"They": A Norse Word in English

[@floralkid]

We don’t deserve Jackson Crawford and his channel but I am very glad he’s here

[@absolutelyfookinnobody2843]

You might not, but people who actually want to learn do deserve it

[@floralkid]

@@absolutelyfookinnobody2843 who said i didn't want to learn?

[@amandaforrester7636]

@@absolutelyfookinnobody2843 it's a expression bud

[@nathanmauk9387]

I never would have expected that thousands of people from all walks of life would spend their leisure time watching historical linguistics videos!

[@jacobandrews2663]

Amazing, isn't it. The good side of the net

[@marvalice3455]

Humans lust for knowledge. This is actually rather close to what the internet was originally Invisioned as

[@nathanmauk9387]

@@marvalice3455 I certainly meant it as praise, not criticism. I think its wonderful that so many people are enjoying learning about a topic which some might consider esoteric.

[@marvalice3455]

@@nathanmauk9387 sorry if I came across as critical, I meant to be supplementary. Lol

[@samchandler7747]

@@marvalice3455 intended to spread knowledge, but was definitely driven in large part by porn 😂 still, as long as channels like this exist then at least we know the internet isn't all bad

[@wolftolbert1032]

I'm happy to see this. All of my life I've heard people say "English is a Romance language" or that it's based on Latin. Which is clearly wrong. So when I was younger I was told that learning Spanish should be EASY since it's based on Latin, the same language we get English from... And so I spent an inordinate amount of time in HS & two college semesters of frustration studying that language & it NEVER made any damn sense & it still doesn't. Which is weird because I did five semesters of Japanese & picked it up pretty well. On my own time I've checked out modern German & found it totally intuitive. So, thanks for putting up a video affirming that English is Germanic & not Latin!

[@BobbyHill26]

Funny you say that, because I have found Spanish to be incredibly easy. It’s the only other language I speak, but I can’t imagine learning one easier than I have Spanish. The verb conjugations are definitely something that will throw you off, and they use pronouns and articles slightly differently than we do, but grammatically speaking, the language is nearly identical to English. Of course there are different constructs in both language s that don’t work perfectly in the other, but there are far more that can be translated completely literally and still make sense, although maybe a little bit odd or archaic sounding. I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but there are several constructs that I would imagine to be relatively unique because of their literal meanings (as I mentioned, I only speak English and Spanish, so maybe they are actually common developments) that are found in both languages. Maybe the reason you struggled with Spanish was more because you went in thinking it would be more similar than it is, where you went in expecting Japanese to be extremely different, and it actually is

[@wolftolbert1032]

​@@BobbyHill26 To me the only similarity to English was that Spanish is also Subject-Verb-Object. I found conjugation totally impossible (never got it right), then there was the whole mess of the articles & gendering that took the difficulty even higher. I've always been confounded by how granite-hard it was despite *considerable* time & effort (a few years as a teen then two college semesters). I've even recently attempted to relearn through Memrise & it STILL didn't take. Japanese is definitely different, but it's also so damn simple & elegant. Once you get the idea of the S-O-V pattern & how to use articles/markers it's just vocabulary & kanji. Other things like counting, polite/casual speech types, & context are just window dressing that doesn't affect syntax.

[@KingoftheJuice18]

Actually, part of what gives English its unique character is that it stems from BOTH Anglo-Saxon and Latinate roots (the latter through French).

[@wolftolbert1032]

@@GPrinceps Interesting essay. You're very invested in my comment!

[@ProjectThunderclaw]

Dr. Crawford has mentioned in the past that while ~50% of the dictionary has Latin roots, that includes a lot of technical jargon and poetic or archaic language that doesn't see much use outside very narrow circumstances. Of the words that English speakers actually use to communicate on a daily basis, the vast majority are Germanic, and the same goes for the structural elements such as grammar.

[@kimfleury]

I have no idea what our kitten saw on the screen, but he leapt onto my back from the chair behind me. That's maybe good for the channel because I had to rewind.

[@plciferpffer3048]

When it come to bodyparts, modern Norwegian and modern English, share most of it. Just a fun fact.

[@plciferpffer3048]

@spim randsley Arm is the same in English as Norwegian

[@dragorsi]

The "backdrop" though.

[@GustavSvard]

One fun thing about modern English they/them is how some dialects (such as some AAVE) have changed the th- to a d- and thus get very very close to the modern Scandiavian de/dem.

[@hennobrandsma4755]

Old Frisian had hia/hiara/hiarem/hia in the plural (plus minor variants), modern standard West Frisian has “hja“ (archaic spelling for [ja], some dialects have [j@]) but also a clitic form ”se” that has become more popular under Dutch influence and is also used in non-clitic forms; even the Dutch standard and substandard (when used in the nominative, which is very common) “hun” is borrowed. East and North Frisian preserve ja/ju forms everywhere.

[@regnbuetorsk]

the teacher i've always wanted to have

[@guyveloz4382]

Dear Professor, my favorite line from the sagas is, and I remember not the saga´s name just now, ´Menn riða þar eptir oss´showing the shocking, at times, similarity to Old Norse that English possesses. Many young folk quite interested in the ´northern thing´as C.S. Lewis called it visit my facebook asking me questions about Old Norse, which I myself learned at UCLA under professors Erik Wahlgren and Kenneth Chapman, and I always refer them to your fabulous videos that do such honor to the world's greatest language, Old Norse. I was so excited when accidentally running across a norse sentence with ALL English cognates that when Professor Chapman came back to Royce hall from a vacation and I spilled out the sentence , making one very bad mistake so that Professor Chapman couldn't understand what I was saying to him, which was, having in my excitement misquoted as ´Menn riða ÞEIR eftir oss´which of course makes no sense at all, and it wasn't till much later that I recalled what my mistake was. But in English is of course, ´Men ride there after us´which in the context of most saga dealings can be shortened to two words in English, ´Haul ass´ LMFAO! and then of course the more correct old norse, ´Menn riða þar eptir oss´and I pray that I haven't dreadfully forgotten everything I was so carefully taught in the Scandinavian department of UCLA, upstairs in Royce Hall, most fun times I've had in my adult life.

[@GeorgeTSLC]

Thank you!| My favorite tangent on this is that the reduced form 'em, as in "Give 'em heck, Harry!" is the original OE word, not any Norse borrowing.

[@AkilZodiac]

This is interesting! Where I live (Montreal), many people here are bilingual and as a result, growing up, I often heard my parents and relatives substitute words while speaking. While having a conversation with another bilingual speaker predominantly in english, we may use a french word here or there as we go. Makes me think a whole new language is in the works, here in Quebec.

[@minirop]

it's bilingualism at its finest. until I was about 5, I was speaking a mixture of French and English by using the first word to come to mind (so it wasn't even consistent, I could use the French word just after the English word in the same sentence)

[@worldtraveler930]

It is a pleasure to actually encounter a true professor, one that is passionate about his teachings and not his politics.

[@stumccabe]

Here, in Devon England, one frequently hears, from older local people, objects being referred to as he/him/his (pronounced "ee"/"im"/"eez" and usually "him" is replaced by "ee") and of course she/her in reference to boats.

[@punkykenickie2408]

But is there gold in them/their hills?

[@erilassila409]

I used they/them pronouns exclusively for a while before switching to he/him, and I'm also a linguistics major at university. Coming from that background, this video was very interesting.

[@professorsogol5824]

6:44 Male Rufous Hummingbird Selasphorus rufus an accidental/visitor in Wyoming

[@BurlapAndPlywood]

This really butters my eggroll

[@alexp.4270]

Thank you for keeping up the quality videos. Any day where we get to learn and see the beauty of nature is a better day for it.

[@hugo54758]

122K, that recognition is coming and I'm very happy about that, I've followed this channel for a couple of years now, I'm also really happy he worked with Ubisoft on their future video game : )

[@Plarby]

Interesting stuff! I'm happy you're doing this, and wish the best for ye good sir! Keep up the good work!

[@qekqbeen]

Dutch hun can be genitive and accusative however that's only common in people that are younger than 20-25, hen is the accurate accusative pronoun for English: them.

[@irenehigginbotham6392]

Thank you. Metaphysically significant this morning!

[@medanapepenel4736]

As always, a very interesting and informative video.

[@fredrikbreivald388]

Dr Crawford turns his style up to 11 for this one

[@juliaconnell]

I am yet again grateful for this channel, the time, commitment and once again fascinating topic - informative and enjoyable - AND once again thankful English- as 'craxy' as it is - all our rules and just as many exceptions to those rules, does not need additional complicated system of gender on top (ha - phone auto corrected rules to roles - applies just as well - more flexibility in language more flexibility in culture in thinking, in paradigms...

[@John-xq3ke]

Thank you for this video. Fascinating as always. I would love to see a video on what the different Scandinavian peoples thought of each other in terms of whether they considered themselves to be part of a cohesive, linguistic whole or whether geographic boundaries caused them to consider themselves as very separate and independent groups. This question comes from how, in much of our modern story telling around vikings and such, the focus always seems to be on the people of Norway and every so often they'll bring in a weirdo or a villain who always seems to be a Swede. Is there any historical basis for the people of Norway having a dislike of Swedes or vice versa for example? Or would they have even put the same kind of emphasis on national boundaries at all? What about the Danes or germanic people further south?

[@mortenthorsen8994]

its very interesting indeed as a speaker of norwegian nynorsk and English. Without being a linguist I would say modern English looks much closer to old norse than it is to old english, which looks like a more distant germanic language such as German or Dutch. May it be that English is descended from old Norse and as such is a Scandinavian language.

[@shaevor5680]

Very interesting video! I think it is notable that in modern German, "sie" (nom.+acc.) and "ihr" (gen.) is both 3rd person plural for all genders and 3rd person singular feminine. Furthermore, "ihr" can be 2nd person plural nominative. So a lot of ambiguity there. I think if the Germans would have had Norse speaking neighbors as the English did, they would probably have borrowed some norse pronouns too instead of dealing with this mess. :D

[@luisrpa123]

In this case, modern German deals with the ambiguity either through case distinction (nominative "ihr" is not the same as dative "ihr") or through verb conjugations (3rd person singular and plural are always distinct). So, the only confusions are accusative "sie" being both "her" and "them" and possesive "ihr" being both "her" and "their", but I guess context is enough to differentiate this edge case syncretism. The most interesting personal pronoun "confusion" in Germanic languages, in my opinion, is the fact that "deres" means "your (pl.)" and "their" in Norwegian Bokmaal, but I also guess then that each Norwegian dialect will adopt their own solution like English speakers distinguish modern "you (sg.)" and "y'all". However, considering that Bokmaal was mostly introduced as a written language from Danish, that looks like a big oversight to have in written form. :D

[@TheGlassgubben]

According to my dusty high-school German, you could still tell some of the "sie"s apart by the verb endings though. But I guess tricking the teacher, into thinking my grammar skills were better than they were, by slurring said verb endings, is now backfiring.

[@louismart]

Galenus1234 I totally agree!

[@louismart]

LCwavesAtYa Ich habe sie gesagt, das die Polizei kommen würden contains many mistakes. Ich habe ihnen gesagt, because it is a Dativ form. Dass not das, because it is a conjunction, not the neuter article. Würde not würden, because Polizei is a singular form. You cannot take this sentence as an example for the ambiguity of sie, as sie is incorrect. Ich habe ihnen gesagt = I told them. Ich habe ihr gesagt = I told her. Ich habe Ihnen gesagt = I told you (polite form). Ich habe sie gesagt = wrong.

[@MaV0910]

@@lcmiracle A good example would be: "Sie sieht sie." While the subject "Sie" is unambiguous due to the verb in 3rd person singular form, the object in the accusative case can be in feminine singular form, in genderless plural, or the singular polite form (if written as "Sie", though still pronounced the same). A slight variation would then be: "Sie sehen sie/Sie.": The subject in the nominative case can be interpreted as plural or polite form as the capital S at the start of the sentence makes those forms indistinguishable even in writing. Context makes the meaning clear. Either that or those special cases are avoided (e.g. by exchanging "sie" with for example "die Gruppe" or any similar word.)

[@stanislavk1911]

Thank you for your work.

[@LeoxandarMagnus]

You learn something new everyday.

[@Ammo08]

Isn't the word "thing" also of Norse derivation?

[@lunawolfheart336]

I think it's funny when people use they as a singular pronoun without even thinking about it but then those same people freak out when someone wants to go by those pronouns

[@coyoteroams]

@@Firebreath56 you are incorrect and have no understanding of what it's like to be trans. Do better and listen to people that talk about what it means to them, and stop pretending trans people are the problem here. This is really upsetting, there are people who throw massive tantrums because their children ask to express their gender using they/them. People lose their lives and homes because of transphobia.

[@17thknight]

"Can you believe they want me to call them they! They got a lot of nerve!"

[@t.r.everstone7]

I'm a writer and English tutor, so I'm not a fan of when anyone uses the word to mean non-singular. And the only reason I dislike it is because of instances of lack of clarity (I see it a lot with my students). Many of the essays I see have a lack of clarity between whether the student is talking about a group of people versus an individual. 90% of the time there is a better way to rephrase the sentence or a more fitting word to use (someone/body, anyone/body, individual, person, one, etc. Now, in informal speech, who cares? Do what you will; and language is always evolving, so there is no "right" or "wrong" way as long as the meaning is conveyed well. But in formal writing we do have to have some basic common rules for effective communication. And the weird thing is that "he" and "man" were both gender neutral and technically still could be used as such, so it seems we might have less confusion by using some other words like our language that are not already plural. I don't want to be too rigid and not be able to evolve with our language, but I also see a lot og unnecessarily complicated changes proposed. So one word group I've thought of using is "thee/thou/thy/thine." It already has a similar meaning and is unlikely to cause confusion or offense. Thoughts?

[@t.r.everstone7]

​@@17thknightGood example of a confusing sentence lol I wish we had a different non-plural word to distinguish from the plural. Because your sentence could be read in at least 2 different ways with no clear indocator which is intended. "One" or "Thee" are my main candidates so far

[@elbuggo]

Thanks for the lesson!

[@Hvitserk67]

In modern Norwegian and Danish, we also do not use gender when we refer to de/dem/dere (they/them/their). We can refer to de/dem/dere about anyone known/unknown person regardless of time, place and gender - as in English. I think that these basic grammatical common features are what make it so easy for Scandinavians to understand and learn basic English. A lot is common at this level with small adjustments, which is nice :)

[@anotherelvis]

I don't think that I have ever heard these genderless pronouns used in an actual conversation in Danish, but I would definitely respect if someone asked me to refer to them as "de" (they) instead of "han" (he) or "hun" (she).

[@Hvitserk67]

@@anotherelvis It probably depends a bit on the context. Norwegian is perhaps a little more inaccurate (progressive) in everyday speech, but the grammar (bokmål), is otherwise officially the same as in Danish so whether you specify him/her or use "de" (they - if more than one person) in general terms is an individual choice.

[@anotherelvis]

@@Hvitserk67 I guess that Bokmål and Danish deviates from eachother here (or maybe I misunderstand you). I tried googling and the best I could find was a semi-official answer from the Danish Language Council regarding gender neutral pronomines. (In Danish) sproget.dk/raad-og-regler/artikler-mv/svarbase/SV00016738

[@Hvitserk67]

@@anotherelvis Norwegian Bokmål is in practice a Danish dialect with some elements of special Norwegian words and phrases. Linguists are constantly discussing whether Norwegian Bokmål is really a separate language (then primarily a so-called koiné language) or whether it is political borders that are decisive. The gender-neutral pronoun "hen" is today mostly a Swedish phenomenon, although it is legal to use it in Norway and Denmark as well. However, I have never seen the word used in Norway or Denmark.

[@jpietersen519]

The Dutch 'hun' as an object should probably be 'hen'. 'Hun' in that form is still possible but only if there is an assumed preposition in the sentence. For example it is "I give a ball TO 'hen' ", but "I give 'hun' a ball", with TO being assumed in the second sentenxe

[@akl2k7]

Sounds like it's a dative pronoun.

[@markusass]

Being an East Anglian (in Eastern England), near low-lying fenland, I'll give you an example of how some people still use the vernacular to say big, which is actually derived from a Danish/Viking word. It's dying out now in terms of usage, but some still say "grut-big" -- grut being the English word for 'big'. So, essentially, they're combing the English word with the Danish-Viking word.

[@TOBAPNW_]

Is grut not an ancestor of the word great and as such just a conservative pronunciation of a standard english word? edit: grut is the Frisian equivalent to English "great"

[@faithlesshound5621]

@@TOBAPNW_ Yes, to me "grut-big" looks like a variant of "great big" which is a childish way of saying "large," and not by any means specific to East Anglia.

[@TOBAPNW_]

@@faithlesshound5621 Great big is no more childish than "wee little". It's an intensifier. Many languages use repetition for the same purpose.

[@faithlesshound5621]

@@TOBAPNW_ If I heard "wee little" my first assumption would be that the speaker was, if not a child themself, trying to sound like one. That does not negate the possibility that it might be part of an adult sociolect.

[@TOBAPNW_]

@@faithlesshound5621 If *I* heard a child say "wee little" I would assume they were imitating an adult. That kind of rustic vernacular is something I exclusively associate with the elderly. I'm not sure where you're getting the childish thing from.

[@jabezcreed]

Thanks. Very interesting. The idea that even old English speakers may have advanced a gender neutral class of pronouns is intriguing as well.

[@fjordsonmooreman9931]

Old West Norse gives me some great ideas for a viking spaghetti western comic.

[@livedandletdie]

It's also worth noticing that all the words on the list of the comparisons, are cognates.

[@minirop]

In French, the gender of the unknown person is mostly defined by the word used to "name" her. if "quelqu'un" is used, then the rest of the sentence will use the masculine. if "une personne" is used, then the feminine will be used.

[@ProjectThunderclaw]

Does that carry into a conversation? Like if I ask someone in French "Hey, there was someone here earlier. Did you see them?" will that person respond with "I didn't see him" or "I didn't see her" depending on whether I said "quelqu'un" or "une personne", or will they default to one or the other?

[@minirop]

@@ProjectThunderclaw yes, it will carry (until someone rename the unknown by sayign explicitly "une personne" for example).

[@dseelenmagie8811]

That's so weird... it's no wonder I have problems with my first language! Let alone trying to learn the German language.

[@IntelVoid]

Could it have been influenced by the indeclinable relative pronoun 'þe'? I don't know how long that lasted and if there's any temporal overlap with singular 'they'

[@hugo54758]

5:04 I (native speaker of French) differ. *Quelqu'un d'autre était là et il (3SG.m) a laissé des ordures. Une autre personne (this noun has the feminine grammatical gender) était là et elle (3SG.f) a laissé des ordures. Only the second one is grammatical and acceptable to me. Note that it is equally compatible with a male and female referent.

[@Lebst]

Might it have been an easy transition because Old English already had the very similar þa/þam/þara(þæra) in the demonstrative plural pronouns? Also interesting to note the reduced form of "them" 'em which probably comes from earlier English "hem"?

[@skyworm8006]

Most likely. People assume that different speech is the recent failings of the uneducated. Like em and my retaining prevowelshift pronunciation (pronounced same as me).

[@anotherelvis]

Great video, I didn't fully understand what the Proto-Germanic pronouns look like. Can someone give an example of a reconstructed Proto-Germanic sentence that uses something else instead if "they"?

[@anotherelvis]

@@Galenus1234 Hmm... but did they use an other pronoun instead of "they" or did they omit the subject of the sentence completely?

[@sikoyakoy2376]

@Another Elvis I think I’ve read that proto-Indo-european may have only used demonstrative pronouns (e.g. “this”, “that”, “these”, “those”) for the third person according to reconstructions. I’m not sure if this is thought to have changed for proto-Germanic though.

[@anotherelvis]

​@@sikoyakoy2376 Ah, so instead of saying "they arrived" the protoindoeuropeans said "those people arrived", and that became "those ... arrived" which lead to confusion because the word for "those" depended on the gender of the noun?

[@akl2k7]

@@anotherelvis Or just "these/those arrived". We can see similar constructions in Latin. They probably didn't need to use 'people'. Heck, they probably just said "Arrived" with the pronoun dropped (again, much as in Latin or modern Spanish, since the person is already indicated).

[@skyworm8006]

@@akl2k7 I'd also add 3rdperson pronouns in general have different developments and are kinda unneeded. Think of all the different nouns, which are 3rd person, that are used generically in addition to a wide range of demonstratives. It is convention to strongly default to they in English but it's not really needed even without verb conjugations. Ah but then if you removed it eventually one of those nouns or demonstratives would come to be used as default, likely not as strongly, and perhaps you're back to the same thing assuming the language doesn't redevelop its 'logic' into a very different direction overshadowing the idea of pronouns. Or perhaps pronouns, including 3rdperson, always come to be as a linguistic imperative it's just that it takes a very very long time and with the more static and standardised tendency imposed upon languages by standard one-orthography literacy, mass media, and extreme intolerance for variation/diversity (despite it being trendy to pretend otherwise) of our great technological world-civilisation, this 'very very long time' may be in range of tens of thousands of years but then again I doubt the present world will hold that long. My prediction: increased centralisation/totalitarianism as is the thousand-year trend -> problems with environment/resources/mental health/cultural coherence -> poverty and slow, fragmenting collapse (not total collapse but perhaps the death of 'world narratives' and orgs -> freer language development. Also note that pronouns in general aren't needed in language. You can just use nouns + 'pro-dropping' as many languages do. So pronouns may not have been grammaticalised into being, fixed and obligatory, at the time protoindoeuropean is supposed, that it is to say they may not have existed as we know them. Another thing: most languages are so-called 'pro-drop' even without having grammaticalised person. Meaning there is no concept of the 'person' bit of information being separable and regularly applied to words (not lexical). Meaning they drop without person verb conjugations with no problem. Prominent examples are Indonesian and Japanese. Those two languages also lack pronouns, or at least morphologically and syntactically and semantically the words we might hastily identify as pronouns are nothing like the pronouns of Indoeuropean languages.

[@hussaindaud1260]

Do you guys think the Viking rulership of Northern England might've given way to a word like They/Them being transferred to the vernacular as subjects might've referred to their rulers with the word /observed high ranking Norse diplomats refer to the Head using this word?

[@hussaindaud1260]

@widhbnw efDwdwDW hmm thats what i was thinking too. Interesting, thank you.

[@anotherelvis]

In modern German you can use "Sie" (They) as a polite second person singular pronoun. This was also used in Denmark until 50 years ago. I don't know if the old Norse also did this, or if this idea was introduced later. I would love to watch a video about "How to speak politely in old Norse".

[@username-mf7zx]

@widhbnw efDwdwDW In Egil's saga the author writes "því at á Norðimbralandi váru þeir einir menn, ef nökkut var til, at danska ætt átti at faðerni eða móðerni, en margir hvárirtveggju." Which means roughly - In Northumberland, nearly all the inhabitants were Danish by father's or mother's side, many by both.

[@jimm6095]

Thank you Vikings! "They" is one of my fave words!

[@DozifJuggles]

as a non binary person, thank you for teaching me the history behind my pronouns :)

[@jamesfforthemasses]

there are many, but they are all in the rockies... lol

[@wijse]

De, Dem. Deres.

[@sonyak9879]

🍃💗🍃🍂🍃💗🍃

[@beauforda.stenberg1280]

...

[@Axalon900]

A fun fact about the third person plural in English: the abbreviated form of “them”, ‘em, actually originated from the older “hem” pronoun and is a sort of fossil. Since people don’t go around consciously reinventing abbreviations but rather pick them up like any other word, this abbreviation carried on long after the original word it came from fell out of use. You can sort of intuit this from the fact that English doesn’t really omit “th” sounds from the beginning of words, (there’s no corresponding “ ‘ey” AFAIK), but he, his, her are often abbreviated as ‘e, ‘is, ‘er in speech.

[@mamichaelson]

“They” was borrowed because of the importance. Refers to a certain ancient group...

[@ICTsiege]

It is sad how much you have to justify your objectivity and factual analysis. Pretty ridiculous. Thanks for weathering the storm.

[@TOBAPNW_]

What are you on about?