I probably shouldn’t go off on a rant about this because 1. I definitely am not an expert, I’m just someone who read absolutely anything i could find as a child and internalized the linguistic patterns in a lot of what i read, and also 2. I am very much not a prescriptivist and in nearly all cases I am 99.9% fine with people screwing around with language in whatever way they want

but

the 0.1% that actually gets under my skin is people using archaic forms of English in ways that there’s no historical record of them ever ever EVER being used

like. adding “eth” on the end of absolutely everything. replacing every instance of “my” with “mine.” things that just scream “you skimmed through one page of shakespeare once and picked out 2 trends that caught your eye as looking the most iconically old-fashioned and you decided these are the defining characteristics of what you will now call Ye Olde English (the inaccuracy of that term is 3 whole other rants though)”

and i think that the reason my descriptivist, anti-prescriptivist linguist brain still gets so ticked off by this, is that… descriptivism is by definition describing language the way it is.

which usually, most of the time, means describing the living, currently growing and changing language that we speak. which means allowing for all the different ways people actually currently use that language– as opposed to “prescribing” a “correct” way to use it, based on grammar rules that were already a little out of date from actual usage by the time they got nailed down in style manuals

but when you’re describing a language that is not currently growing and changing– the language of a particular range of years in history, which we currently know only from writings that survived from that time?

then the only approach that makes sense is to describe what we know from those writings.

otherwise, if you just make up a way to talk, and claim that’s how people talked back then? that feels (at least from the viewpoint of my own personal and probably ill-advised outrage) a lot closer to prescriptivism.

and again: disclaimer that 1. this is still not a serious problem, compared to god knows what number of other more important things i should complain about, it’s just a thing that irritates me… and 2. i am not even an expert by any means on what is the actual “right” way to use older forms of english

but here’s like. a couple very basic details that are just the entry-level stuff that a literate child learns from (as i said before) reading absolutely anything they could find and internalizing the linguistic patterns in what they read.

“eth” is the third-person-singular ending for verbs. which means it’s like the “-s” on the end of a verb that “he” or “she” or “it” is doing. He has a name = he hath a name. She lives here = she liveth here. It comes and goes = it cometh and goeth.

like probably at least 90% of the time you can tell whether “eth” is appropriate to use by asking yourself, “could I imagine this is just someone with a severe lisp using an s-ending verb here”

-st, on the other hand, is the “thou” form. Thou dost, thou livest, thou speakest. and “thou” doesn’t just mean “you,” it’s the informal version of “you” that’s used with close friends and family.

This is one that i admittedly got a cheat code on by being a kid who was raised speaking german as well as english. modern german still has separate formal and informal “you” forms, and the informal one still takes -st endings in german, so i had an unfair advantage there.

and there are also exceptions, irregular verbs where these rules won’t work.

(like “be.” The second-person thou-form of the word “be” is “thou art,” it’s not “thou ast” or “thou ist” or “thou beest.”)

(the third person singular he-she-it form of the word “be” is the word “is,” and i am fairly sure there’s no time in history when it was “ith.”)

(i could be very wrong though. like i said. i am NOT an expert)

“my” and “mine” are used just the same as we use them now, EXCEPT that “mine” can also be used instead of “my,” if it comes before a vowel sound.

this is the same deal we currently still have with the words “a” and “an.” the general rule here is that you can use “mine” where you could use “an.” An eye? Mine eye. An uncle? Mine uncle. An old house? Mine old house. it goes by the sound that comes immediately after.

(of course, these things can be plural, unlike things referred to by “an.” So there are cases where you would not use “an” but you would use “mine.” Mine eyes. Mine uncles. Mine old houses. same deal just plural.)

“thy” and “thine” are possessive forms of “thou.” they are used just like “my” and “mine,” except they’re for the person you’re talking to (informally). Thine eye. Thine uncle. Thine old house.

“thee” is the object-pronoun form of “thou.” It’s the informal you, when the informal you is the object of the sentence– when something is being done TO you, or in relation to you.

I see thee. They love thee. He gave thee a gift. “Thee” is to “thou” basically just what “me” is to “I,” or what “him” is to “he.”

so anyway that covers probably the majority of misuses that get on my nerves. but i am still not prescriptivist and i sure as heck am still not telling you how to talk or write. you can take it or leave it.

(side note. if you’re creating a fantasy world and you include a speech pattern that’s based on archaic english but doesn’t follow how it was actually spoken or written, this won’t necessarily bother me as long as it follows its own internal rules, especially if it’s done in a creative way.)

(or if it’s influenced by one of the actual lesser-known dialects of archaic english. that’s cool too.)

(you know how T'Pau talked in the episode Amok Time in Star Trek TOS? at first it didn’t even annoy me that much, how she kept saying “thee are” and “thee has,” because it wasn’t even one of the boring old misuses, it was a fresh new way i had actually never seen “thee” used before! ….and THEN, i gained a whole new level of respect for it, later on, when i found out it’s actually based on a specific way that a Quaker dialect of English used to use “thee.”)