@Angry Young Man Vanquisher of Tyranny I think that we should also refer to "History" as "Herstory" for the sake of being more progressive and gynocentric, also Epstein didn't kill himself.
When I taught English in Japan, I had one group of students who were very confused why English made a distinction between singular and plural in the first and third persons but not the second person. I taught them "thou, thee, thy" (in the same format we taught them other pronouns, such as "I, me, my"), and they actually seemed really relieved that this concept existed in English and wasn't just some sort of weird oversight. Lol.
So glad to hear you address the thorn substitution for ‘th’. I first read about it in a biography of Thomas Jefferson, and have explained its use to many people over the years. I’m on a campaign to get more subscribers for you, as it’s wonderful to share in your interesting (though off-beat) and scholarly approach. Especially appreciate your giving license (American spelling there :)) to your imagination in bringing life-like uses of the dialects/languages in your skits/scenarios. Your ability to speak in a conversational tone will probably encourage other young people to pursue your career field, which can certainly tend to sound boring when stumbled through by initiates forced to tackle Beowulf against their will. Thank you for all your efforts. I can only imagine that you will entertain and educate us for years to come with increasing appeal and information.
This is a really lovely comment to read, thank you :) It's fantastic to know that there's a community interested in this sort of thing, and while there will definitely be some issues with my pronunciation and syntax in certain videos, if it gets people interested enough to look into it independently, that's hopefully a good thing!
In Barnsley they still use it, and I still remember one time i was "theethoued" by a man walking on the upper Don trail telling me that the path was closed further up and "tha can go see for thiself if tha wants". It's like a linguistic poke in the ribs conveying all kinds of subtleties about the relationship between the speakers, and feels like something that we would naturally want to use if we could, but our present language doesn't code for it.
I'm from 6 miles away and we didn't say "thee". I remember going to my Auntie's house in Cudworth and noticing straight away that my cousins spoke differently. Not only pronouns but vowels further back. The usage was utterly unselfconscious. A lad threatened me: "Ah'll bray thee!" (I'll batter you.)
Some older Quakers in the US say ‘thee’ to each other. but they use the third person singular verb forms- so Thee is, Thee goes, thy bed. They call it ‘thee-and-thouing’ but they actually never say thou, only thee and thy.
When Hamlet greets his bosom pals, it is "How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?" But later, as his mistrust grows, he addresses Guildenstern as 'you'. Sort of sad that we no longer recognize these nice (in the archaic sense of the word) distinctions.
About 50% of Irish people use 'ye'. Much less common on the East coast but so common everywhere else that people will be insulted or confused if you use you in the plural sense in a conversation. Youse is common in working class Dublinese.
This was very interesting. I am surprised that in my church many members, when they pray aloud, use "thee" and "thou" mistakenly believe that this is a more polite way to speak to God.
Actually this is intentional; in several languages that have a distinction between formal and familiar forms of address, the familiar form is used to address God (such as German and Italian).
Egalitarian Quakers used thee and thou and proper names to make each person a singular being, royalty included. Ye and you were plurals, and this is revealed if you say “you is” and get corrected with “you are” because is is singular and are is plural. I used to have a coworker who pluralized “you” by saying “youse”.
Thee & thou are 'intimate' forms - that's why Bibles & hymns often use those forms for God. Some people mistakenly assume that because it's for God it's a more formal form.
@@pscsuk maybe by the time of the KJV they were still used as "familiar address" but in Anglo-Saxon times (the equivalents of) thou and thee were used simply to address a single person. And among the original Quakers at the time of Friend Fox it was used that way again.
"Yee" as the plural for "you" is widely used in Ireland. The Irish language has the equivalent (sibh/shiv) so the "Yee" fills that need for us in English. In western rural Ireland many English words retained archaic pronunciations up to recently. "Bowl" was rendered as "Bowel" for example, as with Shakespeare : "When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl Then nightly sings the staring owl"
@@myvirtualpresencefyi I'd say it's just an accent as opposed to an 'inability'. In the same way a lot of English accents dont pronounce R's under certain circumstances
I took Spanish in junior high. Had to learn the two forms of "you":formal "usted", and informal "tu". Decades later it occurred to me one day that "HEY! "tu' is the same word as 'thou', and 'usted' is the same word 'you'. That's fascinating that you Kurds (like Spaniards and Italians) also have the word 'tu'. Thanks Bashar.
Usted comes from "vuestra merced", "your Grace", used with nobles. It became contracted and started spreading down the social scale, as happened with the T/V distinction in European languages in general. The equivalent of you/ye is vosotros, formerly just vos, which I think goes back to the same Indo-European root. English pursued a different path than Spanish, one more like French, where the already existing plural was used for a polite singular, rather than a feudal form of address in the third person.
"hear ye hear ye now! ya'll sit a bit and pay attention to me!" is something my shop teacher said a lot when mad. I live in Alabama and that class was in the 70's .
There is also ‘sithi’ or ‘sitha’ meaning, roughly, ‘do you understand/do you see?’. Ah‘ve bin working all day, sitha, and Ah’m havin a sit down. My Grandad, from North Yorkshire, used ‘lookyer’ in exactly the same way. There’s me tomarters in the greenhouse, lookyer.
@@richardbrookman6415 I recognise that name, don't I?! If so, greetings! I do hope you're well. Another language relic I remember from my own youth in the NE is "starving", short for "starving with cold", ie nithered (back to Yorkshire again?) ... I like that one because later as a German teacher I understood the English must originally have had a wider meaning and been cognate with the German "sterben, to die". "Nithered" I like because it sounds sort of shivery... Jim
@@jimflewker8107 I recognise the name very well. Was it South Hunsley? Long time ago, whatever. Yes, I am sure sterben/starving are cognate. Learning Brahms’ Requiem in the original German taught me a lot! Hope you are well.
Latin Nomitive sing. = tu Genitive sing. = tui Dative sing. = tibi Accusative sing. = te Ablative sing. = te Nomitive pl. = vos Genitive pl. = vestri, vestrum Dative pl. = vobis Accusative pl. = vos Ablative pl. = vobis
@@user-bf8ud9vt5b In Macedonian it's: Ti Tebe te Tebe ti Vie Vas ve Vam vi Don't mind there being two words; we have long and short forms of object pronouns. Their use is complicated. I love how most languages in Europe have a common ancestor and still have some similarities to this very day. Macedonian has almost completely lost its cases because of the Balkan sprachbund so I don't have anything for vocative, genitive, ablative, locative or instrumentative. Sad really; I hope I can someday see them reconstructed. We do have "tvoj" and "vaš" though, which mean yours.
You should do "thine" and "mine" as possessive adjectives, too. A lot of people who write dialogue for "medieval" fiction (which is actually normally just an imitation of Elizabethan English) really need a hard lesson on how to use that.
A thought: how much of the move from "thou" to "you" in early modern English was reinforced by the printing press? If the unavailability of þ in German manufactured printing presses saw it often replaced by the generally uncommon letter "y", that means "thou" might show up as "you" in print before the convention of using "th" came about. That renders "thou" and "you" indistinguishable in print, even if distinguishable in speech. Or did, perhaps, the "th" convention for dental fricatives itself arose out of that exact situation, to reduce confusion?
It's possible, although I don't think it'd be truly indistinguishable since "thou" had its own conjugation with the ending -(e)st: thou knowest, thou dost, thou hast, etc.
@@johnvarley428 I love your line of thinking and I agree, but I can also see people asking why should they simplify things with a single letter when two letters will do? I'm thinking about the "ch", "rr" and "ll" that are used in the Spanish alphabet. I think it's an if it's not broke, why fix it type of thing, but maybe eventually they will come around. Heck, I'm wondering how long until emoji are incorporated into our alphabet and that may actually be more likely to happen.
@@johnvarley428 I think the biggest problem with adding back thorn into the English alphabet is the way it looks and how it may cause some misunderstandings... þorn
@@ErwinBlonk okay dude firstly i wanna say Fuck....why didint it even occur to me Secondly *LEGENDARY MATE* I would watch the hell out of it = Starring = Simon Roper.........As Lost Himself In *Ye Olde Lost*
Surely 'any more' is two words. It was for most of my life. Why it got crushed into one (by Americans, they always want to change things just because they can) is a mystery. Most of the time I myself don't pronounce any more as a single word, so I refuse to spell it that way : ) Oh and by the way, I'm a naturalised American married to a New Yorker, so my comments have nothing to do with prejudice.
Many years ago, when I visited my old grandma ,the second question was invariably "How are ye?"By that she meant haw were people in my household. She was second generation Irish, and in the absence of modern media, learned to speak from members of her family and neighbours. I always interpreted "ye" as eqivalent to German "Euch." My other grandma used to talk abput us as "youse."
I read Linguistics at uni a long time ago, but I do not remember any of my lecturers having such a therapeutic effect on me. Simon Roper, you are my new hero.
There’s a fascinating passage from William Bullein’s “Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence” of 1564: Mendicus: Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be your name; your kingdom come, your willes bee dooen in yearth as it is in heauen, &c. Civis: Me thinke I doe heare a good manerly Beggar at the doore, and well brought vp. How reuerently he saieth his Pater noster! he thous not God, but yous hym. Gods blessing on his harte! which goes to show that early modern English, like current French, used the 2nd person plural to show respect to an individual.
In German we have three different ways of addressing someone: An informal one: "Du" (you singular) as well as its declinations A formal one: "Sie" (they) as well as its declinations A highly formal one (obsolete): "Ihr" (you plural) as well as its declinations
wait so is "Ihr" totally obsolete? If I address a small group of people in Germany as "Ihr" will they give me funny looks? It still comes up in my German lessons
@@thedrain9328 No, that is totally fine. But in the olden days it was also used to address a single person of high status, and in this function it is obsolete now.
And to get their pronouns and verbs to agree. 100%. No one ever seems to know how to use "thou" with the proper verbs and subjunctives. "Thou goest," instead of "thou go," or "Wouldst thou," instead of "would thou," (or worse "would thee like an ale, m'lord") and so forth.
Similar thing happened in Brazilian Portuguese "você" (formal you) became the standard way of saying you in Brazil. "Tu" (formal you) is barely used in Brazilian Portuguese although it's still used in Portugal. No problems with plurals though as they have separate words for the plural form unlike French.
"Tu" as formal you? "Você" is what became of the expression "vossa mercê" but grammatically "tu" is the familiar form of you. Now, in the northeast of Brazil many people misconjugate "tu" by using the conjugate for você (e.g. "tu vai) which is merely regional colloquial use but "tu" is familiar not formal.
@@timcarlos my bad, I got that the wrong way around. Interesting then that Brazil diverged towards the non-formal way whereas English went the other way. Seems English favoured being more polite whereas Brazilians wanted to be more familiar/friendly.
avaya What is interesting in Brazil is that, depending on where you are at the moment, because "tu" is so rarely used in the majority of Brazil, some people think that "tu" is formal and will even argue that "tu". It can be a mixed bag, for sure and it makes for some interesting conversation and potential misunderstandings.
As usual, an excellent video, Simon. Thanks. As a New York City boy growing up I heard and still here many people say "yous". I watch lots of Brit TV which I love and I've noticed eg on EastEnders I will sometimes hear "yous" or "you lot". Also on the old series, Last Of The Summer Wine, which is in Holmfirth, Yorkshire, they say thou, thee and ye still. Let's keep "thou" going. Cheers! Peter.
An interesting channel I recall having watched before and which I anticipate coming back for more, despite the visual distraction of the unmade bed behind you lol.
I love your videos. Thank you for your generosity in sharing your findings and knowledge like this. I live in Germany, speak German and teach English (to adults) so learning about the connections between the languages is really great. I also hail from the north east of England originally and my dad was a coal miner. He told me about a sort of work dialect used in especially the less urban Durham collieries called "Pitmatic". He told me a lot of thou and thee were used. A favourite and funny expression was one that contracted into sounding something like "Wherethawizzeldee" This (slowed down) was Where thou is will dee or Where you are will do. It was a response to someone asking, eg if they were sitting in someone's seat by mistake. Nah, son, wherethawizzeldee. ☺
There seems to be a distancing to show respect. There's thou to you; then you to "your lordship" (a noun); and then even further distancing to "his lordship".
I just stumbled across these thoroughly fascinating videos and I'm hooked. I studied English at the LMU in Munich 20 years ago and was lucky to have had a couple of courses with an enthusiast in historical linguistics.
ye is plural second-person subject pronoun. I think that sentence should've been "Look at you..." as the object pronoun following a preposition, as in "at them" and "at me" and "at us"
"Why'd ya spill yer beans!?" Haha I loved that movie! Willem Dafoe totally chewed the scenery up in every scene. Not many movies capture that Lovecraft type cerebral horror very well
As a non-linguist, I'd always sort of guessed / assumed that 'ꝥ' became 'th' and 'þ' became 'y' - and then I questioned whether 'þ' made a 'd' sound. I was never able to find that connection, because apparently there isn't one... (and even if I still have my doubts (had these thoughts for ~20+ years - lol ), I at least finally know where and what to look for. Thanks so much!) I'm glad I recently discovered your channel. I'm really finding your content fun and enjoyable. Thanks.
In Norwegian Thou - Du - informal Thee - De - formal Thine - Din - nutral You - Deg - informal Ye - De and Dere - formal and informal depending on context.
@@lisenpedersen Portuguese; the way you conjugate “thou” in Aenglish and use “thee” are very similar to Portuguese, so Ic prefer to use “thou” instead of “you” ! ahaha Basically the pronouns “tu” (/ thou /) - and “te” (/ thee /) and “vos” are identical in Portuguese, Hispannish and Latin. Basically Aeglish, Italian and French follow the same usage pattern, but with different orthographies.
Same in Danish (mostly). I feel like him saying that there's no way to know for certain how it was used is kinda odd - as it still is being used to this day. His pronunciation sounds of old English sounds like modern Danish - I don't think it's too much of a leap to say that what English lost over time, other indo-european languages retained.
@@PoiarNoia native english monolinguals are trapped in a one dimensional bubble, unable to step outside themselves and objectively view their native tongue. It's a folly of empire. I don't know if Simon is fluent in another language though.
Love these vids, I studied French and German, and even took a French language history class, the parallels and overlap between the two histories is fascinating. Keep up the good work. Cheers from Oregon (“origgin” or “orygun” NEVER “or-rig-gone”!)
In “Moby Dick”, I found it interesting that a special point was made that Ahab and his wife address themselves by Thous and Thees ... itcame across as affectionate bit somewhat strange or outdated, perhaps
Isabel Pirsic In the US the thou/thee and ye/you distinctions were preserved in Puritan parts of New England for a while-because the King James version of the Bible had them, and puritans felt that to properly read the bible you had to speak in a biblical manner. It was already obsolete in most the colonies/states for most of their history, but the Puritans saw it as important to make their kids learn the traditional (or to their mind “correct”) uses of the pronouns to protect them from the fickle whims of secular world that would so quickly drop such an important part of the language. The Pequod set sail from Nantucket, so most of its crew hailed from the island, or somewhere else in the predominantly Puritan Massachusetts.
@@peggyeaston1575 Yes, they do indeed. And at the beginning of Quakerism (mid 1600s), part of what made them so radical was they addressed everyone, including the King, with "thou/thee" instead of "ye/you", thus refusing to acknowledge/accept any social hierarchies.
I recently watched the Gothic arthouse horror film 'The Lighthouse' set in the Northeast US during the late 1800s, and the characters used thou/thee/ye and I thought that was a cool eye for detail especially after seeing your comment... (im still not sure what accent Robert Pattinson was going for but Willem Dafoe was awesome, if you like off the wall arthouse stuff I recommend it)
@@IONATVSWas that really their motivation? If you truly want to speak in "a biblical manner", shouldn't you speak in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek? Seems strange to fixate on one arbitrary translation to the degree where you model your speech after it.
A similar thing happened in Dutch: "du" (2.sg.) was replaced by "jij" or "gij" (2.pl.). The Dutch went a step further and reintroduced a new form for the 2.pl "jullie" which is, as far as I understand, a contraction of "je lieden" = "you people". It is interesting to observe that English seems to be going the same way with "you all", "you guys" etc. - at some point in the future one of these forms might become a pronoun of its own.
You know... I like listening to you, I think, because you sound like a very sane person. It seems surprisingly rare! And you seem to know what you're talking about about an interesting subject
“Thou” is informal which is why the bible uses it, we all have a personal connection to god, no formality needed. Now that “thou” is only in the bible it seems formal and imposing, maybe this subtly change affected how English speakers felt when they were introduced to religion?
@@Hello-ro8fq Thank God that is King, Creator, Saviour, Lord, Protector, Provider, and Friend, Judge, Defender, High Priest and Sacrifice. He is everything and all that we truly need. I desire to see that.
Oh No Its Him We call God He in the Christian tradition for a few reasons: firstly, because we consider masculinity and femininity to be features that are not merely limited to the body. Even after you die, and your soul is separated from your body, you remain male or female. CS Lewis explores this concept in Perelandra, when he discusses the angels. Anyways, to put it extremely reductively, masculinity is characterized by activity, giving, sending, while femininity is characterized by passivity, receiving, and nourishing/growing. Again, this is extremely rough and reductive sketch of the idea, but you can see this pattern even in our biology, in how man and woman complement each other in the marital embrace. When viewed through this lends, God is masculine where we the creature are “feminine”. He gives, we receive. Secondly, God has consistently revealed Himself as masculine, so we think it inappropriate to ignore that. Thirdly, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Son, the Word of God, became Incarnate - His Name was Jesus of Nazareth, the Anointed One. He was not only masculine, but definitively male. So it would be entirely false to refer to Him as anything else but He. Hope that made sense! Let me know if you have any questions about it.
Christian ex-muslim I feel you - that’s our relationship to Him by nature. But, we have been granted a privilege in Baptism, becoming adopted Sons and Daughters according to the pattern of Christ. And so “I no longer call you slaves, but friends.”
you know simon, you might just inspire me to make a version of your channel for chemistry - specifically computational chemistry. i think theres something to be said for the casual relaying of esoteric information in a plain way & in more depth, unlike popular channels that tackle fairly mainstream subjects in a simplistic form. it's also from the interface of the layman & specialist. i.e. a masters student like you & me as opposed to a professional who has forgotten what is easy to grasp and what is more abstract. this channel is a niche and worthwhile area.
Yeah, for most native English speakers the idea of a formal pronoun is so weird and foreign. "Thou" sounds cool and its use is interesting. Oh, and we wouldn't have to have a "y'all" because when in context "You" is the plural.
It still does in some English dialects in England. Some English dialects are still very Germanic, but when they write online they tend to write in standard English so you wouldn't know they existed unless you were travelling around here and met the people who spoke them.
Ye is still used as a plural in some dialects, especially in Newfoundland English. Because of the number of Newfies that I've interacted with over the years, I have begun to use ye as the plural.
It's still used as a plural all over Munster in Ireland (where most Newfoundlanders initially emigrated from). And in the other Irish provinces to lesser degrees.
just discovered your channel a few days ago and it has all been oddly very interesting. I wouldnt have guessed, a week ago, thar i would be learning up on some English history haha
Thou and You - there was a sort of transitional use for a while in the 18th century. I noted it in novels of that time, in which someone is writing a letter to a friend, and writes "you was" ( not "you were"). That looked to me like a hangover from "thou wast". Interestingly I saw this only when the novel had a woman writing to another woman. I'm not saying it was a construction only women used, just that the only time I noticed it, it was between two women.
I'm fairly sure English is one of the only Indo-European languages to not have a modern Thou and Thee. It's certainly the only Germanic language not to have them Edit: The only Germanic language where thee and thou aren't actively used by it's speakers in everyday life.
@@waterdrager93 I boldly assumed it had that grammatical feature since it appears in Platendeutsch, which is very similar to Dutch, but you're right. Regrettably I've never actually taken any time to take a proper look at the Dutch language and it's grammar, since I can kind of comprehend it, if I treat it as a really weird mix of German and English.
People still used thee and thou, between family members and close friends and mostly for talking to children, in the Black country in the West Midlands when I was growing up there. I don't know if they still do.
Thou and Thee was still prevalent in colloquial speech among elderly people in the West Country and Wales 70 years ago, but the singular second person pronoun has pretty much gone extinct. Maybe in some pockets of the countryside there were still remnants as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, but I don't know if anyone uses it now in a simple conversation outside of quoting the Bible.
Hi Simon thanks for the video. I went to University in Leeds and I definitely remember reading somewhere about a conversation between two old blokes in which one of them said "Don't tha 'thee' me!". After you video I think I might understand this sentence at last!
It's happening in Germany at the moment, too, the "Duzen" (to address someone with "du") of people you don't know, became much more accepted within my lifespan. In my primary school 35 years ago we called our teacher "Sie" + "Mrs. Surname", my children use "du" + "first name" throughout their first 4 years of school, and only start to use the polite form in Highschool. And you hear it in everyday use, too. People working in customer service, hairstylists,... are often called "du". At my place of employment (hospital) I'm duzed (...), too (at least as long as I don't carry a syringe, an enema set or something like this, then I'm suddenly "Sie"... ;) ) I used to siezen grown-ups until I got some weird reaction, where it sounded rude or dismissive, then I observed myself using "du" more and more. But when I called a short person "du" a few weeks ago she got super angry with me, telling me that she was no child, and what was I thinking to duzen her, I switched back to Sie. There'll always be someone offended, so I'm using what I am comfortable with.
Interesting! I took German in high school but I'm nowhere near fluent, although I'm trying to learn more. In Sweden there was a "du-reform" in the 1960's and 70's where the formal _ni_ was replaced with the informal _du_ . So _du_ means du/informal singular you and _ni_ means sie & Sie/formal singular you & plural you. There's an article on Wikipedia about this, available in English as well as German (also French and Persian). However, some people, especially younger people it seems, have somewhat reverted back to using _ni_ when addressing some people, especially older people. I work in customer service and I hear a lot of my younger colleagues using _ni_ when talking to the customer, especially if the customer is older.
I can't verify that at all. Here in the german south, you'll get siezed by strangers (grocery store employees, police, random people on the street) and duzed only by people that either know you or are in the same exact social bracket, like students.
In Germany, people are now switching more quickly from "Sie" to "Du" or the hybrid form "Sie" plus first name, but this does not mean that the use of the distinction between "Sie" and "Du" is generally abandoned. Incidentally, it would only be comparable with the English development if one were to start addressing everyone formally with "Sie" instead of informally with "Du".
@@SofiaBerruxSubs The formal version can have advantages though, for example if you don't like someone and/or if you want to keep distance to someone. Using the formal version gives you the rhetoric possibility for it.
I truly hope and pray that you actually know this much about your topic, because I am loving the detail you add! Keep it up buddy, these vids are excellent.
I took a year of Swedish when I was in college. In the episode where you had the 3 people trying to translate the Old English sentences into modern English I understood parts because they were similar to Swedish. And the letter that looks like a " P" I believe has a "TH" sound in Icelandic. I would love to learn Old English but unfortunately I would need a teacher for that. I love old literature and try to buy every book I can from before the 1700's. Unfortunately there are not that many available here. I probably would have better luck if lived in England. Are you familiar with the book Oroonoko. It was written in the 1600's about a woman who traveled from England to Surinam. I find it amazing that any woman would travel by herself to Surinam in the 1600's. What part of England do you live in? You do not have a heavy accent. I live in New Jersey about 12 miles from Philadelphia.
PA natives represent. I come from an area in which I hear y'all, y'inz, and you'ns frequently in the wild. Along with occasional "yous." And the only one that actually stuck for me is y'all. But if prompted by another speaker's accent, I will absolutely use You'ns or yinz.
I love these videos. It’s so interesting to see the genesis of modern English through the multiple influences of other differences languages, noting a lot of similarities to English and German (often via Dutch) , with the Ye/Je eek/auch, and ci of cildra which is a “ch” from Latin and this mixing of languages and corresponding grammar and pronunciation from Latin and Germanic makes English so confusing for foreigners - as noted in the poem “The Chaos”!
Another really interesting video my guy, keep at it and I really hope you'll keep growing as a channel :) (Just wondering, If 'The' is written as 'Ye' using a thorn but 'That' is written as 'Yt' as you said does that mean that the thorn isn't just 'Th' but has interchangable meanings based on the lettering it's with?)
Alwight my son what on earth are you doing in my comment section you sod The original spelling of 'the' would have been 'þe', but in the typeface a lot of medieval scribes wrote in, the letters 'þ' and 'y' came to look almost identical. It reached a point that 'y' was often just used to represent the 'th' sound as well as the 'y' sound, so basically it depended on the word it was in - a literate speaker at the time would probably have been able to tell when it was supposed to be pronounced 'y' and when it was supposed to be 'th' :)
I can't believe someone used their time machine to get someone from old english times, teach him modern English, clean and dress him and get him to explain thee thou ye. What a time to be alive.
Yes. Your comment immediately made me think of the hymn ‘Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer’ or The Lord’s Prayer - ‘Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name…’ Surely we’re talking up, not down, when we talk to the Lord?
Thanks for taking time to make these enjoyable and educational videos. I come to linguistics from history and psychology but get more and more interested in linguistics in it self listening to you.
Really fascinating, and I appreciate how you've confirmed what I've always suspected about "thou." That stated, why did "thou" undergo a vowel shift but "you" did not? In other words, why did "thou" evolve from "thuu" to "thow" but "you" remained as "yuu" and did not become altered to "yow?"
in my town in northenr england thee, thou and thy are all still used. thou and you still rhyme but are said as tha and ya, very close to a schwa but still an a
Where I'm from (in the US) we generally say 'you guys' for the plural. I know in some parts of the US (I pretty certain the east coast) they have 'youse' used in that same way. It's interesting to know that there was a a second person plural before. Shame it's gone. A very informative video as always.
It’s crazy how English has changed so much. Like when you look at Old French, Old Spanish and Old German it’s different for sure but not THAT different where a person couldn’t recognize it. If any of us went back just 700 years in England we literally couldn’t make out a word anyone would be saying.
You would still understand some of Middle English (700 years ago), but it would be very difficult. But you wouldn't understand a word of Old English if you went further in the past, some 1000 years or more.
Actually that's not quite right. 700 years ago, English was in the middle English period (11th to 15th century). This is the era that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in. It's still somewhat readable and understandable to a modern English speaker today, I'd say perhaps around 70% mutually intelligible. Speech would have been a little harder to understand as pronunciation has changed a bit since then. But it would be more like a strange dialect of English. You'd have to go back further to Old English (say 1000 years ago) for things to get much harder. Old English (5th to 11th centuries) is older than Old French (8th to 14th century), and Old Spanish (10th to 15th century). Comparing modern English with Old English is more like comparing modern French or Spanish to Latin, if you want a fair comparison.
I pretty much knew most of that, but the formality of You was completely new to me. Thank you for that, it makes some things I have previously found confusing a lot clearer.
More specifically as to the other commenter: the ye referred to in the video is always the object in a sentence. Give to ye. Ask ye. But in your examples, that is really just a different pronunciation of you, which you can tell because in both instances it's the subject. (Also they're pronounced differently, not so much the /i/ of ye but schwa, hence why a lot of people spell that as 'ya': "How are ya?")
@@seiretzym Small comment: your statement about the pronunciation is very dependent on the dialect of the region you are in. I live in Alabama and ye as in /ji/ (or more specifically /jIi/) is far and away the more common pronunciation.
@widhbnw efDwdwDW I'm not so sure. Would someone from Appalachia say, Did he go with ye? Or would they say, Did he go with you? If they switch to you outside the nominative, it might have that vestigial element. I'm not familiar enough, but ye sounds a bit fishy in that example to me. How y d'ye do? Is definitely correct, in contrast.
Old english is so fascinating, it's cool to think that even culturally if you make a small difference to something a hundred times it will inevitably be almost completely different.Thank you for making these
Mr. Rich B.O.B The Scots-Irish that went to the Appalachians brought their Scots tongue with them. There are still remnants of it alive and well. The Scots pronoun for singular you is “ye” and for two or more people it is “yees”, the word for “I” is “a”,, the possessive pronoun for your is “yer” , the possessive pronoun for “my” is “ma”as in “where”s yer maw” and “there”s ma maw”. They also brought their love for “whiskey”. Whiskey is in fact a Gaelic word that means water! Originally whiskey was called in Gaelic the water of life.
@@CharlesMcManus Interesting that no modern English dialect has retaine the actual origial second person singular pronouns, thou and thee, which correspond to the second person plural nouns, you and ye. Even in the times of Shakespeare and the King James Bible, thou and thee largely dissapeared from common speech, but was still used in writing. English is the only European language I can think of that the singular pronouns merged into the plural pronouns.
In Russian, it's also a polite way to address a person using a plural form of "you". Most commonly it's used when speaking to a stranger, person older than you, customer service personnel, and people with some sort of authority over, or that are on a higher level of a hierarchy than, you
You reminds me my favourite English teacher in uni. I didn't mean to choose Reading Shakespeare in the first place but I find what he taught quite intriguing. I guess it was not the knowledge you taught--since you can google it easily, it's the way you put it, less dramatic but sincere and casual.
Unrelatedly but just for info, there was a noun in old english which died out with the chivalric ethos in the middle english period but at a last gasp has made it into the modern english OED: "Thew" (unvoiced thorn). It means courage and a spirit of derring-do, someone with thew (the OED gives "thewful" as a possibility) is someone you could implicitly rely on at all times.
I teach English as a second language in a French school and I always give my students a little historical background to the English language. When we are doing conjugations, I show the parallel conjugation in French, which as you know, has a distinction between the singular and the plural, "tu" or "vous" (as well, the formal and informal, which still very much exists in French according to whom you are speaking). I tell them that there used to exist a singular form of the second person (Thou) and one question which someone always asks is why did it change. Why did the use of "thou" die out? I thought extensively about it and one conclusion I came to is that the person or persons to whom you are speaking, always know(s) whether you are talking to one person or many persons. In some ways, the distinction is irrelevant. Whether it is one person or many people, he, she, or they are there if front of you. That might have taken care of the singular and plural, but it also took care of the formal or informal. "You" became the 'safe' form. Just a thought!!
I don’t think this is true. If I walk into a room of three people, look at one of them, and say, ‘What’ve you been up to?’, it’s not clear whether I’m talking to one of them or all three. Hence even in dialects like mine where there’s no recognised plural form of ‘you’, we resort to workarounds like ‘you guys’ or ‘you lot’ to make it clear when we’re talking to the whole group.
Coupal1 would you not say that that also means names aren’t that relevant because it quickly becomes clear who you’re talking to? Maybe it’s similar actually - it’s something we can get by without but it certainly helps
I was taught long ago that the differences were similar to the rules for who & whom. Who (thou & you) are used as “subjects”, while whom (thee & ye) are “objects” in sentences. It could all be hooey. I am no expert.
Interesting hypothesis. Like the reason, I suppose, why "woman" has become all over the English-speaking world "lady", as in "cleaning lady". However, there is the opposite case, for example, in Spanish the formal "usted" (itself an old contraction of vuestra Merced, or "your mercy") is falling fast out of use, at least in Spain, in favor of an informal or "lower" "tu" across the board, even from young to aged (unthinkable 20 years ago). I've begun to notice a similar shift (if a lot less obvious) in France, though I suppose there it'll take a couple generations, maybe more... This probably points to the fast democratization of certain societies, not expected 700 years ago...
Same in German. First, the formal "Euch" and "Ihr" fell out of use, now the formal "Sie" seems to be lesser used by the younger generation (e.g. at start up workplaces the informal versions replace the formal version to make the job look cooler and more personal like you're working next to friends and guys around your age). I think the generation and authority barriers are eroding in western democracies starting with the 68ers to put more effort onto subjectivity and individualism
In Irish (at least the book Irish I’ve learnt) there doesn’t seem to be the tu/sibh informal/formal distinction anymore but when learning Scottish Gaelic we were advised, especially with older native speakers, to observe the thu/sibh distinction and stick to the formal/plural sibh with them so as to avoid offence.
In Russian the formal plural is still very much a staple of the culture. I would not think about addressing a stranger or a person of a higher social standing who isn't a relative or a friend in the singular. That would be highly inappropriate. However, younger people among their own age group casually use the informal singular even when friendships are not established.
In Swedish, the old formal you "ni" (now only you pl.) fell out of use gradually between the late 1700s and the 1950s, ultimately being replaced by "du", which had previously been the informal you. By the 1860s it was seen as impolite for just anyone to call someone "ni", while "du" (you sg.) was still seen as informal and therefore not used. To avoid this, people would sometimes just avoid saying you at all (e.g. "Vad sägs?" = "What is said?" = "What do you say/are you saying?") and later the painful tendency to use their title (e.g. "Vad säger doktorn?", "What does the doctor say?") or even both their title AND last name: "Vad gjorde doktor Johansson när doktor Johansson såg det?" (What did doctor Johansson do when doctor Johansson saw it? = what did you do when you saw it?). Meanwhile, from the 1880s, the police and the army were told to refer to people with "ni", trying to retain its formality, but ended up actually driving using "du" - the unfriendly usage of "du" to talk down to someone became associated with "ni", and so it actually drove the working class to prefer to use "du", which was seen as familiar and nice. By the 1960s, "ni" for singular you was only used for the royal family, and today it's only used for addressing multiple people at once or for asking a representative for a company (e.g. a cashier) about something the company does/can do. Everyone is "du" in Swedish; it would be a faux-pas to call someone "ni" nowadays, unless you're feeling a little old-fashioned. :)
@@nickrobson4068 fascinating thread. It shows little by little the speed and degree by which the various societies changed from hierarchical to egalitarian. In the West, everybody always says that Sweden was in the forefront of that move. This reflection shows it in act, so to speak. Most Western cultures are getting rid of their formal "you," and I can easily imagine a time when, as in Sweden, that form will simply be a vestigial trait, like the coccix in the back of our spine.
Harold Potsdamer dialect doesn’t mean a poor education. Non-standard forms just don’t have prestige, you can have a good education and still use your dialect with your family and friends from your local area.
@Harold Potsdamer I have a good education,and all my teeth. I use whatever lingo and jargon I feel like using,depending on my mood. You sound like an elitist.
also y'all has already rapidly been morphed by many to already undergo the same thing that "you" did, in that y'all is often used for singular second person. Therefore y'all is honestly redundant and useless.
@@differentlyabledmuslimjewi4475 That may be the case among people who don't use it in their primary dialect, and thus don't understand the grammar. Those of us living in the Deep South have a VERY clear distinction between singular 'you' -- often pronounced something like 'yew' (like the tree) -- and "y'all" -- pronounced with a more open vowel and de-stressed 'L' than in Simon's rendition, often sounding more like 'yaw', particularly in the middle of a sentence before a word starting with a consonant. Someone from my area might hear a "Southern accent" in a movie or on TV where the 'L' is pronounced before a following consonant and immediately feel "in their bones" that the accent is faked. So (phonetically), "Yaw got 'nuff t'eat?" vs "Yawl (y'all) ain't hungry?" In any case, the distinction is far from redundant and quite useful. ;)
In Italian we have still very much in use “tu” and “te” which are the equivalent of thou and thee, so the first time time I came across thou and thee I instantly recognized them and therefore I knew what they were and how they were used. The funny thing is that it never crossed my mind that native English speakers could have problems with something that seemed so obvious to me. Feels weird but makes sense for modern speakers who have never met the concept.
Great video Simon. A little story about an old fellow I knew for years who had told me he was getting married at the age of 80 I turned to him and asked if EMS would be on standby at the honeymoon sweet? He replied raising his right hand middle finger and with a smile said F#$k thee Which I found amusing coming from an well spoken elderly fellow. So Simon should he have said thee or thou in this instance? 😁
An easy way to remember it is that you can use "thee" wherever you can use "me". You can say "f**k me" but not "f**k I" so it has to be "thee" not "thou"
One thing that bothered me when I was young was how to address a member of a group as opposed to the whole group. Both are normally handled with 'you'. Later, I heard more people speaking "Southern" American English. They have a marvelous word, "y'all" (a contraction of 'you' and 'all') for the whole group. Now, suppose you mean to invite an individual in a group to visit you sometime. Use 'you'. Suppose you mean to invite the whole merry crew to visit you sometime. Use "y'all". Problem solved. Thanks for another very interesting and informative video!
this was a really interesting. I initially thought that it was all based on the scribal shorthand mentioned but your highlighting of the fact that english used to have plurals of 'you' was unknown to me. thanks for a good video.
I heard that one of the reasons people stopped using "thou" was because Quakers would never address anyone as "you" because they believed that all people were equal. And since Quakers were very unpopular and people didn't want to be associated with them, everyone else started only using "you" and dropped the "thou". Of course that's too simple of an explanation, but it might be part of the answer.
There was a story of a young Lancashire lad with and adult and the kid got thee and thou confused. His superior wasn't pleased and remonstrated with him and giving this warning. "Look 'ere lad! Don't thee thou me till I thou thee.!"
The English have a reputation for politeness. Many other European languages seem to have the formal and informal forms (eg tu/usted is Spanish). Do you think these could be linked in some way? Maybe if the English are polite, the need for the formal/informal forms was dropped as not needed, or perhaps the other way round, that because the English dropped the different forms of "you", the need to speak differently in formal/informal settings was instead expressed by additional words/phrasing, which to foreigners could have seemed like redundant pleasantries and therefore gained the English the stereotype of politeness. (Not sure if that makes any sense, just thinking out loud)
I don't know that the English have a reputation for politeness. I think you're confusing formality and form with politeness. And that formality/form is typically reserved for formal and official occasions. English differs in many ways from continental European languages. E.g., English nouns, adjectives and articles have dropped gender inflections and dative and accusative case inflections; the pronouns whom and whomever are disappearing from spoken English; the pronouns thee, thou. and ye have been replaced by you. English has been undergoing a process of simplification that began many centuries ago, even before the Great Vowel Shift that caused English vowels to sound different from continental vowels.
So the King James Version of the Bible and other older texts which use “Thou” frequently are actually using the informal construction? That’s very interesting considering how serious we usually think of thou thee and thy.
Although you should notice that God is always addressed as Thou with a capital T in the Bible, and probably any Christian hymn book published before the 1960s.
Dutch also still has the thou/you distinction, though with slightly different forms: Thou: Jij/Gij(southern dialects) Thou (unstressed): Je/Ge (southern dialects) Thee: Jou Thine: Jouw (identical pronunciation to Jou) You (formal singular): U Your (formal singular: Uw You (plural): Jullie Your (plural): Jullie There are also Low Saxon dialects in the east which have forms closer to German, and Frisian in the north, which has Do for Thou and Jo for you
I can't speak for Dutch, but Afrikaans (from which it of course evolved) differentiates between second person singular and plural (yo, yulle) but it doesn't have the social overtones that 'tu'/'vous or 'thou'/ 'you' has.
@@davebox588 really? From my limited knowlegde of Afrikaans I know of jy (singular, cognate with jij) and julle (plural, cognate with jullie), but I believe they also still retain the more formal U (singular, cognate with u in Dutch). So from what I know, their system seems more or less identical to Dutch.
As a side note, "u" and "uw" aren't formal in southern dialects (including Belgian ones) but they can be used formally by those speakers when they engage in standard Dutch. As a southerner I address my mates informally as "U" and my boss formally as "U", hehe :).
Firefox is red, Explorer is blue. Google+ sucks and Chrome does too. Haha yeah I knew there was something like that but I wasn’t quite sure about the exact contexts so I left it out, thanks!
Hearing the word "y'all" in a British accent just made my day
Well, now you understand what it feels like to hear an american pronounce a non english word. ;)
@@itsisk2043 my Cuban and Spanish friends always laugh at my Spanish, to be fair it’s pretty bad 😅
Brits use the term “I reckon” a lot too. You only hear Southerners use that here in the States.
There’s no such thing as a British accent old bean 🤓
@@luke125 big W for the Southerners.
Simon gives me hope for the future of mankind.
@Angry Young Man Vanquisher of Tyranny chill bro it's not that deep
@Angry Young Man Vanquisher of Tyranny F off wanker
@Angry Young Man Vanquisher of Tyranny I was waiting for you. It appears that my bait worked flawlessly.
@Angry Young Man Vanquisher of Tyranny
I think that we should also refer to "History" as "Herstory" for the sake of being more progressive and gynocentric, also Epstein didn't kill himself.
@Angry Young Man Vanquisher of Tyranny Does it matter? Don't make a mountain out of a molehill. Should we say transkind as well?
When I taught English in Japan, I had one group of students who were very confused why English made a distinction between singular and plural in the first and third persons but not the second person. I taught them "thou, thee, thy" (in the same format we taught them other pronouns, such as "I, me, my"), and they actually seemed really relieved that this concept existed in English and wasn't just some sort of weird oversight. Lol.
But you didn't teach them to actually use "thou, thee and thy" in standard English, did you?
And what if she did? Would that be so wrong. Who are you to judge others? Ha?
@@daniel89ph Well, Daniel, if she did, she would not have been teaching her students standard English, that's all.
@@daniel89ph wellit confuse her students. Thoes words no longer exsist in english and a native English speaker wouldnt know what it means.
@@trappistpreserves But if someone addressed you with "thou", you would understand it, would you?
So glad to hear you address the thorn substitution for ‘th’. I first read about it in a biography of Thomas Jefferson, and have explained its use to many people over the years. I’m on a campaign to get more subscribers for you, as it’s wonderful to share in your interesting (though off-beat) and scholarly approach. Especially appreciate your giving license (American spelling there :)) to your imagination in bringing life-like uses of the dialects/languages in your skits/scenarios. Your ability to speak in a conversational tone will probably encourage other young people to pursue your career field, which can certainly tend to sound boring when stumbled through by initiates forced to tackle Beowulf against their will. Thank you for all your efforts. I can only imagine that you will entertain and educate us for years to come with increasing appeal and information.
This is a really lovely comment to read, thank you :) It's fantastic to know that there's a community interested in this sort of thing, and while there will definitely be some issues with my pronunciation and syntax in certain videos, if it gets people interested enough to look into it independently, that's hopefully a good thing!
Exactly! the thorn / Y story is one of the most interesting things I have heard in the last few years. thanks Simon for covering this.
In Barnsley they still use it, and I still remember one time i was "theethoued" by a man walking on the upper Don trail telling me that the path was closed further up and "tha can go see for thiself if tha wants". It's like a linguistic poke in the ribs conveying all kinds of subtleties about the relationship between the speakers, and feels like something that we would naturally want to use if we could, but our present language doesn't code for it.
did he not say thisen instead of thiself? tahts how i would say it and im from barnsley
In Austria, if one is hiking, it's acceptable to use Du, so this makes sense.
I'm from 6 miles away and we didn't say "thee". I remember going to my Auntie's house in Cudworth and noticing straight away that my cousins spoke differently. Not only pronouns but vowels further back. The usage was utterly unselfconscious. A lad threatened me: "Ah'll bray thee!" (I'll batter you.)
Yorkshire dictum: Tha musn't "thee" sumbdy owder than thisen.
Some older Quakers in the US say ‘thee’ to each other. but they use the third person singular verb forms- so Thee is, Thee goes, thy bed. They call it ‘thee-and-thouing’ but they actually never say thou, only thee and thy.
When Hamlet greets his bosom pals, it is "How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?" But later, as his mistrust grows, he addresses Guildenstern as 'you'. Sort of sad that we no longer recognize these nice (in the archaic sense of the word) distinctions.
Similarly, I seem to remember Juliet using thou and you with her family at different places in the play.
this guy is just like 100% content and zero bs. Makes me feel like I'm in the intellectual part of youtube
In Ireland, 'ye' is still used by the majority of people. I'd almost always use it when referring to a group over 'you'.
I wouldn't say it's used by people in the east.
I forgot to mention this usage in Ireland! Thanks for pointing it out :)
@@popland1977 you're probably right. It's more common outside of dublin I'd say. I'm in cork myself.
Yeah, same here in Tipperary. Maybe it's more of a Munster thing?
About 50% of Irish people use 'ye'. Much less common on the East coast but so common everywhere else that people will be insulted or confused if you use you in the plural sense in a conversation. Youse is common in working class Dublinese.
Oh the joy of listening to intelligent, interesting, passionate and, apparently, humble people!
This was very interesting. I am surprised that in my church many members, when they pray aloud, use "thee" and "thou" mistakenly believe that this is a more polite way to speak to God.
Actually this is intentional; in several languages that have a distinction between formal and familiar forms of address, the familiar form is used to address God (such as German and Italian).
Egalitarian Quakers used thee and thou and proper names to make each person a singular being, royalty included. Ye and you were plurals, and this is revealed if you say “you is” and get corrected with “you are” because is is singular and are is plural. I used to have a coworker who pluralized “you” by saying “youse”.
Thee & thou are 'intimate' forms - that's why Bibles & hymns often use those forms for God. Some people mistakenly assume that because it's for God it's a more formal form.
@@pscsuk maybe by the time of the KJV they were still used as "familiar address" but in Anglo-Saxon times (the equivalents of) thou and thee were used simply to address a single person. And among the original Quakers at the time of Friend Fox it was used that way again.
@@samplayle1858 I asked my German then-girlfriend why God was "Du" and not "Sie" and she said "Cos he's our dad"...
Ye is also used in Ireland in colloquial speech
no i'm not
I grew up in Munster and never even noticed that 'ye' wasn't used as the plural for you everywhere until recently.
"Yee" as the plural for "you" is widely used in Ireland.
The Irish language has the equivalent (sibh/shiv) so the "Yee" fills that need for us in English.
In western rural Ireland many English words retained archaic pronunciations up to recently.
"Bowl" was rendered as "Bowel" for example, as with Shakespeare :
"When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl
Then nightly sings the staring owl"
@@TheWayWithinUs True but the inability to pronounce the "th" is not linguistic, I think.
@@myvirtualpresencefyi I'd say it's just an accent as opposed to an 'inability'. In the same way a lot of English accents dont pronounce R's under certain circumstances
I took Spanish in junior high. Had to learn the two forms of "you":formal "usted", and informal "tu". Decades later it occurred to me one day that "HEY! "tu' is the same word as 'thou', and 'usted' is the same word 'you'. That's fascinating that you Kurds (like Spaniards and Italians) also have the word 'tu'. Thanks Bashar.
Usted comes from "vuestra merced", "your Grace", used with nobles. It became contracted and started spreading down the social scale, as happened with the T/V distinction in European languages in general. The equivalent of you/ye is vosotros, formerly just vos, which I think goes back to the same Indo-European root. English pursued a different path than Spanish, one more like French, where the already existing plural was used for a polite singular, rather than a feudal form of address in the third person.
"hear ye hear ye now! ya'll sit a bit and pay attention to me!" is something my shop teacher said a lot when mad. I live in Alabama and that class was in the 70's .
When I worked in South Yorkshire, tha and thee were still common. “Sithee” (see thee) is “goodbye”.
There is also ‘sithi’ or ‘sitha’ meaning, roughly, ‘do you understand/do you see?’. Ah‘ve bin working all day, sitha, and Ah’m havin a sit down. My Grandad, from North Yorkshire, used ‘lookyer’ in exactly the same way. There’s me tomarters in the greenhouse, lookyer.
@@richardbrookman6415 I recognise that name, don't I?! If so, greetings! I do hope you're well. Another language relic I remember from my own youth in the NE is "starving", short for "starving with cold", ie nithered (back to Yorkshire again?) ... I like that one because later as a German teacher I understood the English must originally have had a wider meaning and been cognate with the German "sterben, to die". "Nithered" I like because it sounds sort of shivery... Jim
@@jimflewker8107 I recognise the name very well. Was it South Hunsley? Long time ago, whatever. Yes, I am sure sterben/starving are cognate. Learning Brahms’ Requiem in the original German taught me a lot! Hope you are well.
We say "Tu" (nominative) and "Te" (oblique) in Kurdish. Some words never change
Latin
Nomitive sing. = tu
Genitive sing. = tui
Dative sing. = tibi
Accusative sing. = te
Ablative sing. = te
Nomitive pl. = vos
Genitive pl. = vestri, vestrum
Dative pl. = vobis
Accusative pl. = vos
Ablative pl. = vobis
@@user-bf8ud9vt5b In Macedonian it's:
Ti
Tebe te
Tebe ti
Vie
Vas ve
Vam vi
Don't mind there being two words; we have long and short forms of object pronouns. Their use is complicated. I love how most languages in Europe have a common ancestor and still have some similarities to this very day.
Macedonian has almost completely lost its cases because of the Balkan sprachbund so I don't have anything for vocative, genitive, ablative, locative or instrumentative. Sad really; I hope I can someday see them reconstructed. We do have "tvoj" and "vaš" though, which mean yours.
😯 Same in Portuguese (and in Spanish, and French): nominative: Tu; oblique: Te. (we have also "ti" oblique).
@@user-bf8ud9vt5bin Spanish both singular "Tú" and "vos" are still use. "Vos" plural change to "Vosotros".
Tu- informal you in hindi
Tum- a friendly way of you
Aap- formal you in hindi
You should do "thine" and "mine" as possessive adjectives, too. A lot of people who write dialogue for "medieval" fiction (which is actually normally just an imitation of Elizabethan English) really need a hard lesson on how to use that.
A thought: how much of the move from "thou" to "you" in early modern English was reinforced by the printing press? If the unavailability of þ in German manufactured printing presses saw it often replaced by the generally uncommon letter "y", that means "thou" might show up as "you" in print before the convention of using "th" came about. That renders "thou" and "you" indistinguishable in print, even if distinguishable in speech. Or did, perhaps, the "th" convention for dental fricatives itself arose out of that exact situation, to reduce confusion?
This is kind of what I was thinking as well.
It's possible, although I don't think it'd be truly indistinguishable since "thou" had its own conjugation with the ending -(e)st: thou knowest, thou dost, thou hast, etc.
If German speakers can decide to keep the "Sharfes S" (β) for double S, then we should campaign to start using "thorn" (Ϸ) instead of "th" !!!!
@@johnvarley428 I love your line of thinking and I agree, but I can also see people asking why should they simplify things with a single letter when two letters will do? I'm thinking about the "ch", "rr" and "ll" that are used in the Spanish alphabet. I think it's an if it's not broke, why fix it type of thing, but maybe eventually they will come around. Heck, I'm wondering how long until emoji are incorporated into our alphabet and that may actually be more likely to happen.
@@johnvarley428 I think the biggest problem with adding back thorn into the English alphabet is the way it looks and how it may cause some misunderstandings...
þorn
So he's not lost anymore
Well'thats just great
I was looking forward to an Anglo-Saxon version of Lost.......in the English Countryside
Bugzy Hardrada Ye Olde Loste. I’d watch that.
@@ErwinBlonk okay dude firstly i wanna say
Fuck....why didint it even occur to me
Secondly
*LEGENDARY MATE*
I would watch the hell out of it
= Starring =
Simon Roper.........As Lost Himself In *Ye Olde Lost*
"We have to gete backe to þe island, Kate."
@@bugzyhardrada3168 l
Surely 'any more' is two words. It was for most of my life. Why it got crushed into one (by Americans, they always want to change things just because they can) is a mystery. Most of the time I myself don't pronounce any more as a single word, so I refuse to spell it that way : ) Oh and by the way, I'm a naturalised American married to a New Yorker, so my comments have nothing to do with prejudice.
Many years ago, when I visited my old grandma ,the second question was invariably "How are ye?"By that she meant haw were people in my household. She was second generation Irish, and in the absence of modern media, learned to speak from members of her family and neighbours.
I always interpreted "ye" as eqivalent to German "Euch." My other grandma used to talk abput us as "youse."
I read Linguistics at uni a long time ago, but I do not remember any of my lecturers having such a therapeutic effect on me. Simon Roper, you are my new hero.
There’s a fascinating passage from William Bullein’s “Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence” of 1564:
Mendicus: Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be your name; your kingdom come, your willes bee dooen in yearth as it is in heauen, &c.
Civis: Me thinke I doe heare a good manerly Beggar at the doore, and well brought vp. How reuerently he saieth his Pater noster! he thous not God, but yous hym. Gods blessing on his harte!
which goes to show that early modern English, like current French, used the 2nd person plural to show respect to an individual.
England was under French rule for over 300 years. The French honorifics eventually became part of the English society.
This backdrop is everything, the content, fabulous and informative.
As a Shropshire lad, I and some friends occasionally still use "How bist thee?" (Reply: "Bis good, Mon!")
In German we have three different ways of addressing someone:
An informal one: "Du" (you singular) as well as its declinations
A formal one: "Sie" (they) as well as its declinations
A highly formal one (obsolete): "Ihr" (you plural) as well as its declinations
English was more like German with Old English
Actually, there even was a fouth way: "Er"/"Sie" (he/she), that was primarily used to address subordinates and was more formal than a "Du".
@@JaycenGiga That's correct. Also lords often used to speak of themselves in plural.
wait so is "Ihr" totally obsolete? If I address a small group of people in Germany as "Ihr" will they give me funny looks? It still comes up in my German lessons
@@thedrain9328 No, that is totally fine. But in the olden days it was also used to address a single person of high status, and in this function it is obsolete now.
They're all interesting, man, keep up the great content
I never cease to be amazed that this channel exists, and gratified thereby.
We could use some pronoun refresher courses here in the States for all the Renaissance Fair performers...
And to get their pronouns and verbs to agree. 100%. No one ever seems to know how to use "thou" with the proper verbs and subjunctives. "Thou goest," instead of "thou go," or "Wouldst thou," instead of "would thou," (or worse "would thee like an ale, m'lord") and so forth.
"In America you have "y'all" and other ones I don't know how to pronounce." This is absolutely precious.
Similar thing happened in Brazilian Portuguese "você" (formal you) became the standard way of saying you in Brazil. "Tu" (formal you) is barely used in Brazilian Portuguese although it's still used in Portugal. No problems with plurals though as they have separate words for the plural form unlike French.
"Tu" as formal you? "Você" is what became of the expression "vossa mercê" but grammatically "tu" is the familiar form of you. Now, in the northeast of Brazil many people misconjugate "tu" by using the conjugate for você (e.g. "tu vai) which is merely regional colloquial use but "tu" is familiar not formal.
@@timcarlos my bad, I got that the wrong way around. Interesting then that Brazil diverged towards the non-formal way whereas English went the other way. Seems English favoured being more polite whereas Brazilians wanted to be more familiar/friendly.
avaya What is interesting in Brazil is that, depending on where you are at the moment, because "tu" is so rarely used in the majority of Brazil, some people think that "tu" is formal and will even argue that "tu". It can be a mixed bag, for sure and it makes for some interesting conversation and potential misunderstandings.
As usual, an excellent video, Simon. Thanks. As a New York City boy growing up I heard and still here many people say "yous". I watch lots of Brit TV which I love and I've noticed eg on EastEnders I will sometimes hear "yous" or "you lot". Also on the old series, Last Of The Summer Wine, which is in Holmfirth, Yorkshire, they say thou, thee and ye still. Let's keep "thou" going. Cheers! Peter.
An interesting channel I recall having watched before and which I anticipate coming back for more, despite the visual distraction of the unmade bed behind you lol.
Student room!
I love your videos. Thank you for your generosity in sharing your findings and knowledge like this. I live in Germany, speak German and teach English (to adults) so learning about the connections between the languages is really great.
I also hail from the north east of England originally and my dad was a coal miner. He told me about a sort of work dialect used in especially the less urban Durham collieries called "Pitmatic". He told me a lot of thou and thee were used. A favourite and funny expression was one that contracted into sounding something like "Wherethawizzeldee"
This (slowed down) was Where thou is will dee or Where you are will do. It was a response to someone asking, eg if they were sitting in someone's seat by mistake. Nah, son, wherethawizzeldee.
☺
There seems to be a distancing to show respect. There's thou to you; then you to "your lordship" (a noun); and then even further distancing to "his lordship".
I just stumbled across these thoroughly fascinating videos and I'm hooked. I studied English at the LMU in Munich 20 years ago and was lucky to have had a couple of courses with an enthusiast in historical linguistics.
"Look at ye, handsome lad with eyes as bright as a lady".
ye is plural second-person subject pronoun. I think that sentence should've been "Look at you..." as the object pronoun following a preposition, as in "at them" and "at me" and "at us"
Totally aware of it, I was just quoting "The Lighthouse". It has this amazing pirate dialect.
"Why'd ya spill yer beans!?"
Haha I loved that movie! Willem Dafoe totally chewed the scenery up in every scene. Not many movies capture that Lovecraft type cerebral horror very well
As a non-linguist, I'd always sort of guessed / assumed that 'ꝥ' became 'th' and 'þ' became 'y' - and then I questioned whether 'þ' made a 'd' sound. I was never able to find that connection, because apparently there isn't one... (and even if I still have my doubts (had these thoughts for ~20+ years - lol ), I at least finally know where and what to look for. Thanks so much!)
I'm glad I recently discovered your channel. I'm really finding your content fun and enjoyable. Thanks.
In Norwegian
Thou - Du - informal
Thee - De - formal
Thine - Din - nutral
You - Deg - informal
Ye - De and Dere - formal and informal depending on context.
Thou - Tu - informal
Thee - Te - Informal Oblique
Thee - lhe - formal Oblique
You - Vossa merced(/mercê/), vós - formal
Your - vos, vosso - formal or plural
Ye - vós - formal
Thine - vosso - plural, formal
Thy - teu, tua - informal
@@srsrikndadje448 Espanol?
@@lisenpedersen Portuguese; the way you conjugate “thou” in Aenglish and use “thee” are very similar to Portuguese, so Ic prefer to use “thou” instead of “you” ! ahaha
Basically the pronouns “tu” (/ thou /) - and “te” (/ thee /) and “vos” are identical in Portuguese, Hispannish and Latin. Basically Aeglish, Italian and French follow the same usage pattern, but with different orthographies.
Same in Danish (mostly). I feel like him saying that there's no way to know for certain how it was used is kinda odd - as it still is being used to this day. His pronunciation sounds of old English sounds like modern Danish - I don't think it's too much of a leap to say that what English lost over time, other indo-european languages retained.
@@PoiarNoia native english monolinguals are trapped in a one dimensional bubble, unable to step outside themselves and objectively view their native tongue. It's a folly of empire.
I don't know if Simon is fluent in another language though.
Love these vids, I studied French and German, and even took a French language history class, the parallels and overlap between the two histories is fascinating. Keep up the good work. Cheers from Oregon (“origgin” or “orygun” NEVER “or-rig-gone”!)
In “Moby Dick”, I found it interesting that a special point was made that Ahab and his wife address themselves by Thous and Thees ... itcame across as affectionate bit somewhat strange or outdated, perhaps
Isabel Pirsic In the US the thou/thee and ye/you distinctions were preserved in Puritan parts of New England for a while-because the King James version of the Bible had them, and puritans felt that to properly read the bible you had to speak in a biblical manner. It was already obsolete in most the colonies/states for most of their history, but the Puritans saw it as important to make their kids learn the traditional (or to their mind “correct”) uses of the pronouns to protect them from the fickle whims of secular world that would so quickly drop such an important part of the language. The Pequod set sail from Nantucket, so most of its crew hailed from the island, or somewhere else in the predominantly Puritan Massachusetts.
I think Quakers use it still.
@@peggyeaston1575 Yes, they do indeed. And at the beginning of Quakerism (mid 1600s), part of what made them so radical was they addressed everyone, including the King, with "thou/thee" instead of "ye/you", thus refusing to acknowledge/accept any social hierarchies.
I recently watched the Gothic arthouse horror film 'The Lighthouse' set in the Northeast US during the late 1800s, and the characters used thou/thee/ye and I thought that was a cool eye for detail especially after seeing your comment... (im still not sure what accent Robert Pattinson was going for but Willem Dafoe was awesome, if you like off the wall arthouse stuff I recommend it)
@@IONATVSWas that really their motivation? If you truly want to speak in "a biblical manner", shouldn't you speak in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek? Seems strange to fixate on one arbitrary translation to the degree where you model your speech after it.
For years, I have badly needed this channel!
A similar thing happened in Dutch: "du" (2.sg.) was replaced by "jij" or "gij" (2.pl.). The Dutch went a step further and reintroduced a new form for the 2.pl "jullie" which is, as far as I understand, a contraction of "je lieden" = "you people". It is interesting to observe that English seems to be going the same way with "you all", "you guys" etc. - at some point in the future one of these forms might become a pronoun of its own.
but there's really no need for it. Just use thee for singular and you for plural. Periods.
It was first gijlieden which later became jijlieden. In Brabant province gijlieden en zijlieden became gullie and zullie.
You know... I like listening to you, I think, because you sound like a very sane person. It seems surprisingly rare! And you seem to know what you're talking about about an interesting subject
“Thou” is informal which is why the bible uses it, we all have a personal connection to god, no formality needed. Now that “thou” is only in the bible it seems formal and imposing, maybe this subtly change affected how English speakers felt when they were introduced to religion?
it was to purposefully distinguish between singular and plural because in early modern english culture, people usually only referred to on deity
@@Hello-ro8fq he can also be your mate on top of being your creator
@@Hello-ro8fq Thank God that is King, Creator, Saviour, Lord, Protector, Provider, and Friend, Judge, Defender, High Priest and Sacrifice. He is everything and all that we truly need. I desire to see that.
Oh No Its Him We call God He in the Christian tradition for a few reasons: firstly, because we consider masculinity and femininity to be features that are not merely limited to the body. Even after you die, and your soul is separated from your body, you remain male or female. CS Lewis explores this concept in Perelandra, when he discusses the angels. Anyways, to put it extremely reductively, masculinity is characterized by activity, giving, sending, while femininity is characterized by passivity, receiving, and nourishing/growing. Again, this is extremely rough and reductive sketch of the idea, but you can see this pattern even in our biology, in how man and woman complement each other in the marital embrace. When viewed through this lends, God is masculine where we the creature are “feminine”. He gives, we receive. Secondly, God has consistently revealed Himself as masculine, so we think it inappropriate to ignore that. Thirdly, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Son, the Word of God, became Incarnate - His Name was Jesus of Nazareth, the Anointed One. He was not only masculine, but definitively male. So it would be entirely false to refer to Him as anything else but He. Hope that made sense! Let me know if you have any questions about it.
Christian ex-muslim I feel you - that’s our relationship to Him by nature. But, we have been granted a privilege in Baptism, becoming adopted Sons and Daughters according to the pattern of Christ. And so “I no longer call you slaves, but friends.”
you know simon, you might just inspire me to make a version of your channel for chemistry - specifically computational chemistry. i think theres something to be said for the casual relaying of esoteric information in a plain way & in more depth, unlike popular channels that tackle fairly mainstream subjects in a simplistic form. it's also from the interface of the layman & specialist. i.e. a masters student like you & me as opposed to a professional who has forgotten what is easy to grasp and what is more abstract. this channel is a niche and worthwhile area.
Do it! :) Chemistry's never something I've been able to get my head around, so it would be interesting to see it explained for the layman.
Am I the only one that's sad that English doesn't have "thou" is a pronoun anymore?
Yeah, for most native English speakers the idea of a formal pronoun is so weird and foreign. "Thou" sounds cool and its use is interesting. Oh, and we wouldn't have to have a "y'all" because when in context "You" is the plural.
If lots of people start using it or an influencer celebrity Queen or President use it the people would follow because now it's cool
It still does in some English dialects in England. Some English dialects are still very Germanic, but when they write online they tend to write in standard English so you wouldn't know they existed unless you were travelling around here and met the people who spoke them.
No, thou art not the only one!!! :P
Did you see Slingblade? Carl says ye all the time as the plural .J use it now too.
I did a video on this, now I wish I hadn't bothered. This is a masterful show of knowledge. Thank you!
Ye is still used as a plural in some dialects, especially in Newfoundland English. Because of the number of Newfies that I've interacted with over the years, I have begun to use ye as the plural.
It's still used as a plural all over Munster in Ireland (where most Newfoundlanders initially emigrated from). And in the other Irish provinces to lesser degrees.
just discovered your channel a few days ago and it has all been oddly very interesting. I wouldnt have guessed, a week ago, thar i would be learning up on some English history haha
"I will see ye then." :)
No, it would still be "I will see you then," because the direct object is you, not ye.
Me thinks I shall revert to using thee, thou and ye.
Ye art wise, Mr Roper, and thou knowest greatly. Good on thee.
Thee is still used a little in Cornish dialect, although the "th" is usually dropped, so its pronounced "ee", as in "'ow 'ee doin'?"
ti's true
In Devon too, I think. I occasionally say "Here's a drink for 'ee" as if hypnotising myself back to my early childhood in that county
It's interesting how many accents drop þ.
Thou and You - there was a sort of transitional use for a while in the 18th century. I noted it in novels of that time, in which someone is writing a letter to a friend, and writes "you was" ( not "you were"). That looked to me like a hangover from "thou wast". Interestingly I saw this only when the novel had a woman writing to another woman. I'm not saying it was a construction only women used, just that the only time I noticed it, it was between two women.
Scandinavian also has "Du" and "Dig/deg" equivalents of Thou and Thee
In Iceland we also use "þú" and "Þig".....just saying mate
I'm fairly sure English is one of the only Indo-European languages to not have a modern Thou and Thee. It's certainly the only Germanic language not to have them
Edit: The only Germanic language where thee and thou aren't actively used by it's speakers in everyday life.
It still has them - they just aren't used very much these days 😉
@@oleksiishekhovtsov1564 Dutch?
@@waterdrager93 I boldly assumed it had that grammatical feature since it appears in Platendeutsch, which is very similar to Dutch, but you're right. Regrettably I've never actually taken any time to take a proper look at the Dutch language and it's grammar, since I can kind of comprehend it, if I treat it as a really weird mix of German and English.
Thanks Simon. Your research helps me understand a lot of linguistic history.
People still used thee and thou, between family members and close friends and mostly for talking to children, in the Black country in the West Midlands when I was growing up there. I don't know if they still do.
Thou and Thee was still prevalent in colloquial speech among elderly people in the West Country and Wales 70 years ago, but the singular second person pronoun has pretty much gone extinct. Maybe in some pockets of the countryside there were still remnants as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, but I don't know if anyone uses it now in a simple conversation outside of quoting the Bible.
Hi Simon thanks for the video. I went to University in Leeds and I definitely remember reading somewhere about a conversation between two old blokes in which one of them said "Don't tha 'thee' me!". After you video I think I might understand this sentence at last!
It's happening in Germany at the moment, too, the "Duzen" (to address someone with "du") of people you don't know, became much more accepted within my lifespan. In my primary school 35 years ago we called our teacher "Sie" + "Mrs. Surname", my children use "du" + "first name" throughout their first 4 years of school, and only start to use the polite form in Highschool. And you hear it in everyday use, too. People working in customer service, hairstylists,... are often called "du". At my place of employment (hospital) I'm duzed (...), too (at least as long as I don't carry a syringe, an enema set or something like this, then I'm suddenly "Sie"... ;) )
I used to siezen grown-ups until I got some weird reaction, where it sounded rude or dismissive, then I observed myself using "du" more and more. But when I called a short person "du" a few weeks ago she got super angry with me, telling me that she was no child, and what was I thinking to duzen her, I switched back to Sie. There'll always be someone offended, so I'm using what I am comfortable with.
It is probably why English stopped having an Informal and Formal version... it caused problems like that.
Interesting! I took German in high school but I'm nowhere near fluent, although I'm trying to learn more. In Sweden there was a "du-reform" in the 1960's and 70's where the formal _ni_ was replaced with the informal _du_ . So _du_ means du/informal singular you and _ni_ means sie & Sie/formal singular you & plural you. There's an article on Wikipedia about this, available in English as well as German (also French and Persian). However, some people, especially younger people it seems, have somewhat reverted back to using _ni_ when addressing some people, especially older people. I work in customer service and I hear a lot of my younger colleagues using _ni_ when talking to the customer, especially if the customer is older.
I can't verify that at all. Here in the german south, you'll get siezed by strangers (grocery store employees, police, random people on the street) and duzed only by people that either know you or are in the same exact social bracket, like students.
In Germany, people are now switching more quickly from "Sie" to "Du" or the hybrid form "Sie" plus first name, but this does not mean that the use of the distinction between "Sie" and "Du" is generally abandoned. Incidentally, it would only be comparable with the English development if one were to start addressing everyone formally with "Sie" instead of informally with "Du".
@@SofiaBerruxSubs The formal version can have advantages though, for example if you don't like someone and/or if you want to keep distance to someone. Using the formal version gives you the rhetoric possibility for it.
I truly hope and pray that you actually know this much about your topic, because I am loving the detail you add! Keep it up buddy, these vids are excellent.
Wow Baldrik is getting really good at modern English!
I am an American and this is the 4th show of yours I have watched and I love them.
Thank you! :)
I took a year of Swedish when I was in college. In the episode where you had the 3 people trying to translate the Old English sentences into modern English I understood parts because they were similar to Swedish. And the letter that looks like a " P" I believe has a "TH" sound in Icelandic. I would love to learn Old English but unfortunately I would need a teacher for that. I love old literature and try to buy every book I can from before the 1700's. Unfortunately there are not that many available here. I probably would have better luck if lived in England. Are you familiar with the book Oroonoko. It was written in the 1600's about a woman who traveled from England to Surinam. I find it amazing that any woman would travel by herself to Surinam in the 1600's. What part of England do you live in? You do not have a heavy accent. I live in New Jersey about 12 miles from Philadelphia.
In western Pennsylvania you say "Yinz" for the plural - hence why Pittsburghers are called "Yinzers."
Ya but that's only a few areas around here. Many of us catch on to "ya'll."
In central PA we say you'ns, which shows the derivation from you-ones.
@@rredd7777 I was just gonna say that. Lol I'm a Central PA native.
PA natives represent. I come from an area in which I hear y'all, y'inz, and you'ns frequently in the wild. Along with occasional "yous." And the only one that actually stuck for me is y'all. But if prompted by another speaker's accent, I will absolutely use You'ns or yinz.
In the Philadelphia and South New Jersey area, we use "youse/yous/yuhs" (essentially just make "you" plural with and s)
I love these videos. It’s so interesting to see the genesis of modern English through the multiple influences of other differences languages, noting a lot of similarities to English and German (often via Dutch) , with the Ye/Je eek/auch, and ci of cildra which is a “ch” from Latin and this mixing of languages and corresponding grammar and pronunciation from Latin and Germanic makes English so confusing for foreigners - as noted in the poem “The Chaos”!
Another really interesting video my guy, keep at it and I really hope you'll keep growing as a channel :)
(Just wondering, If 'The' is written as 'Ye' using a thorn but 'That' is written as 'Yt' as you said does that mean that the thorn isn't just 'Th' but has interchangable meanings based on the lettering it's with?)
Alwight my son what on earth are you doing in my comment section you sod
The original spelling of 'the' would have been 'þe', but in the typeface a lot of medieval scribes wrote in, the letters 'þ' and 'y' came to look almost identical. It reached a point that 'y' was often just used to represent the 'th' sound as well as the 'y' sound, so basically it depended on the word it was in - a literate speaker at the time would probably have been able to tell when it was supposed to be pronounced 'y' and when it was supposed to be 'th' :)
I can't believe someone used their time machine to get someone from old english times, teach him modern English, clean and dress him and get him to explain thee thou ye. What a time to be alive.
That's pretty amazing I always thought the whole thou-thee thing was the formal version, and you ye was informal.
rageonyx same
It might have something to do that you hear of thou mostly in a formal context like in the bible or Shakespeare
Yes. Your comment immediately made me think of the hymn ‘Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer’ or The Lord’s Prayer - ‘Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name…’
Surely we’re talking up, not down, when we talk to the Lord?
Thanks for taking time to make these enjoyable and educational videos. I come to linguistics from history and psychology but get more and more interested in linguistics in it self listening to you.
Really fascinating, and I appreciate how you've confirmed what I've always suspected about "thou." That stated, why did "thou" undergo a vowel shift but "you" did not? In other words, why did "thou" evolve from "thuu" to "thow" but "you" remained as "yuu" and did not become altered to "yow?"
in my town in northenr england thee, thou and thy are all still used. thou and you still rhyme but are said as tha and ya, very close to a schwa but still an a
Where I'm from (in the US) we generally say 'you guys' for the plural. I know in some parts of the US (I pretty certain the east coast) they have 'youse' used in that same way.
It's interesting to know that there was a a second person plural before. Shame it's gone.
A very informative video as always.
the second person plural iz still here, "thou" iz singular
It’s crazy how English has changed so much. Like when you look at Old French, Old Spanish and Old German it’s different for sure but not THAT different where a person couldn’t recognize it. If any of us went back just 700 years in England we literally couldn’t make out a word anyone would be saying.
You would still understand some of Middle English (700 years ago), but it would be very difficult. But you wouldn't understand a word of Old English if you went further in the past, some 1000 years or more.
We’ve just had so many changes and new languages mixed in. A language that rifles through other languages’ pockets in dark alleys as the saying goes.
Actually that's not quite right. 700 years ago, English was in the middle English period (11th to 15th century). This is the era that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in. It's still somewhat readable and understandable to a modern English speaker today, I'd say perhaps around 70% mutually intelligible. Speech would have been a little harder to understand as pronunciation has changed a bit since then. But it would be more like a strange dialect of English. You'd have to go back further to Old English (say 1000 years ago) for things to get much harder. Old English (5th to 11th centuries) is older than Old French (8th to 14th century), and Old Spanish (10th to 15th century). Comparing modern English with Old English is more like comparing modern French or Spanish to Latin, if you want a fair comparison.
I pretty much knew most of that, but the formality of You was completely new to me. Thank you for that, it makes some things I have previously found confusing a lot clearer.
I am an Appalachian Tennessean. "Ye" is a common form of "you" in Appalachian English--"What are ye doing?" "How are ye?" etc.
More specifically as to the other commenter: the ye referred to in the video is always the object in a sentence. Give to ye. Ask ye. But in your examples, that is really just a different pronunciation of you, which you can tell because in both instances it's the subject. (Also they're pronounced differently, not so much the /i/ of ye but schwa, hence why a lot of people spell that as 'ya': "How are ya?")
@@seiretzym Actually, it was the opposite. "Ye" was the subjective case (nominative), "you" was the objective case.
@@seiretzym Small comment: your statement about the pronunciation is very dependent on the dialect of the region you are in. I live in Alabama and ye as in /ji/ (or more specifically /jIi/) is far and away the more common pronunciation.
@widhbnw efDwdwDW I'm not so sure. Would someone from Appalachia say, Did he go with ye? Or would they say, Did he go with you? If they switch to you outside the nominative, it might have that vestigial element. I'm not familiar enough, but ye sounds a bit fishy in that example to me. How y
d'ye do? Is definitely correct, in contrast.
Old english is so fascinating, it's cool to think that even culturally if you make a small difference to something a hundred times it will inevitably be almost completely different.Thank you for making these
Hello , here in America Pennsylvania specifically. We sometimes use yins or yeens, yinz where do you think that came from?
I love your videos. So interesting. Keep them coming! Good luck mate.
In Scots we continue to use “ye”.
I think Geordies use it as well.
Mr. Rich B.O.B
The Scots-Irish that went to the Appalachians brought their Scots tongue with them. There are still remnants of it alive and well. The Scots pronoun for singular you is “ye” and for two or more people it is “yees”, the word for “I” is “a”,, the possessive pronoun for your is “yer” , the possessive pronoun for “my” is “ma”as in “where”s yer maw” and “there”s ma maw”. They also brought their love for “whiskey”. Whiskey is in fact a Gaelic word that means water! Originally whiskey was called in Gaelic the water of life.
@@CharlesMcManus Interesting that no modern English dialect has retaine the actual origial second person singular pronouns, thou and thee, which correspond to the second person plural nouns, you and ye.
Even in the times of Shakespeare and the King James Bible, thou and thee largely dissapeared from common speech, but was still used in writing.
English is the only European language I can think of that the singular pronouns merged into the plural pronouns.
@@elimalinsky7069 Yes, we do. Or did. As in, Are ye gannin yem or back down tae the pub wor lad?
In Russian, it's also a polite way to address a person using a plural form of "you". Most commonly it's used when speaking to a stranger, person older than you, customer service personnel, and people with some sort of authority over, or that are on a higher level of a hierarchy than, you
My dialect uses "you guys" for plural you and the possessive form is "your guys's"
same
In my North Florida dialect, we say “y’all“ for the plural, and the plural possessive is “y’all’s,” a form that I love.
“I like y’all’s new car.“
@@Mike-ee2ij don't forget all y'all and all y'all's!
You reminds me my favourite English teacher in uni. I didn't mean to choose Reading Shakespeare in the first place but I find what he taught quite intriguing. I guess it was not the knowledge you taught--since you can google it easily, it's the way you put it, less dramatic but sincere and casual.
Thou is still said in many pitmatic dialects in the North east but its pronounced thew
Unrelatedly but just for info, there was a noun in old english which died out with the chivalric ethos in the middle english period but at a last gasp has made it into the modern english OED: "Thew" (unvoiced thorn). It means courage and a spirit of derring-do, someone with thew (the OED gives "thewful" as a possibility) is someone you could implicitly rely on at all times.
I really enjoy your talks. They are very informative.
I teach English as a second language in a French school and I always give my students a little historical background to the English language. When we are doing conjugations, I show the parallel conjugation in French, which as you know, has a distinction between the singular and the plural, "tu" or "vous" (as well, the formal and informal, which still very much exists in French according to whom you are speaking). I tell them that there used to exist a singular form of the second person (Thou) and one question which someone always asks is why did it change. Why did the use of "thou" die out? I thought extensively about it and one conclusion I came to is that the person or persons to whom you are speaking, always know(s) whether you are talking to one person or many persons. In some ways, the distinction is irrelevant. Whether it is one person or many people, he, she, or they are there if front of you. That might have taken care of the singular and plural, but it also took care of the formal or informal. "You" became the 'safe' form. Just a thought!!
I don’t think this is true. If I walk into a room of three people, look at one of them, and say, ‘What’ve you been up to?’, it’s not clear whether I’m talking to one of them or all three. Hence even in dialects like mine where there’s no recognised plural form of ‘you’, we resort to workarounds like ‘you guys’ or ‘you lot’ to make it clear when we’re talking to the whole group.
@@ojjo1892 True. In some ways it is irrelevant because it quickly becomes apparent whether you are talking to one or many.
Coupal1 would you not say that that also means names aren’t that relevant because it quickly becomes clear who you’re talking to? Maybe it’s similar actually - it’s something we can get by without but it certainly helps
I was taught long ago that the differences were similar to the rules for who & whom. Who (thou & you) are used as “subjects”, while whom (thee & ye) are “objects” in sentences. It could all be hooey. I am no expert.
Most interesting, as always. Really enjoying your posts.
Interesting hypothesis. Like the reason, I suppose, why "woman" has become all over the English-speaking world "lady", as in "cleaning lady".
However, there is the opposite case, for example, in Spanish the formal "usted" (itself an old contraction of vuestra Merced, or "your mercy") is falling fast out of use, at least in Spain, in favor of an informal or "lower" "tu" across the board, even from young to aged (unthinkable 20 years ago). I've begun to notice a similar shift (if a lot less obvious) in France, though I suppose there it'll take a couple generations, maybe more...
This probably points to the fast democratization of certain societies, not expected 700 years ago...
Same in German. First, the formal "Euch" and "Ihr" fell out of use, now the formal "Sie" seems to be lesser used by the younger generation (e.g. at start up workplaces the informal versions replace the formal version to make the job look cooler and more personal like you're working next to friends and guys around your age). I think the generation and authority barriers are eroding in western democracies starting with the 68ers to put more effort onto subjectivity and individualism
In Irish (at least the book Irish I’ve learnt) there doesn’t seem to be the tu/sibh informal/formal distinction anymore but when learning Scottish Gaelic we were advised, especially with older native speakers, to observe the thu/sibh distinction and stick to the formal/plural sibh with them so as to avoid offence.
In Russian the formal plural is still very much a staple of the culture. I would not think about addressing a stranger or a person of a higher social standing who isn't a relative or a friend in the singular. That would be highly inappropriate.
However, younger people among their own age group casually use the informal singular even when friendships are not established.
In Swedish, the old formal you "ni" (now only you pl.) fell out of use gradually between the late 1700s and the 1950s, ultimately being replaced by "du", which had previously been the informal you.
By the 1860s it was seen as impolite for just anyone to call someone "ni", while "du" (you sg.) was still seen as informal and therefore not used. To avoid this, people would sometimes just avoid saying you at all (e.g. "Vad sägs?" = "What is said?" = "What do you say/are you saying?") and later the painful tendency to use their title (e.g. "Vad säger doktorn?", "What does the doctor say?") or even both their title AND last name: "Vad gjorde doktor Johansson när doktor Johansson såg det?" (What did doctor Johansson do when doctor Johansson saw it? = what did you do when you saw it?).
Meanwhile, from the 1880s, the police and the army were told to refer to people with "ni", trying to retain its formality, but ended up actually driving using "du" - the unfriendly usage of "du" to talk down to someone became associated with "ni", and so it actually drove the working class to prefer to use "du", which was seen as familiar and nice. By the 1960s, "ni" for singular you was only used for the royal family, and today it's only used for addressing multiple people at once or for asking a representative for a company (e.g. a cashier) about something the company does/can do.
Everyone is "du" in Swedish; it would be a faux-pas to call someone "ni" nowadays, unless you're feeling a little old-fashioned. :)
@@nickrobson4068 fascinating thread. It shows little by little the speed and degree by which the various societies changed from hierarchical to egalitarian. In the West, everybody always says that Sweden was in the forefront of that move. This reflection shows it in act, so to speak. Most Western cultures are getting rid of their formal "you," and I can easily imagine a time when, as in Sweden, that form will simply be a vestigial trait, like the coccix in the back of our spine.
I think your videos are so interesting... Wish I mastered the English language the way you have.. Such a beautiful language spoken correctly.
"In America you have ones I can't pronounce"
*you'unz has entered the chat*
Harold Potsdamer dialect doesn’t mean a poor education. Non-standard forms just don’t have prestige, you can have a good education and still use your dialect with your family and friends from your local area.
@Harold Potsdamer I have a good education,and all my teeth. I use whatever lingo and jargon I feel like using,depending on my mood. You sound like an elitist.
@Harold Potsdamer alright. Um. Stay safe and healthy out there.
also y'all has already rapidly been morphed by many to already undergo the same thing that "you" did, in that y'all is often used for singular second person. Therefore y'all is honestly redundant and useless.
@@differentlyabledmuslimjewi4475 That may be the case among people who don't use it in their primary dialect, and thus don't understand the grammar. Those of us living in the Deep South have a VERY clear distinction between singular 'you' -- often pronounced something like 'yew' (like the tree) -- and "y'all" -- pronounced with a more open vowel and de-stressed 'L' than in Simon's rendition, often sounding more like 'yaw', particularly in the middle of a sentence before a word starting with a consonant. Someone from my area might hear a "Southern accent" in a movie or on TV where the 'L' is pronounced before a following consonant and immediately feel "in their bones" that the accent is faked. So (phonetically), "Yaw got 'nuff t'eat?" vs "Yawl (y'all) ain't hungry?" In any case, the distinction is far from redundant and quite useful. ;)
In Italian we have still very much in use “tu” and “te” which are the equivalent of thou and thee, so the first time time I came across thou and thee I instantly recognized them and therefore I knew what they were and how they were used. The funny thing is that it never crossed my mind that native English speakers could have problems with something that seemed so obvious to me. Feels weird but makes sense for modern speakers who have never met the concept.
Great video Simon. A little story about an old fellow I knew for years who had told me he was getting married at the age of 80 I turned to him and asked if EMS would be on standby at the honeymoon sweet? He replied raising his right hand middle finger and with a smile said F#$k thee Which I found amusing coming from an well spoken elderly fellow. So Simon should he have said thee or thou in this instance? 😁
Thee was the “correct” option, as the you in “fuck you” is accusative
'Thee' - if you are the one being fucked in that context
An easy way to remember it is that you can use "thee" wherever you can use "me". You can say "f**k me" but not "f**k I" so it has to be "thee" not "thou"
@@simonroper9218 🙂👍
@@Sprecherfuchs It's oblique, so also when you'd use my
One thing that bothered me when I was young was how to address a member of a group as opposed to the whole group. Both are normally handled with 'you'.
Later, I heard more people speaking "Southern" American English. They have a marvelous word, "y'all" (a contraction of 'you' and 'all') for the whole group. Now, suppose you mean to invite an individual in a group to visit you sometime. Use 'you'. Suppose you mean to invite the whole merry crew to visit you sometime. Use "y'all". Problem solved.
Thanks for another very interesting and informative video!
In Ireland we actually still use ye
Wow, this was really interesting to learn. Saw the QI episode, but glad you clarified the issue. Good video!
They still use tha, thee and thine in Barnsley, S.Yorks. Many of the "yoofs" use them because it makes them sound "cool"
this was a really interesting. I initially thought that it was all based on the scribal shorthand mentioned but your highlighting of the fact that english used to have plurals of 'you' was unknown to me. thanks for a good video.
I heard that one of the reasons people stopped using "thou" was because Quakers would never address anyone as "you" because they believed that all people were equal. And since Quakers were very unpopular and people didn't want to be associated with them, everyone else started only using "you" and dropped the "thou". Of course that's too simple of an explanation, but it might be part of the answer.
My guess is the great vowel shift made it awkward to say
"thou" iznt awkward & even if it waz it could be replaced by other forms ov the word
There was a story of a young Lancashire lad with and adult and the kid got thee and thou
confused. His superior wasn't pleased and remonstrated with him and giving this warning.
"Look 'ere lad! Don't thee thou me till I thou thee.!"
The English have a reputation for politeness. Many other European languages seem to have the formal and informal forms (eg tu/usted is Spanish). Do you think these could be linked in some way? Maybe if the English are polite, the need for the formal/informal forms was dropped as not needed, or perhaps the other way round, that because the English dropped the different forms of "you", the need to speak differently in formal/informal settings was instead expressed by additional words/phrasing, which to foreigners could have seemed like redundant pleasantries and therefore gained the English the stereotype of politeness.
(Not sure if that makes any sense, just thinking out loud)
That was many moons ago the English were polite and mostly in appearance.. .. Not even in appearance any more
@@ishenicole9987 Hi ishe Nicole. When would you say the English lost this politeness?
The distinction is formal vs informal, not polite vs impolite.
@@herrickinman9303 but it would be considered polite/impolite to use the correct formal/informal terms
I don't know that the English have a reputation for politeness. I think you're confusing formality and form with politeness. And that formality/form is typically reserved for formal and official occasions. English differs in many ways from continental European languages. E.g., English nouns, adjectives and articles have dropped gender inflections and dative and accusative case inflections; the pronouns whom and whomever are disappearing from spoken English; the pronouns thee, thou. and ye have been replaced by you. English has been undergoing a process of simplification that began many centuries ago, even before the Great Vowel Shift that caused English vowels to sound different from continental vowels.
I find the comment section so interesting - love hearing about all these different dialects!
Youve studied latin or another language with cases?
When you said nominative i really perked up haha
Always worth watching! Thank you!
So the King James Version of the Bible and other older texts which use “Thou” frequently are actually using the informal construction? That’s very interesting considering how serious we usually think of thou thee and thy.
Well in the Lawd's book, all constructions are serious.
mouthpiece200 Yeah but apparently informal?
@@michaelwu7678 God was consindered the most familiar person you could talk to so it’s okay to use the informal prounoun.
Although you should notice that God is always addressed as Thou with a capital T in the Bible, and probably any Christian hymn book published before the 1960s.
Dutch also still has the thou/you distinction, though with slightly different forms:
Thou: Jij/Gij(southern dialects)
Thou (unstressed): Je/Ge (southern dialects)
Thee: Jou
Thine: Jouw (identical pronunciation to Jou)
You (formal singular): U
Your (formal singular: Uw
You (plural): Jullie
Your (plural): Jullie
There are also Low Saxon dialects in the east which have forms closer to German, and Frisian in the north, which has Do for Thou and Jo for you
I can't speak for Dutch, but Afrikaans (from which it of course evolved) differentiates between second person singular and plural (yo, yulle) but it doesn't have the social overtones that 'tu'/'vous or 'thou'/ 'you' has.
@@davebox588 really? From my limited knowlegde of Afrikaans I know of jy (singular, cognate with jij) and julle (plural, cognate with jullie), but I believe they also still retain the more formal U (singular, cognate with u in Dutch). So from what I know, their system seems more or less identical to Dutch.
As a side note, "u" and "uw" aren't formal in southern dialects (including Belgian ones) but they can be used formally by those speakers when they engage in standard Dutch.
As a southerner I address my mates informally as "U" and my boss formally as "U", hehe :).
Firefox is red, Explorer is blue. Google+ sucks and Chrome does too. Haha yeah I knew there was something like that but I wasn’t quite sure about the exact contexts so I left it out, thanks!