Talk:Dynaheir/@comment-108.31.115.145-20160113054544

Uh no. Old English is nothing like Latin. It's most similar to other Germanic language of the early middle ages like Old Saxon and Old Norse.(Viking Language) The closest modern language to OE would be Icelandic. If you're interested, you can find Beowulf in the original Old English, with line-by-line translation, here . If you want to know what it sounded like, you can listen to a very impassioned reading of the first few lines by a medieval musicologist here

Middle English begins with the Norman conquest in 1066 and begins blending French influence with Old English. Wikipedia has a good table showing the pronouns in ME here. (þ is a Germanic letter called a "thorn" that is roughly equivalent to "th") Note that:

1) the possessive pronouns are indeed þi (thy/'your') and þin (thine/'yours')

2) þou/þu (thou/thu) and þe (thee) are not the same: thou is when 'you' is the subject, thee is when 'you' is the object. e.g. "Where are thou going?" vs. "Where is he taking thee?"

The meanings stay the same in Early Modern English (Shakespearean English) though the alphabet is further latinized with the remaining Germanic letters being changed. The EME spellings are more appropriate anyway since the world of Baldur's Gate is more inspired by renaissance culture than medieval. You can see this particularly in the clothes nobles wear in-game which are very 16th century as well as the tavern music. (compare it w/ this)

So yes, Dynaheir saying "Whatever thy need" could be correct if "whatever your need [is]" is meant, but "Thy called?" and "thy wish my ear?" would definitely be grammatically incorrect. "I pray thee did not kiss thy mother with that mouth!" is a more grammatically complex sentence but "thee" should still be "thou". Perhaps the writers were confused by "I pray thee" (or "prithee") being a common EME phrase (meaning "I implore you") but who knows...