I am asking two things here, about Ænȝlıſċ (Old English)
– which was taken from this page:
What is the difference between these two words: "þisse," and "þisre," which, according to the aforementioned, both function, in the Old English tongue as "this"? Both are listed as both genitive and dative case feminine singular.
The same goes for "þissa," and "þisra", which are both listed as being "these" in the genitive plural case.
Are these variations used in specific cases? Or is one of the words classical, and the other newer, one developing early, and one after the Norman conquest? Or are they dialectal differences?
— e.g. the Ænglisc first person singular accusative pronoun was "mec", but toward the end of the language’s life, before Middle English came about, "mec" was replaced with the dative and instrumental first person singular pronoun "mé."
— e.g. in the West Saxon dialect of Old English, "hand," was the word for "hand," as in the human hand, but in another common dialect of Ænglisc, the word was spelled and pronounced as "hond."
Old English is an inflected language, so all words must agree in some form, therefore one does not simply say "mín hand": the genitive singular pronoun does not agree with the noun it owns, "hand", which is feminine. One must say "míne hand", adding "-e", the feminine singular possessive ending, to the stem "mín-."
That being said, suppose a man wanted to show off his hand, and say: "Lo! this is my hand!" Would he say "Hwæt! þēos míne hand!" ("þēos" being the feminine nominative singular form of the article "this"), or would he say: "Hwæt! þisse/þisre míne hand"?