern English, the second person pronoun is the same in both singular and plural forms:
Said the magic mirror, "You, O Queen, are the fairest in the land."
When Snow White heard the dwarves' proposal, her fears faded. "You are very kind, and I would be glad to care for you and your house," she said.
Early Modern English, however, still had different forms for the singular and plural of this pronoun, just as many other languages still do today:
Said the magic mirror, "Thou, O Queen, art the fairest in the land."
(We'll take a closer look at what the mirror has done with the verb in the next section.)
When Snow White heard the dwarves' proposal, her fears faded. "You are very kind, and I would be glad to care for you and your house," she said.
Now, we could also make a case that the mirror should have addressed the queen as "you" because the plural form was also used in addressing a person's social superior. Again, there are modern languages (such as Spanish) that do something very similar.
This table lays out the forms of the second person pronoun by their grammatical usage:
Number Nominative
(Subject) Accusative
(Object) Genitive
(Possesive) Singular thou thee thy or thine* Plural ye you your or yours
*The difference in usage is much like the difference between the articles "a" and "an": you use "thy" before a consonant and "thine" before a vowel: "thy hand" but "thine ear."
How Art Thou?
In English today, some of the most commonly used verbs are the most irregular. That is to say, while most of today's English verbs follow simple rules in the changes that they undergo to indicate when the action takes place (relative to "now"), others have special forms that often appear to be completely unrelated to the basic word. One of the most striking examples is the verb be, with forms including is, was, were, and others.
In Early Modern English, be is even more complicated, because as in the case of the pronouns we discussed above, it makes a differentiation between the singular and plural of the second person. Remember that the mirror used art rather than are when it was reassuring the queen that she was still the most beautiful? That's because the mirror was making the verb match the singular second person pronoun, thou.
Take a look at the various forms of the verb:
Form Pronoun Present Tense Past Tense First Person Singular I am was Second Person Singular Thou art wert Third Person Singular He, She, It is was First Person Plural We are were Second Person Plural You are were Third Person Plural They are were
You can see that the only real difference between this conjugation and our modern version occurs with the second person singular.
On the other hand, some verbs show a similar variation not only for the second person singular but also for the third person singular. For example:
Snow White peered out the window at the old woman. "What hath she in that great basket?" she wondered to herself. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she opened the shutters and called out to the visitor: "What hast thou in thy basket, old mother?"
Here are the conjugations of some common verbs that show these differences:
Form Pronoun Present Tense Past Tense Have Second Person Singular Thou hast hadst Third Person Singular He, She, It hath had Do Second Person Singular Thou dost didst Third Person Singular He, She, It doth did See Second Person Singular Thou seest sawest Third Person Singular He, She, It seeth saw
Some of the sources linked below can provide other examples, as can a number of other sites online. However, you should note that there's more to writing authentic-sounding Early Modern English than the proper conjugation of verbs and declension of pronouns. Word order and choices are often different, as in the example of Snow White's question to the disguised queen in the example above:
"What hast thou in thy basket, old mother?"
A Snow White who spoke modern U.S. English might say instead:
"What do you have in your basket, ma'am?"
Finally, as in the case of any other non-standard usage, such as eye dialect, be careful that your language choices don't distract from your story. As in the case of other media forms, including film and Web site design, you should remember that special effects draw attention to themselves.
Sources
- Politeness in Early Modern English: the second person pronouns (ENG 121: The Story of English, Department of English, Northern Arizona University)
- Archaic English Grammar (Daniel R. Tobias' Web site)
- Shakespeare's Words (Web site created by David & Ben Crystal as an accompaniment to their book by the same name)
- Personal pronouns in Early Modern English (Spring Woods High School, Houston, TX)
- Speaking Elizabethan - An Introduction (The Guild of St. George, Inc. )
- Conjugation with thou & ye (English/English Only, Wordreference.com)