Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns are substitutes for proper nouns. Old English personal pronouns show the grammatical person, gender, number, and case of the noun it replaces. Examine 'I' and 'You' in the two sentences below and don't forget that verbs conjugate differently depending on their subject.

The variety of pronouns may seem overwhelming at first, but most words should still be recognisable as personal pronouns have not changed significantly. For example, in modern English, I, you, he, she, we, ye, they, all function as subject pronouns, while me, him, her, us, them function as object pronouns. Examine the table below and look for similarities between the modern English pronouns and Old English pronouns. Some words, like 'thee' and 'thine', have fallen out of modern usage but should still be recognisable as an old-fashioned way of saying 'you' and 'yours', making the Old English easier to understand.

You will notice in the table above that the third-person pronouns are inflected for gender, but only in the singular. So 'he' and 'heo' are used for 'he' and 'she', while plural pronouns are not declined for gender. Examine the two sentences below: He gave us our dogs, and she gave me my dog.

Personal pronouns are used reflexively in Old English more often than in modern English. In Old English, verbs which refer to self or motion of self usually take a reflexive pronoun even where it would not in modern English. For example, the sentence, ic me ne ondred, translated literally could be interpreted as 'I me/myself dreaded not' but a more accurate translation is 'I was not afraid'. You can see another example in the sentence below which could be translated as 'the king himself travelled to the town'.

You may also see the word 'self' or ‘sylfe in use with pronouns. While it appears to be a reflexive pronoun, this should be considered an emphatic pronoun more so than reflexive, as it is generally treated as an adjective used to emphasise an existing noun or pronoun. So in the sentence 'Iudas hine sylfne aheng - Judas hung himself', 'hine' is the object ‘himself’, not 'sylfne'. Sylfne just emphasises the 'hine' and ‘hine’ would still mean ‘himself’ without it.

You will also notice 'sylf' above is declined strangely. This is because 'self' is usually treated like an adjective. Adjectives will be covered in a later module, so for now, just know that 'self' or 'sylf' are for emphasis and always pair with an existing noun or pronoun in the sentence.

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