Exercise: Packaging Pronouns
_Explain the pronouns of your target language.
And, yes, I made this challenge to bully the Japanese-learners.
In Latin, there are only four basic pronouns, distinguishing by person and number. There are no third-person pronouns – he, she, it – I don’t know of any other languages that lack this. It’s not an easy thing to absorb as an English-speaker.
To an extent you can use words like hic (“this”), which actually conjugates to show both gender and number, to stand in for the third-person. But I get the impression that this was mainly a Late Latin or Medieval trope and that classical writers were using some other, less familiar structure. I’ve forgotten what I learnt about this .__. There also seem to be a set of reflexive ("-self") pronouns in the third person. Pretty confusing.
The “true” pronouns:
| Person | Sing. | Plu. |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | ego (I) | nós (we) |
| 2nd | tú (you) | uós (you all) |
And here are the third-person “pronouns” derived from hic-type words. If I remember rightly, like in modern Romance languages a group of people are addressed as male if there is even a single man.
| Gender | Sing. | Plu. |
|---|---|---|
| Masc. | hic (he) | hí (they) |
| Fem. | haec (she) | hae (the women) |
In the Latin language, of course, it’s no surprise that pronouns decline through the usual case system. Note that the genitive of pronouns doesn’t govern possession, like in nouns, but instead phrases like “I am proud of you”.
| Sing. | 1st P. | 2nd P. |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. | ego (I) | tú (you) |
| Voc. | ego (I) | tú (you) |
| Acc. | mé (me) | té (you) |
| Abl. | mé (from me) | té (from you) |
| Dat. | mihi (to me) | tibi (to you) |
| Gen. | meí (of me) | tuí (of you) |
| Poss. | meus (my) | tuus (your) |
Note that ego is irregular, like English I, me, my, mine.
| Plu. | 1st P. | 2nd P. |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. | nós (we) | uós (you all) |
| Voc. | nós (we) | uós (you all) |
| Acc. | nós (us) | uós (you all) |
| Abl. | nóbis (from us) | uóbis (from you all) |
| Dative | nóbis (to us) | uóbis (to you all) |
| Gen. | nostrí (of us) | uestrí (of you all) |
| Poss. | noster (ours) | uester (yours) |