Learn English – What’s up with “this,” in Old English(Ænȝlıſ͡ċ/Anglo Saxon‽)

grammargrammatical-caseold-englishpronounsthis-that

I am asking two things here, about Ænȝlıſċ (Old English)

First and foremost, see this picture here:
enter image description here

– which was taken from this page:

QUESTION 1:

What is the difference between these two words: "þisse," and "þisre," which, according to the aforementioned, both function, in the Old English tongue as "this"? Both are listed as both genitive and dative case feminine singular.

The same goes for "þissa," and "þisra", which are both listed as being "these" in the genitive plural case.

Are these variations used in specific cases? Or is one of the words classical, and the other newer, one developing early, and one after the Norman conquest? Or are they dialectal differences?

— e.g. the Ænglisc first person singular accusative pronoun was "mec", but toward the end of the language’s life, before Middle English came about, "mec" was replaced with the dative and instrumental first person singular pronoun "mé."

— e.g. in the West Saxon dialect of Old English, "hand," was the word for "hand," as in the human hand, but in another common dialect of Ænglisc, the word was spelled and pronounced as "hond."

QUESTION 2:

Old English is an inflected language, so all words must agree in some form, therefore one does not simply say "mín hand": the genitive singular pronoun does not agree with the noun it owns, "hand", which is feminine. One must say "míne hand", adding "-e", the feminine singular possessive ending, to the stem "mín-."

That being said, suppose a man wanted to show off his hand, and say: "Lo! this is my hand!" Would he say "Hwæt! þēos míne hand!" ("þēos" being the feminine nominative singular form of the article "this"), or would he say: "Hwæt! þisse/þisre míne hand"?

Best Answer

1. I was able to find an article that explains how this, that, and the changed. (You may not be able to get into the full article, unless you're paying a lot for college tuition like I am.)

It compares the language from two different versions of the same poem, one in Cotton Caligula A. ix and the other in Cotton Otho C. xiii. While both manuscripts were written in a Central West Midlands dialect around the same time ("the second half of the thirteenth century"), there were plenty of differences:

Caligula appears to be closer to the original with the language more archaic than that of Otho, which shortened and modernized Laзamon's narrative.

Although the article is clearly written about Early Middle English, the context is nice to have:

Here should be mentioned also an increasing use of þisse in genitive, dative, and post-prepositional contexts, which in Otho almost completely replaces þisses, þissen, and þissere. * This apparently reduced form is only one step removed from indeclinable þis: it would lose the final vowel and merge into the latter in due course of time.

* This spot leads to the following footnote (which answers your first question):

Old English has the genitive or dative singular feminine þisse as well as þissere, “developed by parasiting from þisre” (Campbell, §711). Some instances of þisse therefore could be a reflex of the historical feminine form, though it should rather be taken as a reduced form of þissere, which is almost exclusively found as the genitive or dative singular feminine in Caligula, in line with the development of þisses and þissen.
Unhistorical Gender Assignment in Laзamon's Brut: The Development of a Tripartite System of Defining Words, The, That, and This

2. You should use the nominative case for "this". (You also need a verb!) Here's an example (masculine case):

þes is min leofa sunu ðe me wel licað.

This is my dear son who greatly pleases me.

Old English from ÆCHom II, 4 B1.2.5
"Translation" from Instructional Writing in English: Studies in Honour of Risto Hiltunen

You should say "Hwæt! þēos is míne hand!"

On a related note, it's interesting to note that some words, notably lichama (body, masculine noun), were not always written with the "right" gender, depending on context:

þis is min lichama.
The Gospel of Saint Luke in West-Saxon

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