Is "You've" Proper English?

[Al B. Sure!]

Ye is Old English, not Standard/Proper English.

No it's not. It's Modern English. Old English is the language of the Anglo-Saxons.



You're not very learned, Asher.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

"Ye" was just an alternative of "the" in Middle English (and pronounced the same way) after the abandonment of the thorn letter "þ".


Incidentally, watching colonials debate English really is like watching the Paralympics.

[Al B. Sure!]

Apparently not.

Ye (IPA: /jiː/) was the second-person, plural, personal pronoun (nominative), spelled in Old English as "ge". In Middle English and Early Modern English, it was used to direct an equal or superior person. It is also common today in Ireland's Hiberno-English to distinguish from the singular "you".

The use of the term "Ye" to represent an Early Modern English form of the word "the" (traditionally pronounced /ðiː/), such as in "Ye Olde Shoppe", is technically incorrect. This mistaken attribution is due to the medieval usage of the letter thorn (þ) the predecessor to the modern digraph "th". The word "The" was thus written Þe. Medieval printing presses did not contain the letter "thorn", so the y was substituted owing to its similarity with some medieval scripts, especially later ones.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_(grammar)




Does any of this sound proper?
You've a car.
They've a house.
He's a cat. (How do you know if it's He has or He is?)

Talk to a native English speaker in conversation (i.e. fast and fluid delivery of the words) and the "h" will almost certainly be dropped, with the following "a" shortened to near non-existance.

So "they've" is a good approximation of how I would say it in conversation- unless I was deliberately slowing it down and stressing every word in order to accommodate foreigners and the elderly.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Apparently not.

Read it again.

[Al B. Sure!]

It says you are repeating a mistaken attribution

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I think I missed the point you were making there. Anyway, "you've" is fine, so stop complaining.

[Provost Harrison]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_(grammar)

Does any of this sound proper?
You've a car.
They've a house.
He's a cat. (How do you know if it's He has or He is?)

Have is usually contracted with the pronoun when it is an auxiliary verb. As a main verb (indicating possession), it is not normally contracted by American native-speakers.

It's not normally contracted in British English either from my observation. I would never say "I've a car"...it would be "I have a car" or possibly "I've got a car".

[Al B. Sure!]

It's not normally contracted in British English either from my observation. I would never say "I've a car"...it would be "I have a car" or possibly "I've got a car".

Everyone else (except apparently Drake) is in the Twilight Zone and just want to act like I'm wrong.

[C0ckney]

you've no idea al.

[Provost Harrison]

Everyone else (except apparently Drake) is in the Twilight Zone and just want to act like I'm wrong.

Doesn't technically make it wrong, but it doesn't quite sound right to my ear. But then again the boundaries between the two form of English aren't that huge (they certainly aren't two separate dialects) and influence one another significantly.

[Guynemer]

The answer is yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

[SlowwHand]

Everyone else (except apparently Drake) is in the Twilight Zone and just want to act like I'm wrong.

This is his stance on all things. He's right, all others are wrong.

[Kitschum]

Oh you'se guys. You'se guys is great.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

We will now settle beyond all doubt by showing "I've" used correctly by David Essex.