Today, I am discussing the use of personal pronouns in English, as they relate to the subject of the verb. In future videos, I will talk about the other types of personal pronouns including those relating to the object, and also possessives.
I would like to welcome captioner and transcriptionist Viviane Blais to WilderWords. Viviane is a genius with subtitles and captions for film and video, and she has graciously agreed to add subtitles to my videos to make it easier for beginners to follow.
Tu in English
In the video, I mention that there used to be an English equivalent to the French tu. That word was ‘thou’. In fact, if I can jump ahead a video or two, the whole table of personal pronouns was originally quite different.
Subject Object Possessive
1st Person (singular) I Me My (or Mine)
1st Person (plural) We Us Our (or Ours)
2nd Person (singular) Thou Thee Thy (or Thine)
2nd Person (plural) Ye You Your (or Yours)
3rd Person (singular) He/She/It Him/Her/It His/Hers/Its
3rd Person (plural) They Them Their (or Theirs)
So we can see that, up until the mid-17th Century (later in some regions of England and Scotland) the entire catalogue of second person pronouns is quite different. Even ‘you’ in the plural was different. Many bibles and theological texts were written in this more intimate usage to reflect the personal relationship that worshipers were supposed to have with the Deity.
