H.L. Mencken (1880–1956). The American Language. 1921.
Page 293
was applied, and so there arose such forms as minum and eowrum (=mine and yours), from min and eower (=my and your).72 Meanwhile, the original simple genitive, now become youre, also survived, and so the literature of the fourteenth century shows the three forms flourishing side by side: youre, youres and youren. All of them are in Chaucer.
Thus, yourn, hern, hisn, ourn and theirn, whatever their present offense to grammarians, are of a genealogy quite as respectable as that of yours, hers, his, ours and theirs. Both forms represent a doubling of inflections, and hence grammatical debasement. On the side of the yours-form is the standard usage of the past five hundred years, but on the side of the yourn-form there is no little force of analogy and logic, as appears on turning to mine and thine. In Anglo-Saxon, as we have seen, my was min; in the same way thy was thin. During the decadence of the language the final n was dropped in both cases before nouns—that is, in the conjoint form—but it was retained in the absolute form. This usage survives to our own day. One says “my book,” but “the book is mine”;“thy faith,” but “I am thine.”73 Also, one says “no matter,” but “I have none.” Without question this retention of the n in these pronouns had something to do with the appearance of the n-declension in the treatment of your, her, his and our, and, after their had displaced here in the third person plural, in their. And equally without question it supports the vulgar American usage today.74 What that usage shows is simply the strong popular tendency to make language as simple and as regular as possible—to abolish subtleties and exceptions. The difference between “his book” and “the book is his’n” is exactly that between my and mine, thy and thine, in the examples just given. “Perhaps it would have been better,” says Bradley, “if the literary language had accepted hisn, but from some cause it did not do so.”75
As for the addition of s to you in the nominative and objective
Note 72.Cf. Sweet: A New English Grammar, pt. i, p. 344, 1096. [back]
Note 73. Before a noun beginning with a vowel thine and mine are commonly substituted for thy and my, as in “thine eyes” and “mine infirmity.” But this is solely for the sake of euphony. There is no compensatory use of my and thy in the absolute. [back]
Note 74. I am not forgetting, of course, the possible aid of his own, her own, etc. [back]
