Horse 2848 - What? That.

When? Then

Whose? Those.

Where? There.

I had my mind taken to a delightful new place last week when someone on the radio made mention of the "Wh? Th." question and answer formation.

The rational explanation is that 'who' and 'what' derive from Old English hwa and hwæt, respectively, and in turn are simply the descendants of the masculine and neuter forms of Proto-Indo-European 'kwos' and 'kwod'. The direct Latin equivalents are 'quis' and 'quod'. 'wh' and 'qu' are similar and at some point 'w' merged with 'ū' and that makes sense as they are both velar approximant excpet that /w/ is a voiced labialized-velar approximant.

Why? Thy.

How? Thou.

(I bet that 'how' used to be spelt 'whow').

These questions and answers do in fact work but they're nowhere near as elegant. These answers also attach ownership of the answer to the person directly in front of the one asking the question.

However (just like when you hear the word 'but' you can ignore everything that came before, when you hear the word 'however' you'd better strap yourself in because it's going to be a bumpy ride), I kind of feel as though I've found a word which doesn't exist but absolutely, totally, definitely, indubitably, should. 

Whese? These.

It feels to me that 'whese' should exist as a word because it follows the same construction of this kind of particle but I don't honestly see any practical purposes for it. 'Whese' if it is to exist as a word, needs so much of an explanation as to be unwieldy and ridiculous. 'Whose are these?' 'Which ones are these?' Those concepts are far more complex than the usual questioning words.

Who? Tho.

Which? Thich. 

'Who? Thou.' might be a reminder that the ancient rule which existed, worked in this case after all. What has changed in the meantime is both the great vowel shift and English flirting with the idea and then rejecting the concept that objects have gender.

Whing? Thing.

White? Thite.

Whee? Thee.

The thing that makes the English language the best language in the world is that it is so very brilliant at allowing things that could be built; which fits into the existing rules. The only real hard and fast rule in grammar is that every sentence contains a verb and that verb can either be stated or implied. English is so versatile that you can verb a noun and noun a verb. You can also build words that make sense, from the intuitive rules which exist.

Whither? Thither.

Wherefore? Therefore.

Use of 'th' in place of what would have been a yogh explains neatly why words like 'thee', 'thou', and 'thine' exist in print. Typesetters in looking through their new fangled box of bits, while minding their ps and qs found that they were missing thorns, eths, and yoghs. There might be as many as ten letters that English lost as a result of the arrival of the printing press and this also explains why the Scots name which might be pronounced as Men-ghi-s, came out as Menzies. This also explains why 'The Old Shop' comes out as 'Ye Olde Shoppe'.

Whyfor? Thyfor.

Whyroid? Thyroid.

Whis? This. 

The problem when I start tumbling down the rabbit hole is that I feel as though there is some underlying rule which existed in a proto-English that got baked into the final product but I don't know how you even go about researching this. I imagine that linguists have come across this before and that maybe someone somewhere has written a paper on it but again, I don't know how to find it.

I am left with a lot of 'wh' questions but not many 'th' answers. Oh English, ye weird wayward child of Saxon, Viking, Anglish and French. Do you know what trouble thou hast wrought?

What? That.