RE: pronouns and portfolios--bringing it back tech writing

[Chris Gooch <Chris -at- lightwork -dot- co -dot- uk>]

Brian in Oz wrote:

> The loss of inflections in English has been attributed to the merging of
Old
> Norse with Anglo-Saxon. Both languages had similar vocabularies but
somewhat
> different inflexional systems. When Norse met Saxon, they could understand
> each other but there was a natural reluctance to stress the inflection, in
> case they got it wrong. The one exception would be the sibilant since it
is
> so intrusive. ... We modified our plurals to use the
> Norse "s" rather than the "en" of Saxon, we use the genitive "es" (or as
it
> now appears "'s") and we retained the midlands dialectical "s" for the
third
> person, singular. (Note the AV Bible retains the southern "eth", in all
> cases.)

This is utterly fascinating - if anyone can recommend a good book on
the history of early English I'll be a happy man over Easter.

In the meantime, as an inhabitant of one of the few places that still
use thee and thou (but not correctly) I'm considering doing a Yorkshire
version of my company's software manuals;

"Wen thi gets thi softwier art uh ' box, put ' CD in ' tray an tipe
follerin command in ' DOS box. If it dunt werk, tha'rt a reet pratt,
dornt bother ringin us up cos wi'll just laff at thi."

Should be a winner -- although doing localised versions for Geordie,
Cornish, and Glaswegian customers may be a problem (never mind the
Americans, French and Japanese...)  ;-)

Christopher Gooch, Technical Author,
LightWork Design Ltd., Sheffield, England. 
chris -at- lightwork -dot- co -dot- uk    www.lightwork.com



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