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0 pointsfusiongyro8y ago0 comments

Not the parent, but "your machine" should probably be "thy machine." "Thou compiler" should be "thy compiler." In general, mapping from 3rd to 2nd person, "he" = "thou", "him" = "thee", and "his" = "thy."

I believe "thou doth do" should just be "thou doth" but I could be mistaken about what "doth" is. :)

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sevensor8y ago

Yup, that's about the size of it. Also, "canst maketh" is wrong. "Thou canst make" is correctly conjugated. But I pick nits -- I appreciate the attempt to write about FORTRAN as if one were a 16th century scholar translating the instructions from Aramaic. I had a laugh.

danblick8y ago

Just to share something I think is fun:

Modern German has separate formal and informal pronouns ("du bist" vs. "Sie sind") and verbs. English used to have them too ("thou art"/"you are"). Even though people assume "thou" is more formal, it's actually the informal/intimate version.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou

Apparently we (~Angles/Saxons) also used to have a separate tense for "a group of exactly two of you" and words like "both" (vs all) and "either" (vs any) are residual traces of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number)

hardlianotion8y ago

I have always enjoyed the insult "I thou thee thou traitor" offered to Sir Walter Raleigh, presumably just before he was executed. There is a semi-plausible explanation of how thou died out in England

https://www.quora.com/English-language-Why-did-people-stop-u...

but it leaves open the question why it persists in other languages.

jjtheblunt8y ago

doth is 3rd person singular, so maybe dost ? not sure, have to look it up, 20+ years since I was doing this sort of thing in grad school

maw8y ago

Yes, definitely thou dost.

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