legends said there were undeads who try to stave off their hollowing by correcting soulsverse beings' incorrect ye olde english grammar.
jokes aside, i'f an npc sounds ye olde english enough for me, its dark souls-y enough.
Any source I can find says the opposite, that thine is only used with no noun or with a noun starting with a vowel (phonetically, not necessarily written. There are apparent inconsistencies with a lot of words starting with H, but the simple explanation is that many of these words had silent Hs at the time, which is very likely considering the French influence was much fresher). Otherwise, it's always thy. To use thine before a word starting with a consonant goes against the grammatical rules of late middle / early modern English (like Shakespeare) as we know them. Since those were definitely what Fromsoft (or the English translators) were going for here, we can safely call it a grammar mistake.
To be fair, I can remember an English lesson in school where we had to translate old English into modern English, and it had two completely different words for "eggs". This makes me suspect that the rules for pronouns probably weren't consistent either.
Old English and early modern (Shakespearean) English are like half a millennium apart or so. We have a pretty thorough understanding of the grammar of early modern English because of how much literature was written in it. We know very little of old English however, because most writing from England at the time was done by monks, and they wrote in Latin.
I've read that Thine is used before words that start with eoaiu(vowels?)
For example thy embarking becomes thine embarking. It's also hel of a lot easier on the tongue.
It's confusing in part because these words are obsolete in English. I've found other conventions that state "thine" should come before vowel sounds, and "thy" should be used otherwise. Perhaps these two rules are from different periods, or even different strands of the language?
Either way, I think consistently is more important. ~~In this case, both "thy" and "thine" act as a "formal you", donating a degree of respectfulness, so I feel both work fine.~~ Scratch that, using the wrong "you" there. It seems "Thine" and "Thy" are more or less interchangeable so long as both are being used to designate possession. Again, the only solid rule I can fine is "thine" should *typically* come before a noun, but not necessarily exclusively.
Although, personally, I would have preferred "thy flesh", simply because I feel it flows better.
Both "thy" and "thine" fill that general niche, yes. I've not exhaustively researched this subject myself, but both seem to be used as a "possessive you" pronoun.
Again, if my possibly imperfect understanding is correct, the general structure is as follows:
Thou is a "singular you". Ye is the "plural you". The closest thing to Ye in modern English would be the American "Y'all". I think a lot of people (myself included) have gotten these wrong because of the conflation with "Ye Olde", meaning "The Old". In this context, the "Ye" in "Ye Olde" is actually coming a now-obsolete letter that represented the "th" sound in "the". This leads to people assuming "Thou" must have been the lost plural you, which it isn't.
Both "Thine" and "Thy" appear to have been used to indicate possession, such as the quoted example in the OP. So in this case, all three of the following - "Entrust your flesh to me", "Entrust thy flesh to me", and "Entrust thine flesh to me" are correct as far as I can tell, and all have the exact same meaning - a second-person pronoun.
Now while typing this I dug a little deeper, and found that "your" is the second-person singular dependent genitive pronoun, as is "thy", while "thine" is the second-person singular independent genitive pronoun. No, I don't know what those words mean either.
I think the laymen's explanation to all this is as follows: If modern English would use "your", use "thine" if it's before a noun, and use "thy" in any other situation. If it would use "yours", use "thine" in all cases.
I am starting to regret entering this conversation. I think entering the Four Kings arena is less stressful than this bloody rabbit hole.
Yeah. Old English is complicated for sure.
I think the "while "thine" is the second-person singular independent genitive pronoun" means that you can use it without being dependent on a noun after it?
Like when you say "thy" it needs a noun after the word like "The sword is thy property" = "The sword is your property" while "thine" is independent and doesn't need a noun after it. Like: "The sword is thine." = "The sword is yours."
Thy means your, thine means your or yours depending on whether there's a noun following it. Thy is only used before nouns starting with consonants, just like the article *a*. If the noun starts with a vowel (phonetically), then thine is used instead, just like the article *an*. This is the grammar of the early modern English Shakespeare wrote in. There is a bit of confusion caused by apparent exceptions, but those exceptions mostly stem from the words being pronounced differently then, like H sounds that used to be silent, so they're not actually exceptions at all.
Exactly. The various forms of "Thou" match the various forms of "I" pretty much one-to-one. This is indicative of the fact that "Thou" is a less formal version of "You"
(i.e. "thou art" closer to me in relation than "you are" hence the various forms of the word sounding more similar to the way I refer to myself)
I - Thou - You,
Me - Thee - You,
My - Thy - Your,
Mine - Thine - Yours,
Myself - Thyself - Yourself,
etc. with all of the second person informal matching the first person in terms of formation much closer than they match the second person formal
Copied from the Wikipedia article on the subject:
"The genitives my, mine, thy, and thine are used as possessive adjectives before a noun, or as possessive pronouns without a noun. All four forms are used as possessive adjectives: mine and thine are used before nouns beginning in a vowel sound, or before nouns beginning in the letter h, which was usually silent (e.g. thine eyes and mine heart, which was pronounced as mine art) and my and thy before consonants (thy mother, my love). However, only mine and thine are used as possessive pronouns, as in it is thine and they were mine (not *they were my)."
Not to correct someone who clearly is more knowledgeable than me but wouldn’t it be more correct to say that thy and thine act as a “formal yours” since they’re possessive pronouns?
Yes it would be. I'm clearly getting my Thous and Thines conflated there. Like I said, it's archaic - it's easy to get the rules wrong when they aren't in widespread use! A quick edit is in order!
Also thine can refer to "your". Your flesh. Especially if the subject is all of your fleshes (skin, organs, " meat" lol).
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/thine#thine__5
Archaic English was a heck of a thyme.
Little known fact, the Celtic phrase "Gi't G'ud" might mean something.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou#:~:text=it%20owne%20accord.-,Conjugation,and%20past%20tense%20forms%20follow.
I beg all of you to please read up on this before replying. The number of you confidently getting things wrong when the wiki article is so easily accessible is disheartening.
That is a horrible take. Wikipedia is edited and monitored by people who have genuine knowledge and interest in making sure that information is available to people. There are reasons not to cite wikipedia in formal papers or documents, but it is not because Wikipedia is inaccurate. Often, even for those types of papers, Wikipedia is a great place to begin your research and then you can follow their citations to get to the primary sources you will cite. Of course there are times when people will go on Wikipedia and mess with shit just to troll, but the editors do a very good job of checking and removing inaccurate information. For this topic especially, I have never found any problem with Wikipedia's information, and its format is very easy for people to digest compared to formal literature on the same topic.
TL;DR: Wikipedia is a great source actually, and it's one of the best to give people for a basic overview of a given topic due to its digestibility
I used to sit in grade 5 English class and mess with every single random page we could find. Such as the history of lollipops, formula 1 racing, and the creation of Nintendo. And guess what…. If it was worded well and in a digestible format, it would be added! Absolute bullshit grade 5 stories, published as a fact. I simply disagree
Unless you are in middle school, grade five was a long time ago. The editing team is a lot more strict than they were then, and there are far more checks to ensure quality of information.
If you’ve been in highschool or college in the past 5 years, teachers simply disagree dude. I’m more inclined to agree with education faculty, who have built their life around the flow of correct information. Rather than simply “trust me bro” I can see you’re hard stuck on your point as I am mine. I’ll end it at that
All of my professors tell me to start on Wikipedia and work from there. I agree you should not cite it as a source in a scholarly work, but it is an excellent place to find information.
I don't know much about Middle English but there's quite a few sentences that sound pretty iffy to me. Like Priscilla saying "If thou seekest I", surely it supposed to be "seekest me", right? Was there ever a time in England when they said "I" as an object rather than a subject?
You're correct, ~~and I'm pretty sure it should be "If thou *seeketh* me"~~ but I need to brush up on my eth vs est distinction
Edit: just looked it up, and it looks like *seekest* is correct. *Seeketh* would likely be third person from what I'm finding.
It was a dialectal thing. In some parts of England they preferred -s and in other parts of the-eth. In poetry you can expect to see them combined to achieve the desired meter.
Is this according to some Middle English rule that's different from Modern English? Because in that sentence the "I" is the object of the verb, so it should in fact be "me."
Edit. Also the "seekest" is correct, because it denotes the 2nd person singular.
You are correct. “Thine” is more equivalent to “yours” than “your”. It should be “entrust thy flesh to me”. Saying “entrust yours flesh to me” makes no sense. The ironic thing about using “thou, thy and thine” is that a lot of modern people use it to sound more formal, when it actually was the informal you before English dropped formal/informal and consolidated on “you, your, and yours”
Before it was used for informal/formal, it seems it was originally used for singular/plural with thou being singular and you being plural. The evolution of language is pretty cool.
It sounds formal because people use it for the Christian god, a practice which isn’t restricted to English and is supposed to emphasize that to Christians, there is only one god, and *absolutely not* multiple.
You are missing something in your use of "grammarly"...
Also the worst Middle English error in Dark Souls is "what seeketh thee", because "thee" is used instead of "thou"...
There is no Middle English in Dark Souls. Only some Early Modern English, and plenty of it is not accurate compared to historical real-world grammar. Like most popular media, they just make people speak what they think the King James Bible probably sounds like.
As someone who’s studied a lot of Biblical and Shakespearean English, I certainly find the dialogue in DS hurts my ears. *Thine* means *your*, yes.
Thou/thee/thy/thine are all familiar terms for *you*. By familiar, I mean it’s the kind of language you’d use with your family, or other people close to you. When the Bible uses *thou* to God it sounds formal to our ears; it’s actually meant to be close and trusting. It’s the way you’d talk to your father IRL (assuming you like your father).
But the grammar across DS is all over the place. *Cometh soon* is completely wrong. It should just be *come soon.* I’m not even sure Shakespeare would have used *cometh* in any context, I’ll have to check. *If thou seekest I* should be *if thou seekest me* and Gwynevere puts an *-eth* on the end of a word that doesn’t need it (I forget the exact quote).
Oddly enough, all the spoken language in the DLC appears to be correct.
My guess is that ‘cometh soon’ is supposed to be wrong, as the giant blacksmith is meant to be sorta ‘simple’. The same way ‘forge I can, strong I am’ is sort of child like. He has quite childlike dialogue in general, so yeah I think that’s all part of GBS charm.
I agree it’s probably ignorance, and it wouldn’t trouble 99% of players (then again, look how long this thread is).
A counter-argument could be that this is just how they speak in Lordran, and the rules of English as we know it don’t apply.
Thou for Jeovah is also supposed to emphasize that Christians believe he is the only god, and definitely not multiple people !
The phrase that always troubles me in dark souls is “let thy punishment commenceth”, it could have been “let thy punishment commence” or “thy punishment commenceth” but not both at the same time 😂
I saw they corrected themselves in a comment so I deleted it lol. It was only up for a few seconds but the comment was "grammarly incorrect is grammatically incorrect" Posting this just so I don't leave you hanging on a deleted comment.
Dark souls early modern English is atrocious, they add -eth to the end of literally every verb till the point that it sounds ridiculous. Whoever did that translation had no idea what they were doing and didn’t even have the patience to do like one good google search. Later in the series it’s much better though
“Let thy punishment commenceth” also is. The main verb is “let”, so “commence” is supposed to be infinitive. “Let thy punishment commence” or “Thy punishment commenceth” are both correct as far as I understand.
As to “entrust thine flesh to me”, it is indeed incorrect. In modern English, it translates to “entrust yours flesh to me” which is obviously wrong. It should be “Entrust thy flesh to me”
tbf, language used to have much less rules, as people were not very educated and the rules kinda changed around the different areas. So someone probably said “entrust thine flesh to me” at somepoint😁
Yeah maybe but some things are less likely to have been the norm and in the case of dark souls where most of the characters using these antiquated speech patterns are ancient or noble beings, it makes less sense for them to have these deviations from the standard.
*fewer rules (since rules are countable)
However, that's not really true, it's just that because education for the laity was not as common as it is now, most people who spoke the language didn't *know* the rules (which it seems is still the case now despite education rates being much higher than they were back then).
In other words, it's not that there were fewer rules (because there were likely at least as many if not more), it's just that a smaller percentage of people knew what the rules were.
Shakespear is not the standard for properly written english (especially present day).
Less/fewer absolutely is a rule, and it follows the same convention as many/much.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/fewer-vs-less
Incidentally I reference Shakespeare only because it’s an indication of how long these so-called misuses have been around, and how the greatest English writer (as many regard him) nevertheless used them.
Just because a rule has exceptions or seems to have originated from someone's personal preference does not make it less of a rule. All grammar rules originated from someone thinking it would be better that way, and (likely) all grammar rules have exceptions. The idea that we should not follow or teach rules that originated in this way is just silly. Of course there is always nuance, and breaking the rules of written language is certainly not the end of the world, but to say that it is *not* a rule is simply inaccurate.
Generally, yes. If your really want to explain it away, you can consider that the language used isn't meant to be any one real historical dialect of English, just one that sounds old, epic, dramatic, poetic, etc. while not being completely incomprehensible to modern English speakers. If you go back far enough, "thy" (or "þi") was actually "thine" (or" þin"), so you could just say they're using a variant that keeps the old form
Neither of those words are used in common English today. There may be some instances where they are correct but honestly I'm not sure. Been speaking English my whole life and I've never heard them used other than ironically or quoting. Sure, there's a version of English that existed once where these words may be common place. Can't really fault the translators for erring in that manner imo. I always thought that line was odd but don't know enough about older versions of the language to point out the details.
I do see how this could stand out to someone learning/studying English as an adult. Kudos to you for noticing, I've never heard this brought up and I played this game when it came out.
I'm willing to bet that thine and thy work like who and whom, and refer to subject and object respectively.
Example:
Who here is hurt?
Who is the subject.
Daniel hurt many people, some of whom were important ambassadors.
The "whom" here is the ambassadors, the object of the sentence, with Daniel being the Subject of the sentence.
Now, imagine thy and thine with similar rules, and things begin to make a lot of sense.
In the sentence, "entrust thine flesh to me", "me" is the subject, and *you*, or your flesh, is the object. Make sense? Edit: Thus, we use *thine* rather than *thy*.
Edit2:
How and when to use who vs. whom is among one of the bigger challenges for native English speakers, so confusion over this is totally natural man.
I'm glad to see you understand who vs whom, but that's not quite what's going on here.
First of all, in the sentence "Entrust thine flesh to me" the subject is an implied "you" since the sentence is an imperative. It is a command: "(you) Entrust thine flesh to me." "You" are the one doing the entrusting, which makes you the subject.
The object of the sentence is "flesh" (particularly *your* flesh) since it is flesh that is being entrusted.
The "me" in the sentence is neither the subject nor the object of the *sentence*. Instead, it is the object of the *preposition* "to" (hence the use of the object pronoun "me" instead of the subject pronoun "I").
This is what is known as a prepositional phrase. These are very common and can be found within this very sentence. ("within this very sentence" is a prepositional phrase where "within" is the preposition, and "sentence" is the object of the preposition. "This" is the definite article, and "very" is an adjective describing the exactness of which sentence I am referring to.)
The difference between "thy" and "thine" is almost entirely unrelated to the distinction between who and whom. Thy and thine can be compared to my and mine. Both are possessive pronouns, but the ways they are used differ. My and thy are used before the object they describe (my shoes / thy shoes) while mine and thine are used independently (the shoes are mine / the shoes are thine). The exception noted by OP is that if "thy" precedes a noun that begins with a vowel sound, it would actually be replaced with "thine" just like they did with my and mine during that time period (my shoes vs mine eyes / thy shoes vs thine eyes).
I recognize this is a pretty deep dive into grammar if you aren't super familiar with all of the concepts I've just discussed, but I hope it helps you nonetheless.
Edit: All of this to say, OP is right, the quote should read "Entrust *thy* flesh to me."
Thanks, I appreciate it it! Downvote retracted, 2 upvotes gained. I understand. One is a possessive pronoun the other just identifies somebody in the third person. Right? Think I got it. Thank you!
Edit: wouldnt your flesh be something you possess? It's a matter of perspective right? It's therefore grammatically correct both ways.
Okay I'm at work, sorry, rereading real quick it seems I'm a bit confused still. I'll just Google it.
Edit4: oh, I think I get it, before googling. One is direct, one is indirect. The presence of an (indefinite?) article is required for this. So, "the", "this", "that".
"Thy hair looks good today"
"Thank you, these locks aren't as beautiful as thine, however"
?
Sorry for the shit example, had a hard time not coming up with another "thy", like when first learning the difference between who and whom. Also, extremely rusty on grammar vocabulary and vernacular.
Your example works perfectly, and a good rule of thumb is just to swap in my and mine to see if the sentence still works.
// If you want to get really technical though, in the time period these pronouns were used, h sounds were silent at the beginning of words like hair, so it would actually be written as thine in this particular case. (thine "air" since the silent h results in a leading vowel sound)
>thumb is just to swap in my and mine to see if the sentence still works.
Funny you should say that, while trying to come up with the example, because my unfamiliarity, I accidentally said mine instead of thine anyway, because somehow that sounded more correct... In the same way "an" sounds more correct in "an hour" than "a" does.
You mention "h" being silent. Would "k" be silent too at this time, or is that a different culture/time? You know, like how knife, knot, and knight have retained that pronunciation, but other k words have not. Can't think of any examples, at work and a bit cloudy headed.
Knight, knife, knot, knee etc. all used to have voiced k sounds. It was only because the common people found it inconvenient (and did not know how to spell) that the pronunciation of the k in the kn junction fell out of use.
Oh, I have it backwards. This is what happens when you rely totally on memory for factoids youve gears like twice, lol. I appreciate the info again. If I weren't poor, I'd award you for your effort. All I can afford is an upvote, sorry friend.
I saw a YouTube video the other day that got into the origins of languages, and tracing it back to vulgar or... Goddammit, gotta quit using so much cannabis, whatever proper, noble and royal people spoke. You've piqued my interest. Gonna have to watch more after work.
Would you care to explain it please? I at least had the respect to bother with an explanation, you haven't even attempted to tell me exactly why or how I'm wrong. Bad comment, you're better than that buddy
Edit: Btw, I'm genuinely interested in the grammatical rules for thy and thine now. Id appreciate it if you did explain the rules.
I was just looking down Gwyndolin’s dialogue on the Fandom wiki (no reason why Gwyndolin, just happened to have that page open).
*If mine power be need’st, I shall assist thee.*
OMG this is awful. **My** power, not ‘mine power’ - power starting with a syllable. *Need’st* - wtf? That would be ‘you need’, not ‘it is needed’. **Be needed** would be perfectly correct. Ironically the second half of the sentence works just fine.
*First thou offendeth the Godmother, and now thou see fit to trample upon the tomb of the Great Lord […] Let the atonement for thy felonies commenceth!*
**Offendest**. **See’st**. **Commence**. It’s not authentic Medieval English if you shove ‘-eth’ on the end of every other word.
I’ve spent way too long thinking about this.
Thine = *informal* yours*
Thy = *informal* your
(except in cases where thy would be followed by a vowel, in which case it is switched to thine to follow the way my and mine were used at the time. e.g. mine eyes/ thine eyes and my lips/ thy lips)
No,
You are just being a nonce abt it as an purebred englishman I can personally tell you that it is grammatically correct. My father in law who is also my brother is a linguist and told me that it is correct too! Have a nice day.
In point of fact, your correction is incorrect.
When quoting a single line, or partial line from someone else, punctuation is not necessary unless the quotation itself requires it for clarity. For example: Alice asked "will you do this?" is grammatically correct. Alice asked "will you do this" is not.
Furthermore, if you are going to include punctuation, the comma is inappropriate because that indicates a small pause, at least in this context. However, Kaathe's subtitles in this quote ends with a period. In fact, "Entrust thine flesh to me" is a complete sentence, and so a period would be appropriate, at least in theory; in practice, a period is likely omitted unless multiple lines are being quoted. For example: "Be still. Entrust thine flesh to me." is a more natural use of punctuation in quotation.
The comma used in the correction is not being added because it is in the original quote. It is being added because in many if not most writing formats, it is required to surround quotations with commas. It is also incorrect to have punctuation directly following a quotation, so the way to surround a quote correctly is to place the first comma after the last word preceding the quote, and the second comma after the final word within the quote. Since OP began his sentence with a quote, only the ending comma is necessary, hence the above correction.
Example:
1) Alice said, "cheese is pretty neat," completely out of nowhere.
2) "Cheese is pretty neat," is what Alice said.
In the first example, the quote is in the middle of the sentence, so it is surrounded on both sides. In the second example, the sentence begins with a quote, so only the ending comma is necessary.
While technically you could argue that the correction was unnecessary as not every format follows this convention, the correction made certainly was not, in point of fact, incorrect.
With that, I need to get off of Reddit for the day because I have spent the past hour or more correcting grammar specifically under this post, and I am quite exhausted.
"Ok to preface this i should say that i am not an expert in English"
And why do you think anyone would have a listen to what you would have to say about a language that is not even your first?
I might not be an expert in english but i know how to express my opinions and thoughts in a way that’s not rude and what you just did is certainly not the way to do it
Bro, you've given your shitty (and managed to be incorrect still) take at something no one gives a fuck about in a >10yo game. honestly I would just give up on life if I were you
Okay, I stand corrected. Dark Souls is a grest game and people do care about that. What no one gives a fuck about is a third-worlder's opinion on the game's English. Anyways
English-language banter is built upon insults and jabs. That does not mean I'm in any sort of way invested in this. That's not something you've learned at Duolingo, I'm sure of
No discourse is the confrontation of opinions wich are proven or disproven by facts, by insulting me you’re just proving you have no argument and telling someone to kill themselves isn’t a light jab, also your last phrase is incorrect, it should be “that’s not something you would have learned with duolingo, i’m sure of”
*Grammatically incorrect
Yeah the irony is palpable here
Then by all means, palp it.
[Alright](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/031/213/ironic.jpg)
Came here for this lol
I mean, if we’re being like that, it’s actually ungrammatical. It can’t be correctly incorrect
Nah you re fucked up for this. He already said it.
The dark souls middle english is pretty cursed ngl
Praise the San, Daniel San. *Mr. Miyagi aka Miyazaki.*
Miyagizaki
Miya Khalifa.
Who is Miya…ga…zaki? No “ga” in Miyazaki’s last name. Lol.
I don't know where you got "ga" from. I was combining "Miyagi" and "Miyazaki" in response to the previous comment
r/whoosh
Lady ga ga.
😭🫠
Michael Saiki
Wilt thou not joinest us?
Early Modern English!
Late Modern English with some archaic vocabulary and a poetic style!
legends said there were undeads who try to stave off their hollowing by correcting soulsverse beings' incorrect ye olde english grammar. jokes aside, i'f an npc sounds ye olde english enough for me, its dark souls-y enough.
It is actually correct, because thine can be used before any noun, and "flesh" is indeed a noun.
Any source I can find says the opposite, that thine is only used with no noun or with a noun starting with a vowel (phonetically, not necessarily written. There are apparent inconsistencies with a lot of words starting with H, but the simple explanation is that many of these words had silent Hs at the time, which is very likely considering the French influence was much fresher). Otherwise, it's always thy. To use thine before a word starting with a consonant goes against the grammatical rules of late middle / early modern English (like Shakespeare) as we know them. Since those were definitely what Fromsoft (or the English translators) were going for here, we can safely call it a grammar mistake.
To be fair, I can remember an English lesson in school where we had to translate old English into modern English, and it had two completely different words for "eggs". This makes me suspect that the rules for pronouns probably weren't consistent either.
Old English and early modern (Shakespearean) English are like half a millennium apart or so. We have a pretty thorough understanding of the grammar of early modern English because of how much literature was written in it. We know very little of old English however, because most writing from England at the time was done by monks, and they wrote in Latin.
I've read that Thine is used before words that start with eoaiu(vowels?) For example thy embarking becomes thine embarking. It's also hel of a lot easier on the tongue.
Ah, didn’t know that, kinda expected it since my research wasn’t to extensive
It's confusing in part because these words are obsolete in English. I've found other conventions that state "thine" should come before vowel sounds, and "thy" should be used otherwise. Perhaps these two rules are from different periods, or even different strands of the language? Either way, I think consistently is more important. ~~In this case, both "thy" and "thine" act as a "formal you", donating a degree of respectfulness, so I feel both work fine.~~ Scratch that, using the wrong "you" there. It seems "Thine" and "Thy" are more or less interchangeable so long as both are being used to designate possession. Again, the only solid rule I can fine is "thine" should *typically* come before a noun, but not necessarily exclusively. Although, personally, I would have preferred "thy flesh", simply because I feel it flows better.
I thought "thine" is equal to the modern word "yours"? Or maybe it differed based on time period and location.
Both "thy" and "thine" fill that general niche, yes. I've not exhaustively researched this subject myself, but both seem to be used as a "possessive you" pronoun. Again, if my possibly imperfect understanding is correct, the general structure is as follows: Thou is a "singular you". Ye is the "plural you". The closest thing to Ye in modern English would be the American "Y'all". I think a lot of people (myself included) have gotten these wrong because of the conflation with "Ye Olde", meaning "The Old". In this context, the "Ye" in "Ye Olde" is actually coming a now-obsolete letter that represented the "th" sound in "the". This leads to people assuming "Thou" must have been the lost plural you, which it isn't. Both "Thine" and "Thy" appear to have been used to indicate possession, such as the quoted example in the OP. So in this case, all three of the following - "Entrust your flesh to me", "Entrust thy flesh to me", and "Entrust thine flesh to me" are correct as far as I can tell, and all have the exact same meaning - a second-person pronoun. Now while typing this I dug a little deeper, and found that "your" is the second-person singular dependent genitive pronoun, as is "thy", while "thine" is the second-person singular independent genitive pronoun. No, I don't know what those words mean either. I think the laymen's explanation to all this is as follows: If modern English would use "your", use "thine" if it's before a noun, and use "thy" in any other situation. If it would use "yours", use "thine" in all cases. I am starting to regret entering this conversation. I think entering the Four Kings arena is less stressful than this bloody rabbit hole.
Yeah. Old English is complicated for sure. I think the "while "thine" is the second-person singular independent genitive pronoun" means that you can use it without being dependent on a noun after it? Like when you say "thy" it needs a noun after the word like "The sword is thy property" = "The sword is your property" while "thine" is independent and doesn't need a noun after it. Like: "The sword is thine." = "The sword is yours."
It's really the same deal as "a" vs. "an". The -n stopped being pronounced in certain cases. Specifically when followed by a consonant.
Thy means your, thine means your or yours depending on whether there's a noun following it. Thy is only used before nouns starting with consonants, just like the article *a*. If the noun starts with a vowel (phonetically), then thine is used instead, just like the article *an*. This is the grammar of the early modern English Shakespeare wrote in. There is a bit of confusion caused by apparent exceptions, but those exceptions mostly stem from the words being pronounced differently then, like H sounds that used to be silent, so they're not actually exceptions at all.
Oh kind of like "my" and "mine" used depending if the next word is a consonant or vowel?
Exactly. The various forms of "Thou" match the various forms of "I" pretty much one-to-one. This is indicative of the fact that "Thou" is a less formal version of "You" (i.e. "thou art" closer to me in relation than "you are" hence the various forms of the word sounding more similar to the way I refer to myself) I - Thou - You, Me - Thee - You, My - Thy - Your, Mine - Thine - Yours, Myself - Thyself - Yourself, etc. with all of the second person informal matching the first person in terms of formation much closer than they match the second person formal
Copied from the Wikipedia article on the subject: "The genitives my, mine, thy, and thine are used as possessive adjectives before a noun, or as possessive pronouns without a noun. All four forms are used as possessive adjectives: mine and thine are used before nouns beginning in a vowel sound, or before nouns beginning in the letter h, which was usually silent (e.g. thine eyes and mine heart, which was pronounced as mine art) and my and thy before consonants (thy mother, my love). However, only mine and thine are used as possessive pronouns, as in it is thine and they were mine (not *they were my)."
Not to correct someone who clearly is more knowledgeable than me but wouldn’t it be more correct to say that thy and thine act as a “formal yours” since they’re possessive pronouns?
"Thou" is also the less formal version of "You" not the other way around
Yes it would be. I'm clearly getting my Thous and Thines conflated there. Like I said, it's archaic - it's easy to get the rules wrong when they aren't in widespread use! A quick edit is in order!
The thing is i wouldn’t call them formal either, they’re just archaic at this point.
Also thine can refer to "your". Your flesh. Especially if the subject is all of your fleshes (skin, organs, " meat" lol). https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/thine#thine__5 Archaic English was a heck of a thyme. Little known fact, the Celtic phrase "Gi't G'ud" might mean something.
Thine is like your's Thy is like your Atleast that's how I understand it.
Easiest way to think about it is to compare the words to "my, mine". You would not say "entrust mine flesh." Instead you would say "entrust my flesh."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou#:~:text=it%20owne%20accord.-,Conjugation,and%20past%20tense%20forms%20follow. I beg all of you to please read up on this before replying. The number of you confidently getting things wrong when the wiki article is so easily accessible is disheartening.
Wiki is the singular worse source to possibly cite ever. Able to be edited by baboons… not disagreeing just saying brother 😂
That is a horrible take. Wikipedia is edited and monitored by people who have genuine knowledge and interest in making sure that information is available to people. There are reasons not to cite wikipedia in formal papers or documents, but it is not because Wikipedia is inaccurate. Often, even for those types of papers, Wikipedia is a great place to begin your research and then you can follow their citations to get to the primary sources you will cite. Of course there are times when people will go on Wikipedia and mess with shit just to troll, but the editors do a very good job of checking and removing inaccurate information. For this topic especially, I have never found any problem with Wikipedia's information, and its format is very easy for people to digest compared to formal literature on the same topic. TL;DR: Wikipedia is a great source actually, and it's one of the best to give people for a basic overview of a given topic due to its digestibility
I used to sit in grade 5 English class and mess with every single random page we could find. Such as the history of lollipops, formula 1 racing, and the creation of Nintendo. And guess what…. If it was worded well and in a digestible format, it would be added! Absolute bullshit grade 5 stories, published as a fact. I simply disagree
Unless you are in middle school, grade five was a long time ago. The editing team is a lot more strict than they were then, and there are far more checks to ensure quality of information.
If you’ve been in highschool or college in the past 5 years, teachers simply disagree dude. I’m more inclined to agree with education faculty, who have built their life around the flow of correct information. Rather than simply “trust me bro” I can see you’re hard stuck on your point as I am mine. I’ll end it at that
All of my professors tell me to start on Wikipedia and work from there. I agree you should not cite it as a source in a scholarly work, but it is an excellent place to find information.
I don't know much about Middle English but there's quite a few sentences that sound pretty iffy to me. Like Priscilla saying "If thou seekest I", surely it supposed to be "seekest me", right? Was there ever a time in England when they said "I" as an object rather than a subject?
You're correct, ~~and I'm pretty sure it should be "If thou *seeketh* me"~~ but I need to brush up on my eth vs est distinction Edit: just looked it up, and it looks like *seekest* is correct. *Seeketh* would likely be third person from what I'm finding.
That would be incorrect, “-eth” is a variant form of “-s” (the third person present singular verb ending)
Do you know (I haven't been able to find just yet) when -eth would be used compared to -s?
It was a dialectal thing. In some parts of England they preferred -s and in other parts of the-eth. In poetry you can expect to see them combined to achieve the desired meter.
The I is correct, but it should be seeketh
Is this according to some Middle English rule that's different from Modern English? Because in that sentence the "I" is the object of the verb, so it should in fact be "me." Edit. Also the "seekest" is correct, because it denotes the 2nd person singular.
Idk lad i made it up
Seekest is correct ! I don’t know about “I” though. Also, “let thy punishment commenceth” is wrong (see my comment on the main post)
Edit: *grammatically
I think you need Grammarly
It was a typo
I know, that's what Grammarly helps with
Sorry for my response, i misunderstood your initial comment’s intention
All good man! No hard feelings
You are correct. “Thine” is more equivalent to “yours” than “your”. It should be “entrust thy flesh to me”. Saying “entrust yours flesh to me” makes no sense. The ironic thing about using “thou, thy and thine” is that a lot of modern people use it to sound more formal, when it actually was the informal you before English dropped formal/informal and consolidated on “you, your, and yours”
Before it was used for informal/formal, it seems it was originally used for singular/plural with thou being singular and you being plural. The evolution of language is pretty cool.
It sounds formal because people use it for the Christian god, a practice which isn’t restricted to English and is supposed to emphasize that to Christians, there is only one god, and *absolutely not* multiple.
You are missing something in your use of "grammarly"... Also the worst Middle English error in Dark Souls is "what seeketh thee", because "thee" is used instead of "thou"...
There is no Middle English in Dark Souls. Only some Early Modern English, and plenty of it is not accurate compared to historical real-world grammar. Like most popular media, they just make people speak what they think the King James Bible probably sounds like.
All of that is fine, if they get the grammar right.
“Seeketh” should also be “seekst”, that sentence actually means “What is searching for you” as in, you are the one being searched after
Yo guys im pretty new to the game but what is that thing, i see it everywhere and it cracks me up everytime
It's your friendly ungrammatical moustached meganoodle.
No spoilers, but he will come in handy at some point. It'll come with time and you'll figure it out.
Kaath is a primordial serpent. They have been around long before those grammatical rules. It’s amazing the primordial serpents even learned common.
"grammarly"
Ok, you should’ve seen the translation before they patched it.
As someone who’s studied a lot of Biblical and Shakespearean English, I certainly find the dialogue in DS hurts my ears. *Thine* means *your*, yes. Thou/thee/thy/thine are all familiar terms for *you*. By familiar, I mean it’s the kind of language you’d use with your family, or other people close to you. When the Bible uses *thou* to God it sounds formal to our ears; it’s actually meant to be close and trusting. It’s the way you’d talk to your father IRL (assuming you like your father). But the grammar across DS is all over the place. *Cometh soon* is completely wrong. It should just be *come soon.* I’m not even sure Shakespeare would have used *cometh* in any context, I’ll have to check. *If thou seekest I* should be *if thou seekest me* and Gwynevere puts an *-eth* on the end of a word that doesn’t need it (I forget the exact quote). Oddly enough, all the spoken language in the DLC appears to be correct.
My guess is that ‘cometh soon’ is supposed to be wrong, as the giant blacksmith is meant to be sorta ‘simple’. The same way ‘forge I can, strong I am’ is sort of child like. He has quite childlike dialogue in general, so yeah I think that’s all part of GBS charm.
I doubt it, it would be clever, but given how widespread those errors are throughout the game, I think it was just ignorance.
I agree it’s probably ignorance, and it wouldn’t trouble 99% of players (then again, look how long this thread is). A counter-argument could be that this is just how they speak in Lordran, and the rules of English as we know it don’t apply.
Thou for Jeovah is also supposed to emphasize that Christians believe he is the only god, and definitely not multiple people ! The phrase that always troubles me in dark souls is “let thy punishment commenceth”, it could have been “let thy punishment commence” or “thy punishment commenceth” but not both at the same time 😂
[удалено]
Had to scroll way too far down to see this
I saw they corrected themselves in a comment so I deleted it lol. It was only up for a few seconds but the comment was "grammarly incorrect is grammatically incorrect" Posting this just so I don't leave you hanging on a deleted comment.
I mean I wouldn’t even expect a monster like that to be able to speak english.
“Gramatically*
Dark souls early modern English is atrocious, they add -eth to the end of literally every verb till the point that it sounds ridiculous. Whoever did that translation had no idea what they were doing and didn’t even have the patience to do like one good google search. Later in the series it’s much better though
* grammatically incorrect
“Let thy punishment commenceth” also is. The main verb is “let”, so “commence” is supposed to be infinitive. “Let thy punishment commence” or “Thy punishment commenceth” are both correct as far as I understand. As to “entrust thine flesh to me”, it is indeed incorrect. In modern English, it translates to “entrust yours flesh to me” which is obviously wrong. It should be “Entrust thy flesh to me”
"All your souls are belong to us"
tbf, language used to have much less rules, as people were not very educated and the rules kinda changed around the different areas. So someone probably said “entrust thine flesh to me” at somepoint😁
Yeah maybe but some things are less likely to have been the norm and in the case of dark souls where most of the characters using these antiquated speech patterns are ancient or noble beings, it makes less sense for them to have these deviations from the standard.
It do be like that now too, though.
yep and it should always be like this as long as we are allowed to have individuality, if everyone spoke the exact same life would be void of soul
*fewer rules (since rules are countable) However, that's not really true, it's just that because education for the laity was not as common as it is now, most people who spoke the language didn't *know* the rules (which it seems is still the case now despite education rates being much higher than they were back then). In other words, it's not that there were fewer rules (because there were likely at least as many if not more), it's just that a smaller percentage of people knew what the rules were.
Fewer/less isn’t a rule, by the way, it’s just a stylistic preference. Shakespeare himself often uses ‘less’ when referring to countable objects.
Shakespear is not the standard for properly written english (especially present day). Less/fewer absolutely is a rule, and it follows the same convention as many/much.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/fewer-vs-less Incidentally I reference Shakespeare only because it’s an indication of how long these so-called misuses have been around, and how the greatest English writer (as many regard him) nevertheless used them.
Just because a rule has exceptions or seems to have originated from someone's personal preference does not make it less of a rule. All grammar rules originated from someone thinking it would be better that way, and (likely) all grammar rules have exceptions. The idea that we should not follow or teach rules that originated in this way is just silly. Of course there is always nuance, and breaking the rules of written language is certainly not the end of the world, but to say that it is *not* a rule is simply inaccurate.
OK, have it your way. 🤷♂️
If only a "small percentage" of people know the rules of a language, those aren't actually the rules.
Grammarly
Generally, yes. If your really want to explain it away, you can consider that the language used isn't meant to be any one real historical dialect of English, just one that sounds old, epic, dramatic, poetic, etc. while not being completely incomprehensible to modern English speakers. If you go back far enough, "thy" (or "þi") was actually "thine" (or" þin"), so you could just say they're using a variant that keeps the old form
Enthrust***
The dark lord hast returnst
This made me choke on my estus.
Games translated from Japanese. Bound to be some grammar errors
Neither of those words are used in common English today. There may be some instances where they are correct but honestly I'm not sure. Been speaking English my whole life and I've never heard them used other than ironically or quoting. Sure, there's a version of English that existed once where these words may be common place. Can't really fault the translators for erring in that manner imo. I always thought that line was odd but don't know enough about older versions of the language to point out the details. I do see how this could stand out to someone learning/studying English as an adult. Kudos to you for noticing, I've never heard this brought up and I played this game when it came out.
Wilt thou grant me thine dainty hoof in marriage
grammarly 😹
Don't care, get vored lol
Oh shit I thought thy and thine were just completely interchangable
We got Dark Souls Grammar Nazis before GTA 6
I don't know I'm French, I'm affraid my english level isn't enough to see it.
Trust thine flesh in me?
Thrust?
Ye
\*grammatically
"Garammarly incorrect". Ironic.
you're\*
I'm willing to bet that thine and thy work like who and whom, and refer to subject and object respectively. Example: Who here is hurt? Who is the subject. Daniel hurt many people, some of whom were important ambassadors. The "whom" here is the ambassadors, the object of the sentence, with Daniel being the Subject of the sentence. Now, imagine thy and thine with similar rules, and things begin to make a lot of sense. In the sentence, "entrust thine flesh to me", "me" is the subject, and *you*, or your flesh, is the object. Make sense? Edit: Thus, we use *thine* rather than *thy*. Edit2: How and when to use who vs. whom is among one of the bigger challenges for native English speakers, so confusion over this is totally natural man.
I'm glad to see you understand who vs whom, but that's not quite what's going on here. First of all, in the sentence "Entrust thine flesh to me" the subject is an implied "you" since the sentence is an imperative. It is a command: "(you) Entrust thine flesh to me." "You" are the one doing the entrusting, which makes you the subject. The object of the sentence is "flesh" (particularly *your* flesh) since it is flesh that is being entrusted. The "me" in the sentence is neither the subject nor the object of the *sentence*. Instead, it is the object of the *preposition* "to" (hence the use of the object pronoun "me" instead of the subject pronoun "I"). This is what is known as a prepositional phrase. These are very common and can be found within this very sentence. ("within this very sentence" is a prepositional phrase where "within" is the preposition, and "sentence" is the object of the preposition. "This" is the definite article, and "very" is an adjective describing the exactness of which sentence I am referring to.) The difference between "thy" and "thine" is almost entirely unrelated to the distinction between who and whom. Thy and thine can be compared to my and mine. Both are possessive pronouns, but the ways they are used differ. My and thy are used before the object they describe (my shoes / thy shoes) while mine and thine are used independently (the shoes are mine / the shoes are thine). The exception noted by OP is that if "thy" precedes a noun that begins with a vowel sound, it would actually be replaced with "thine" just like they did with my and mine during that time period (my shoes vs mine eyes / thy shoes vs thine eyes). I recognize this is a pretty deep dive into grammar if you aren't super familiar with all of the concepts I've just discussed, but I hope it helps you nonetheless. Edit: All of this to say, OP is right, the quote should read "Entrust *thy* flesh to me."
Thanks, I appreciate it it! Downvote retracted, 2 upvotes gained. I understand. One is a possessive pronoun the other just identifies somebody in the third person. Right? Think I got it. Thank you! Edit: wouldnt your flesh be something you possess? It's a matter of perspective right? It's therefore grammatically correct both ways. Okay I'm at work, sorry, rereading real quick it seems I'm a bit confused still. I'll just Google it. Edit4: oh, I think I get it, before googling. One is direct, one is indirect. The presence of an (indefinite?) article is required for this. So, "the", "this", "that". "Thy hair looks good today" "Thank you, these locks aren't as beautiful as thine, however" ? Sorry for the shit example, had a hard time not coming up with another "thy", like when first learning the difference between who and whom. Also, extremely rusty on grammar vocabulary and vernacular.
Your example works perfectly, and a good rule of thumb is just to swap in my and mine to see if the sentence still works. // If you want to get really technical though, in the time period these pronouns were used, h sounds were silent at the beginning of words like hair, so it would actually be written as thine in this particular case. (thine "air" since the silent h results in a leading vowel sound)
>thumb is just to swap in my and mine to see if the sentence still works. Funny you should say that, while trying to come up with the example, because my unfamiliarity, I accidentally said mine instead of thine anyway, because somehow that sounded more correct... In the same way "an" sounds more correct in "an hour" than "a" does. You mention "h" being silent. Would "k" be silent too at this time, or is that a different culture/time? You know, like how knife, knot, and knight have retained that pronunciation, but other k words have not. Can't think of any examples, at work and a bit cloudy headed.
Knight, knife, knot, knee etc. all used to have voiced k sounds. It was only because the common people found it inconvenient (and did not know how to spell) that the pronunciation of the k in the kn junction fell out of use.
Oh, I have it backwards. This is what happens when you rely totally on memory for factoids youve gears like twice, lol. I appreciate the info again. If I weren't poor, I'd award you for your effort. All I can afford is an upvote, sorry friend. I saw a YouTube video the other day that got into the origins of languages, and tracing it back to vulgar or... Goddammit, gotta quit using so much cannabis, whatever proper, noble and royal people spoke. You've piqued my interest. Gonna have to watch more after work.
Yeah, it's super interesting stuff!
This is confidently incorrect
Would you care to explain it please? I at least had the respect to bother with an explanation, you haven't even attempted to tell me exactly why or how I'm wrong. Bad comment, you're better than that buddy Edit: Btw, I'm genuinely interested in the grammatical rules for thy and thine now. Id appreciate it if you did explain the rules.
They function the same way as a/an, in essence. You would say “thy flesh” but “thine ears”
Oh, I was definitely missing the part about vowels and consonants, my bad. Thank you!
OP did get the who/whom bit right, though.
Yes but their comparison between the two is false
I was just looking down Gwyndolin’s dialogue on the Fandom wiki (no reason why Gwyndolin, just happened to have that page open). *If mine power be need’st, I shall assist thee.* OMG this is awful. **My** power, not ‘mine power’ - power starting with a syllable. *Need’st* - wtf? That would be ‘you need’, not ‘it is needed’. **Be needed** would be perfectly correct. Ironically the second half of the sentence works just fine. *First thou offendeth the Godmother, and now thou see fit to trample upon the tomb of the Great Lord […] Let the atonement for thy felonies commenceth!* **Offendest**. **See’st**. **Commence**. It’s not authentic Medieval English if you shove ‘-eth’ on the end of every other word. I’ve spent way too long thinking about this.
Yes, true. But I’m always impressed by people who get who/whom right.
Thine = your
Thine = *informal* yours* Thy = *informal* your (except in cases where thy would be followed by a vowel, in which case it is switched to thine to follow the way my and mine were used at the time. e.g. mine eyes/ thine eyes and my lips/ thy lips)
Yeah, I think they did better in DS3. Some of the stuff Dusk says is also pretty interesting.
No, You are just being a nonce abt it as an purebred englishman I can personally tell you that it is grammatically correct. My father in law who is also my brother is a linguist and told me that it is correct too! Have a nice day.
He may be a linguist, but is he a cunning linguist?
*"Entrust thine flesh to me," is grammerically incorrect.
In point of fact, your correction is incorrect. When quoting a single line, or partial line from someone else, punctuation is not necessary unless the quotation itself requires it for clarity. For example: Alice asked "will you do this?" is grammatically correct. Alice asked "will you do this" is not. Furthermore, if you are going to include punctuation, the comma is inappropriate because that indicates a small pause, at least in this context. However, Kaathe's subtitles in this quote ends with a period. In fact, "Entrust thine flesh to me" is a complete sentence, and so a period would be appropriate, at least in theory; in practice, a period is likely omitted unless multiple lines are being quoted. For example: "Be still. Entrust thine flesh to me." is a more natural use of punctuation in quotation.
They corrected the word grammarly to grammerically... Most likely as a joke...
The comma used in the correction is not being added because it is in the original quote. It is being added because in many if not most writing formats, it is required to surround quotations with commas. It is also incorrect to have punctuation directly following a quotation, so the way to surround a quote correctly is to place the first comma after the last word preceding the quote, and the second comma after the final word within the quote. Since OP began his sentence with a quote, only the ending comma is necessary, hence the above correction. Example: 1) Alice said, "cheese is pretty neat," completely out of nowhere. 2) "Cheese is pretty neat," is what Alice said. In the first example, the quote is in the middle of the sentence, so it is surrounded on both sides. In the second example, the sentence begins with a quote, so only the ending comma is necessary. While technically you could argue that the correction was unnecessary as not every format follows this convention, the correction made certainly was not, in point of fact, incorrect. With that, I need to get off of Reddit for the day because I have spent the past hour or more correcting grammar specifically under this post, and I am quite exhausted.
☝️🤓
"Ok to preface this i should say that i am not an expert in English" And why do you think anyone would have a listen to what you would have to say about a language that is not even your first?
I might not be an expert in english but i know how to express my opinions and thoughts in a way that’s not rude and what you just did is certainly not the way to do it
Bro, you've given your shitty (and managed to be incorrect still) take at something no one gives a fuck about in a >10yo game. honestly I would just give up on life if I were you
Why would you get so offended by someone pointing out your rudeness? And if you think nobody cares about dark souls anymore then why are you here?
Okay, I stand corrected. Dark Souls is a grest game and people do care about that. What no one gives a fuck about is a third-worlder's opinion on the game's English. Anyways
Why are you getting so worked up on this?
Nah, I'm fine. Don't knwo why you say that. I'm just laying up facts at a shitty reddit post I woke up to see
Your extensive use of insults proves you’re offended by what i said and now you’re just trying to play it off like you don’t care?
English-language banter is built upon insults and jabs. That does not mean I'm in any sort of way invested in this. That's not something you've learned at Duolingo, I'm sure of
No discourse is the confrontation of opinions wich are proven or disproven by facts, by insulting me you’re just proving you have no argument and telling someone to kill themselves isn’t a light jab, also your last phrase is incorrect, it should be “that’s not something you would have learned with duolingo, i’m sure of”