Early Modern English Grammar©

• The Second Person Familiar
Modern English has dropped a set of pronouns and verbs called the "familiar" or "thee and thou" forms once used among close friends and family and to children, inferiors, animals, and inanimate objects.  These old forms did, though, survive into Elizabethan England and appear frequently in Shakespeare.  They correspond roughly to the tu forms of the Romance languages, the ty forms of the Slavic languages, the su forms of Greek, and the kimi forms of Japanese.

	Singular	Plural	
	1st	2nd	3rd	1st	2nd	3rd	
Subject  [nominative]	I	thou	he/she/it	we	you	they	
Object  [accusative]	me	thee	him/her/it	us	you	them	
Possessive adjective [genitive]	my
mine*	thy
thine*	his/her/its	our	your	their	
Possessive pronoun	mine	thine	his/hers/its	ours	yours	theirs	
	*Substitute forms used before a noun beginning with a vowel

• Second person familiar verb inflections

Second person singular (familiar):  adds the ending  ‑est, ‑‘st, or ‑st.

Examples:	thou givest,  thou sing’st

Some irregular verbs:

present:	you	are	have	will	can	shall	do	
	thou	art	hast	wilt	canst	shalt	dost	

past:	you	were	had	would	could	should	did	
	thou	wast	hadst	wouldst	couldst	shouldst	didst	

The negative is of the second person familiar is formed by adding the word not after the verb.

Examples:	thou art not,  thou canst not, thou couldst not

• Third person singular verb inflections

	The third person singular often substitutes  ‑th  for  ‑s.

Examples: 	she giveth (for she gives), it raineth every day (for rains).

© 1994 Skip Nicholson; All Rights Reserved