3 ms·

That analysis doesn't sound right to me. "the music likes me not" To my ear, it's more similar to modern day "me likes", as in "I like". Keep in mind archaic

That analysis doesn't sound right to me. "the music likes me not" To my ear, it's more similar to modern day "me likes", as in "I like". Keep in mind archaic English retains more of the Scandinavian structure. "Likes" would in that case be active, i.e. the person doing the liking. If my hunch is right, it's a play on words going from that more archaic structure in what the host says to the more modern structure in how Julia says it. Playing with the ambiguity of language.

trealira 2y ago
"The music likes me not" - "The music" is the grammatical subject, so the third-person singular conjugation "likes" is used. "Me", being the object form of the first-person pronoun, is the object of the sentence. It's comparable to how in Spanish, you'd say "Me gusta la música" and not "Yo gusto la música" - the person that does the liking is the grammatical object, and the thing that the person likes is the grammatical subject. Except, in English, unlike in Spanish, it used to be in free variation which things were the grammatical subject and object. You can even see how, in Old English, the person who liked was put in the dative case[0]. Translated into modern English, the lines would be: You don't like the music. You're wrong. I don't like the musician. Another verb this happened to was "to think." The word "methinks" is a archaism/holdover from when "think" had the meaning "to seem" and so "me thinks" came from Old English "mē thyncth," which had the first-person in the dative case. [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lician#Old_English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lician#Old_English
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/think https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/think when was it "to seem"?
  - trealira 2y ago
    In Old English: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/methinks#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/methinks#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEyncan#Old_English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEyncan#Old_English Edit: According to Wiktionary, it seems the meaning "to seem" was the Old English verb þyncan, and there was another verb þenċan, which meant "to think." That is, it came from the combination of two different verbs that sounded similar. So, maybe it wasn't the best example.

trealira 2y ago

"The music likes me not" - "The music" is the grammatical subject, so the third-person singular conjugation "likes" is used. "Me", being the object form of the first-person pronoun, is the object of the sentence. It's comparable to how in Spanish, you'd say "Me gusta la música" and not "Yo gusto la música" - the person that does the liking is the grammatical object, and the thing that the person likes is the grammatical subject. Except, in English, unlike in Spanish, it used to be in free variation which things were the grammatical subject and object. You can even see how, in Old English, the person who liked was put in the dative case[0]. Translated into modern English, the lines would be: You don't like the music. You're wrong. I don't like the musician. Another verb this happened to was "to think." The word "methinks" is a archaism/holdover from when "think" had the meaning "to seem" and so "me thinks" came from Old English "mē thyncth," which had the first-person in the dative case. [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lician#Old_English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lician#Old_English

actionfromafar 2y ago
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/think https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/think when was it "to seem"?
- trealira 2y ago
  In Old English: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/methinks#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/methinks#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEyncan#Old_English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEyncan#Old_English Edit: According to Wiktionary, it seems the meaning "to seem" was the Old English verb þyncan, and there was another verb þenċan, which meant "to think." That is, it came from the combination of two different verbs that sounded similar. So, maybe it wasn't the best example.