Wednesday, October 26, 2005

What giveth at Yahoo! Mail?

If you have a Yahoo! Mail account, you've recently been subjected to some strange ads on the login page. Here's one which made me cringe:



Ouch! If you're going to use Elizabethan English, at least get the grammar right!

Yes, the English used in Shakespeare's time had rules, too. You can't just write "giveth" wherever you feel like it. It conjugates like this:

Singular:
  • I give
  • Thou givest
  • He giveth


Plural:
  • We give
  • You give
  • They give

So "SpamGuard taketh away" is correct (third person singular). But "Spammers giveth" is cringe country. "Spammers" is plural, and must be combined with "give", just like in today's English. At best you could say, "The spammer giveth."

But why would you want to? Why would Yahoo! want to evoke the King James Bible in an ad for e-mail spam blocking? Are they using an algorithm developed by Francis Bacon?

Like, what giveth?

2 comments:

Cosmic X said...

Thou dost not know? That is what thou getest when thou usest free email!

P.S. Sorry if I made you cringe.

ifyouwillit... said...

It's not the only thing about the new Y! mail login page that is cringworthy!

Shabbat Shalom.