[2020] Possible grammatical error in one of Coven Morgana's quotes

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A friend bought me Coven Morgana not long ago, so I did some research on the archaic english she uses. I couldn't help but notice the quote she says when meeting Coven Lissandra:

"What visions dost thou chase, Lissandra? What truth hast been revealed to thee?"

Now, I'm not a native speaker, so I could be wrong on this, but according to google:

hast

archaic second person singular present of have.

This would make 'hast' the archaic version of have, not has. The correct form would be:

hath

archaic third person singular present of have.

Can anyone (hopefully better at the language than I) confirm this is a mistake, or tell me why 'hast' is actually correct in the above sentence?

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almost 5 years ago - /u/Riot_Interject - Direct link

Nice find! I looked into this a bit (waiting on servers to deploy :) ) and I think I have an answer - though admittedly I have no particular expertise in old english.

I found this usage in the bible, from searching for 'hath been' - "Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages" - Colossians 1:26 (KJV) (it has)

BUT then found this when searching for 'hast been' - "Thou hast been our dwelling place" - Psalm 90:1 (KJV) which is the second person usage (you have)

So I think, maybe, it's based on the subject it's being directed towards? Seems like you'd say "I had", but "You hast" and "It hath", right? But is 'thee' the same as 'you' or 'thou'?

Going to link this thread on our slack and see if we can gather the Shakespeare nerds :)

almost 5 years ago - /u/Riot_Interject - Direct link

Originally posted by AcrobaticApricot

What truth hast been revealed to thee?

"thee" is the second person object pronoun, so it is analogous to "him," "her," "them," "me," and "us." However, in modern English, "you" is the right second person pronoun for both object and subject. So, for example, you say "I [subject] killed [object] you" but "you [subject] killed [object] me."

In English, we don't conjugate verbs differently based on their objects, only their subjects. So you get I kill, you kill, she kills, et cetera no matter who is being killed.

Same goes for "to have." You say "it hath" and "thou hast" no matter what object pronoun you're using.

So in your examples, you have "the mystery" as the third person subject (it), so "hath" is used, and then you've got "thou" as the second person subject, so "hast" follows. In Morgana's quote, "truth" is third-person, so it needs "hath" instead of "hast."

Interesting! Thanks for the detailed explanation! That makes sense, I was thinking the tense was affected by the subject.

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