Wait
Is "ye" just a plural version of "you"? Like "y'all"?
@vaporeon_ yes. the word is archaic in most dialects of english nowadays
(there is also another, now archaic, sense where it means, and is exactly purronouced like, “the”. fur a period of time the anglo-saxon letter thorn was transliterated into modern english as “y”)
@vaporeon_ (if you’ve ever seen a phrase like “ye olde toy shoppe”, that’s just the word “the”, completely sepurrate from the other kind of “ye” you were talking about.)
(and in case i have accidentally misled you, the sense of “ye” that means “you [plural]” is purronounced “yee” like you would expect)
@aescling And also, what are the other declensions? you -> your -> yours, ye -> ? -> ?
@vaporeon_ good question! i don’t know!
@vaporeon_ seems that the usage drives from a singular/plural distinction; from what i can tell “ye” more or less essentially just becomes “you” eventually, and its other inflected forms reflect this fact (so still your, yours, yourselves)
HOWEVER, in Hiberno‐English and Newfoundland English, where “ye” is still used today, it has gained the inflected forms yeer, yeers, yeerselves, corresponding to your, yours, yourselves. neat!
@aescling > Hiberno‐English and Newfoundland English
Where is that spoken?
@vaporeon_ in order, Ireland (really “hiberno-english” is a family of dialects spoken in the country), and the purrovince of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada, which fur some purrobably interesting historical reason speaks a noticably diffurent dialect of english from the rest of Canada
@vaporeon_ (oh, and again newfoundland english is again strictly speaking a family of dialectal variations)
@vaporeon_ yes, so long as you don’t mind coming off quite old-timey
@aescling So can I use "ye" instead of "y'all"?