E-Ching wrote: (is that Yi-Qing in Pinyin? Your last
name is Ng - are you of Cantonese origin?)

> People got more polite to each other, to put it facetiously. You

and vous started out as respectful forms and are now neutral forms in
French and English. Thou/thee started dying out in educated speech
right after Shakespeare. The Sanskrit professor here requires
translations with thou/thee, but Oskar, I'm afraid that the Latin, Old
Norse and Old English teachers here let thou/thee die some time ago
... do you want us to use it in our homework?

No, don't bother. We just meant to use it that one time; when I
referred to Latin, ON, Greek, and OE teachers using it, I meant by
presenting it perhaps once and then no more. I don't want students
translating ON into archaic English, like "thou seest not my sword
before thee!" or something like that.

> By the way, in case anyone is interested at all, Old English used to

have a dual, but it had pretty much died out by around 1000. Some
paradigms:

>
> 1st person. Sing.: ich (I), mec (me). Dual: wit (we two), unc (us

two). Pl.: we (we), us (us).

> 2nd person. Sing.: thu, thech. Dual: yit, inch. Pl.: ye, eow.

Quite interesting (to me at least). Thanks :)

>My computer is refusing to
>cooperate with Eudora on special characters. My attempts to produce
>thorn come out as Þ and þ !)

Funny thing is, that comes out just fine on my screen, whatever it was
on yours.

> Hope I haven't been wasting everybody's time,

Oh, don't be so modest :)

Óskar