Speaking Of Language...

[Sailor Steve]

A recent exchange in the 'Ask The Next Person A Question" thread has raised another peeve of mine - The mangling of Middle English. The simple rule of pretending to use the old phrasing is this: The 'th' ending replaces the modern 's' ending. Period. So when people think they're being cute by using old phrasing they often look silly and lame instead. Some examples (I'll leave names out of it):

Dost thou liketh Shakespeare-eth?

Translates to "Do you likes Shakespeare-s?

The correct phrase would be "Dost though like Shakespeare?"

Dost thou liketh Shakespeare's style of writing?

Same thing. It's the same as asking "Do you likes Shakespeare's style of writing?" Shakespeare would never make that mistake.

My baseball doth breaketh Frau Kaleun's window on the summer's eve.

Equals "My baseball does breaks Frau Kaleun's window..."

Should be "My baseball breaketh..." Or "My baseball doth break..." The second is workable but the first is best.

Another favorite is the use of "Ye olde book shoppe". The spelling is fine but if you pronounce it "Ye", thou art in error. "Ye" does not start with "Y", but with an old English character called a "thorn". It looks like a modern "Y" but is pronounced "th", thus the word is still pronounce "the". This does not hold true in old books such as The Bible. In that case the speaker is addressing a person or group of people and "Ye" is the same as "You".