For example I am Aunt Jalene talking to a kid.
Instead of saying
I try to cook
I said
Aunt Jalene (I as the first person) tries/try to cook.
Should it be try or tries?
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3In other words, are you asking if you refer to yourself in the third person, how should you conjugate? The answer clearly is that you conjugate in the third person - "Aunt Jalene tries to cook..."– WS2Commented Jul 2, 2019 at 6:14
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2You cannot conjugate Aunt Jalene (third person) in the same way as I (first person). It's Aunt Jalene tries or it's I try. The way you've mashed the two together with parentheses and slashes is confusing.– Jason BassfordCommented Jul 2, 2019 at 6:56
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1It doesn't matter what the name represents. It only matters what function it serves in terms of syntax. It will always be Aunt Jalene tries to cook. The words Aunt Jalene are in the third person.– Jason BassfordCommented Jul 2, 2019 at 7:06
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1@BoldBen Those sound like imperatives to me—and would make equal sense without the use of the names at all. (Assuming it were obvious who was being spoken to.)– Jason BassfordCommented Jul 2, 2019 at 13:31
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1@JasonBassford Quite! Queen Victoria, fond of the "royal we" is reputed to have said "We are not amused". She didn't say "We am not amused".– WS2Commented Jul 2, 2019 at 22:41
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1 Answer
You use the third person when writing or speaking about yourself by name and using the name as the subject noun. Indeed, the pronoun to use then becomes he or she too.
As an example, Julius Caesar wrote Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War), in which he fought himself. Despite being a biased history, he wrote much of it in the present tense and so it illustrates this point. One part was translated in 1869 as
- ... Caesar, induced by these circumstances, decides that he ought not to wait until the Helvetii, after destroying all the property of his allies, should arrive among the Santones.
It would be the same in spoken English as in "Aunt Jalene thinks that is a bad idea and she is usually correct" rather than "I think that is a bad idea and I am usually correct", since your aim is to get the listeners to think about about what Aunt Jalene's thoughts mean to them.
