thou revival

youen would be a nice plural form of you.

>>youen would be a nice plural form of you<<

That`d work. "En" would form the plural like in "bretheren" or "children". Is that what you were thinking?

Still, I`d like to use "ye". It just sounds cool, IMO.

<<youen would be a nice plural form of you.>>

"Thou" would be a nice singular form of 'you'
how bout them apples?

I'm game, if someone can convince the school board. That way people who are too familiar can be put in their place (yes, that's a joke).

"May I address you with 'thou'?"

No, thou mayest not.

Yes, that is one of the reasons I hate English. I am a nobleman, and yet there is nothing to distinguish me from the poor boy who brings my milk each morning and leaves it at the threshold of my vestibule. It's disgraceful for someone of my status and education to be put on the such a level. Well at least he is obliged to say "yes sir" or "yes my lord", but I would prefer a complete different form of address.

You know, while we're on the topic about "thou",
how about this (it's been buggin' me for quite some time now)

How about fixing the word "must" as in the verbal auxillary?

As you know, "must" has no real past tense---because it IS a past tense!

The correct form should be: moot (present)/must(preterite) and to be analogous with modern English modals, no past participle

Now, we still have a present tense as "mote", but it really should be "moot" < OE mo:tan

I propose this: use "moot" for present, and "most" for the past to distinguish it from must, otherwise it's too confusing

so for instance, the conjugated verb would be:
--pres. ind.--
I moot (=I have to)
thou moost (=you have to)
he moot (=he has to)
we moot (=we have to)
ye moot (=you have to)
they moot (=they have to)

--past ind--
I most (=I had to)
thou mostest (=you had to)
he most (=he had to)
we most (=we had to)
ye most (=you had to)
they most (=they had to)

more apples to munch on

<<Thou didst not make very clear what thou werst trying to say...>>

Guest, just for the sake of accuracy, this should be "...what thou wast trying to say..."

Sorry...just my inner grammer-Nazi rearing its ugly head! ;-)

My point was in reference to the earlier comment, suggesting that perhaps I was being overly optimistic in referring to English as a "dynamic" language. My intention was simply to illustrate the clear fact that English is indeed quite dynamic and that it has a great facility for absorbing words of all sorts. Nonetheless, even a highly flexible and dynamic language is under no obligation to absorb any particular word or phrase, "sub-standard" or otherwise.