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Wit, unker, Git: The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260408-the-extinct-english-words-for-just-the-two-of-us
42•eigenspace•2h ago

Comments

markus_zhang•1h ago
For anyone curious as me:

git means You two.

stoneman24•1h ago
I wonder how it evolved into the modern British slang of “git”. To quote Wikipedia [0]

“modern British English slang, a git (/ɡɪt/) is a term of insult used to describe someone—usually a man—who is considered stupid, incompetent, annoying, unpleasant, or silly.“.

And “ Git is a popular open-source software for version control created by Linus Torvalds. Torvalds jokingly named it "git" after the slang term, later defining it as "the stupid content tracker".”

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(slang)

talideon•1h ago
There appears to be nothing linking Old English "git" with Modern English "git". Also, OEng "git" would've been pronounced more like "yit".
Octoth0rpe•52m ago
> Torvalds jokingly named it "git" after the slang term, later defining it as "the stupid content tracker".”

I think the better Torvalds quote was when he said "I name all my projects after myself"

vintermann•1h ago
"Listen baby, they're playing uncer song..."

"Git should get a room!"

rbonvall•14m ago
Of course. It's distributed.
frogulis•1h ago
Boy that unc/uncer looks tantalisingly close to modern German uns/unser. Wiktionary seems to have it descending from a different PIE root, n̥s vs n̥h -- I'm not at all familiar with PIE though.
shakna•1h ago
n̥ is just the "not" prefix. The "ero" is the real root. The prefix applies to the root first, and then the other pieces have their meanings, usually. (Its a reconstructed language. There are both exceptions and things we don't know.)

"n̥-s-ero-" is sort of < "not" next-is-plural "mine" >.

So, plural-(invert mine). Or roughly close to "we".

"n̥-h-ero-" is sort of < "not" next-is-inclusive-plural "mine" >.

So, plural-(group (invert mine)). Or roughly close to "us".

But both are pretty close to the same meaning. High German maintained a lot of PIE, and is very close in a lot of ways. Though... Welsh is closer.

eigenspace•1h ago
That was my first thought too! So many things in old-english are very very close to modern German, so it's sometimes surprising to see these false-friends.
nhgiang•1h ago
You two add

You two commit

You two push

huijzer•53m ago
Also sad is the fact that “you” is now used for “thee” and “thou” and such. The older variants could distinguish between “you” plural and “you” singular
ksherlock•30m ago
W'all have got y'all for plural you.
eigenspace•52m ago
I found this article quite interesting, and couldn't help but feel there's something that's emotionally lost when we got rid of the dual-forms. The example from Wulf and Eadwacer where "uncer giedd" was translated to "the song of the two of us".

Somehow that just doesn't land the same.

heresie-dabord•22m ago
> Somehow that just doesn't land the same.

I fear that a modern colloquial rendering would disappoint yet further:

    our besties tune
zukzuk•4m ago
If you found this interesting, you might want to check out The History of the English Language podcast.

I’m surprised how much I’m enjoying it. And I can’t believe I have 195 episodes left.

psychoslave•38m ago
My biggest side project is about grammatical gender in French, published as a research project on wikiversity[1].

It did made me go through many topics, like dual, exclusive/inclusive group person.

Still in a corner of my head, there is the idea to introduce some more pronouns to handle more subtilty about which first person we are expressing about[2]. The ego is not the present attention, nor they are that thing intertwined with the rest of the world without which nothing exists.

[1] https://fr.wikiversity.org/wiki/Recherche:Sur_l%E2%80%99exte...

[2] The project does provide an homogenized extended set of pronouns with 6 more than the two regular ones found in any primary school book. And completing all cases for all nouns is the biggest chunk that need to be completed, though it’s already done by now for the most frequent paradigms.

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