--- �skar Gu�laugsson <hr_oskar@...>
wrote:

> 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

Oh, I suppose its utterly off-topic, but I got
confused by Earnest Hemmingway's
transliterations. He often wrote statements made
by foreign language speakers (Spanish, mostly) in
English, (that is, he wrote the sentence in
English so his readers could understand what the
character had said, but it was clear that the
sentence was actually meant to have been spoken
in Spanish in the "story reality"). However, he
seemed to try to indicate something by using the
archaic "thou". I don't think he was trying to
make clear that the speaker was using the
singular. I always thought he was indicating that
the speaker was using the formal (I'm pretty
sure, in fact- which just means I am in an
illustrious line of linguistically confused
Americans...).

- DS

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products.
http://shopping.yahoo.com/