Dec. 15th, 2006

twincityhacker: hands in an overcoat's pockets (Who would want to be such a control frea)
I've been thinking on why it's "You're" instead of "you's" when when one is just addressing a singular you.

I was flipping though a book in a bookstore that was a series of small essays on English and other languages, and there was a section on informal and formal you, and it's singular and plural forms.

Apparenlty, there was singular thou and plural ye in (Middle or Old) English - this then moved to singular thee and pluarl you. Then somewhere along the line, thee got dropped.

So the reason why it's "you're" with a contraction plural of a "to be" is because you is considered to be in the plural, so the "to be" has to be plural to agree with the plural subject.

Yes, it's geeky, but it's fun, dammit! And way better than ranting on why you should be able to split infinitives in English.
twincityhacker: hands in an overcoat's pockets (Default)
Just found out why I wasn't getting any messages on my phone - the messages where being left somewhere in the wilds of the IU webserver instead of the answering machine on the telephone.

I'm also probably getting paid for working at the winter comenement, as apparently my paperwork couldn't go though for some reason and they left a message there.

And today was going so well...

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