You are insane if dumb old you wants to do that.
You are insane if dumb old you want to do that.
You are insane if you want to do that.
You are insane if you wants to do that.
Which two of these sentences are correct and why? Very confusing to me and cannot find answer on google. thank you
Using you with an attributive adjective (which is to say an adjective in front of it) is generally interpreted to create a third-person reference to the listener (or reader). The same goes for me. Thus you might hear things like
If I go to the trouble and expense of earning a college degree, future me will appreciate the investment I made in them
where the antecedent of them is “future me.” (Note too that in such usage, the subject of the clause is expressed in terms of me and not I.)
Thus, dumb old you could easily call for wants. I would add though that the noun phrase dumb old you strikes this native speaker of American English as an odd turn of phrase.
And here’s an additional warning. As pointed out by @FumbleFingers in the comment below, the personal pronouns are not a class of words that typically accepts modification, so most uses of such constructions are quirky in tone and anyway fairly nonstandard. So learners of English should probably avoid them. My example, for instance could be rephrased along the lines of
If I go to the trouble and expense of earning a college degree, I will afterwards appreciate the investment I made in myself.
(There are a few counter examples that are safe because of their wide usage—things like silly me! and poor you!)
dumb old you is the subject of the sentence and it's third person.
Dumb old you wants to do that. A man wants to do that.
Just add: you are insane if
Only object pronouns with a modifier can be a subject of a sentence like that one.
The old me would not do that.
The new you is very nice.
Without a modifier, they would not be grammatical in standard English.
