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Episode 55: To Be or Not To Be

The History of English Podcast

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Old English Forms Survived

In old english, whenever you used the verb thou, you had to give the verb an s t ending. So we deem, you all deem, and they deem were all dameth. That specific s t or t ending died out shortly shakespeare. And in fact, since it was usually used with thou, they both died out together. But what about that traditional single pronoun, thou? Well, thou was the old pronoun form inher from the anglo saxons. As we look through the writings of sh Shakespeare, we find that he used thou seest instead of you see,. Thou dost instead of you do. Sometimes the ending was just shortened to t sound. so we find

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