That's very true, Stephen. English as we know it developed over several centuries and the changes were accepted at different times in different places. Yorkshire is in the very north of England (the old Danelaw). Furhter, it may well to add that phonetics play a part in the development. The OE forms for the thirs person plural were rather weak, and confusable with other forms. Adoption of the Norse variations solved that dilemma. Another instance is the loss of the past tense by the rather common verb "to go". This was also phonetically weak, and led to "to go" becoming a defective verb lacking a past tense in modern English albeit the verb itself survived (as most of us are aware, "went" is the borrowed true past tense of the rarely used [now very specialised use] of the verb "to wend").

Erek


--- Stephen Fryer <sfryer@...> wrote:
erek gass wrote:

> Even our third person plural pronoun set is
> attributable to the Norse. The interesting things are the usual
> investigative words: how, when, where, who, and why. In the case of "they,
> them, their" the reason seems to be that the OE words in use were rather
> weak, and the ON equivalents were accepted (the "why" if you will).

Most Norse influence didn't make itself felt until the Middle English period.

"They, them, their" and "-s" (rather than "-th") as third singular ending, did
not get taken into general English usage until the 15th century. Chaucer
(late 14th c.) still used the Old English forms except in dialog by characters
from Yorkshire.

--
Stephen Fryer
Lund Computer Services

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