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Wit, unker, Git: The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy [about the dual in English] (www.bbc.com)

submitted 1 month ago by lvxferre@mander.xyz to c/linguistics@mander.xyz

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It's a bit of pop linguistics about the dual number in English, with a few inaccuracies, but it's interesting regardless. I'll provide here some further historical info.

Proto-Indo-European contrasted three grammatical numbers: singular, dual, and plural. With the dual being used mostly for things that come in pairs (like arms or a couple). By Proto-Germanic times, the dual only survived in the pronouns, as you can see in this table:

Person/number	Nominative	Accusative	Oblique	Possessive
1SG ("I")	ek~ik	mek~mik	miz	mīnaz
1DU ("we both")	wet~wit	unk	unkiz	unkeraz
1PL ("we")	wīz~wiz	uns	unsiz	unseraz
2SG ("thou")	θū	θek~θik	θiz	θīnaz
2DU ("you two")	jut~jit	inkw	inkwiz	inkweraz
2PL ("y'all")	jūz~jīz	izwiz	izwiz	izweraz
reflexive ("self")	se-	sek~sik	siz	sīnaz

Note those forms are reconstructed (I didn't want to clutter the table with asterisks). That ⟨θ⟩ is to be read as in "think", ⟨j⟩ as in "yes", and the vowels as in Spanish or Polish, with a mācron making them lōnger (longcat is ~~looooong~~ lōng).

The dual pronouns would survive until Early Middle English (up to 1350), but were increasingly less used. I believe most of the other pronouns from that table survived.

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