--- In norse_course@egroups.com, Deep Stream <DeepStream@...> wrote:

> Regarding Dual Pronouns:

Heill Djúpstraumr (that name makes even less sense in ON! :)

> 1. Does one HAVE to use the dual if he knows
> there are two? Can he simply use the plural if he
> wants? I'm not trying to make it easy on myself -
> I just want to know if the usage is for cases
> where the speaker wants to stress the duality.

I'd say you must use the dual if the number is known to be dual; to
emphasize the duality, one'd use "vit tveir/tvær/tvau" and "þit
tveir/tvær/tvau", as Haukur presented in another post.

> 2. Do dual pronouns conjugate verbs as plurals,
> singulars or do they have their own conjugation?

They conjugate as plurals.

Separate conjugations for the dual is something *very* archaic; it
was (supposedly) done in Indo-European, but not in Latin, Ancient
Greek, Old Norse, or any other ancient IE-descended language I know
of. Besides, the dual conjugation in IE was (as reconstructed) very
similar to the plural one, so there's no surprise it got dropped.

> Also - at one point in lesson 2 you translate to
> English with "thou art". I think "thou" is old
> English second person *formal* ("you" and "ye"
> were informal). Are you just trying to highlight
> the cognate ("art" = "ert"), or is "þú" formal (I
> thought you've already said Old Norse has no
> formal/informat second person differentiation)?

Actually, "thou" was never a formal in English (except perhaps
today). It was the second person singular, while "you" (or "ye") was
the plural. There was also a special third person plural used for
formality, corresponding to German "Sie". The reason why "thou"
dropped out, was that English-speakers, sometime in the early
industrial age (I think), used the formal so much that most people,
to be safe, just used it at all times. Thus "you", the plural
pronoun, came to be applied to any number of addressees. Today,
when "thou" is sometimes seen only in old texts, notably the Bible
(where God's always addressed that way, because man's relation ship
with God is supposedly too intimate for using the formal), modern
English-speakers perceive "thou" as something formal. But
historically, it's not so.

But using "thou" the way we did is actually quite common in
language courses; the teachers need a more convenient way to
differentiate 2.p.sing. from 2.p.pl. than using the cumbersome "you
(sing.)" vs "you (pl.)". In our case, it served a double purpose,
as "thou art" gives away the similarity to "þú ert", which "you are"
doesn't.

As to ON formality, "þú" is informal, or rather just neutral; "þér"
(= plural) is superformal and usually reserved for royalty.

Óskar