Your is a possessive pronoun that shows who something belongs to:
Whose chair is this? It’s your chair.
You’re is a contraction built from you + are, and it indicates that a person is doing something:
Who is going to cut the cake? You’re going to cut the cake.
Yore refers to a time long, long ago, and it is not a very common word these days, unless you hang out at the Renaissance Festival and listen to tales of yore.
Put them together:
This is your chair, and you’re going to cut the cake.
(This means that the chair belongs to you and that you are going to cut the cake.)
To remember the difference, try these clues:
• Your contains our, a pronoun that indicates something we own.
• You’re is a verb built from you + are. Remember, if you can break it down, it is a verb that needs an apostrophe (’).
You are making me wonder about another word - the colloquial term "yonder." In the South, we used to say, "over yonder." I am now thinking "yonder" is related to the word "you" in some way.
ReplyDeleteActually, after a quick Google search, I think "yonder" comes from an Old English word "geond" - beyond.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/geond-
I have an ongoing argument with an engineer friend who wants to know precisely where "yonder" is. As I keep telling him, it's "over there." And he's from Texas! Must be an engineer thing ...