Challenged the old English pronouns! (probabaly failed horribly and made an ass of myself) Fix it if you want.
Nice to see the SRW and Gundam memes back in full force.
Moonspeaker said:
Polished it a bit.
I'm no NNescio, but a good rule of thumb for the archaic second-person singular pronoun usage is that "thou" is a subject, while "thee" is an object.
Also "thy" before a consonant sound (semivowels/glides "y" and "w" count as consonants) while "thine" goes before vowels. They work like modern English "a/an" (and the two different pronunciations of "the", when unstressed).
Caveat
It does get tricky for words beginning with a "h" sound, because the "h" sometimes gets dropped but sometimes it doesn't, both within the same text too, even. This is unlike modern English where silent "h"s are mostly standardized (at least within the same region, like 'standard' American/British English). So in 'archaic' (i.e. Early Modern English) text like Shakespeare's plays or the KJV Bible you sometimes see "thy hands"/"thine hands" or "thy heart"/"thy heart" used interchangeably*. IIRC Shakespeare h-drops less than the KJV.
*This isn't done at random; usually there is a euphonic reason for doing so, i.e. it sounds better to drop the 'h' in some cases, but not in others. Shakespeare sometimes also sometimes drops the 'h' to reflect contemporary (for his time) socio-dialectical differences, or even to make a pun.
On a related note, "my" and "mine" in 'archaic' English work the same as "thy" and "thine". Also, both "mine" and "thine" are used for the possessive pronoun form, e.g. "This is mine/thine".
Tangential note
Several modern English dialects in both America (e.g. Quakers) and England (e.g. 'Oop North' and West Country) continue to use some of these archaisms in the present day. They don't necessarily follow the same grammar though; a lot of these dialects will use "thee" (sometimes shortened to 'ee) for all cases even in the nominal (sentence subject) position.
This pops up a few times in my TL notes, as I use West Country to approximate the Hiroshima dialect, like for KC Urakaze and Instant Ramen Nisshin.
Neither of them is mine...but I wanted both...One will definitely grant thee both of them...Oh~poor child, didst thou accidentally drop thy Colossal Blade into the sea?The REAL Helmwige?
It's actually called the Valkyrja Buster Sword. Helmwige (or Helmwige Reincar) is the name of the Mobile Suit itself.
However, due to the Mobile Suit's lack of actual action during its first appearance, some fans jokingly called it a "sword holder with limbs", or attributed the name "Helmwige" to its iconic weapon.It is all right, because I...One is the Goddess of the Sea, and One can help thee retrieve thy lost weapon.
So...I...I wanted both...Didst thou drop this?A weapon that can shapeshift as desired, into both an anti-ship blade and a beam rifle?Or didst thou drop this?The Orgone Rifle/Sword?A weapon that can be used in combination with single-handed swords, has exceptional weight, and is powerful enough to smash the head of a Hashmal in one hit?All right, all right, since thou hast replied with honesty...
Start Building!Episode 53: A reminder from the goddess of the sea: be vigilant about temptations
