Most modern English speakers encounter "thou" only in the works of Shakespeare and other classical writers, and in the King James Bible. William Shakespeare ( baptised ^[1]

The word thou (pronounced /ðaʊ/ in most dialects) is a second person singular pronoun in English. Grammatical person, in Linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event such as the speaker the Addressee, or others In linguistics grammatical number is a Grammatical category of nouns pronouns and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in almost all contexts by you. In Language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current YOU' ' is a South African magazine which is the English version of the Afrikaans family magazine Huisgenoot. Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee (functioning as both accusative and dative), and the possessive is thy or thine. The nominative case is a Grammatical case for a Noun, which generally marks the subject of a Verb, as opposed to its object or other An oblique case (casus generalis in Linguistics is a Noun case of Synthetic languages that is used generally when a Noun is the object An objective pronoun in Grammar functions as the target of a Verb, as distinguished from a Subjective pronoun, which is the initiator of a verb The accusative case ( abbreviated ACC) of a Noun is the Grammatical case used to mark the Direct object of a Transitive The dative case is a Grammatical case generally used to indicate the Noun to whom something is given In Grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a Noun as modifying another Almost all verbs following thou have the endings -st or -est; e. For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. g. , "thou goest". In Middle English, thou was sometimes abbreviated by putting a small "u" over the letter thorn: . Middle English is the name given by Historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of Thorn, or þorn (Þ þ is a letter in the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic Alphabets It was also used in Medieval Scandinavia

Originally, thou was simply the singular counterpart to the plural pronoun ye, derived from an ancient Indo-European root. Ye ( IPA: /jiː/ or traditionally /ðiː/ was the second-person, plural, Personal pronoun ( Nominative) in Old English Following a process found in other Indo-European languages, thou was later used to express intimacy, familiarity, or even disrespect while another pronoun, you, the oblique/objective form of ye, was used for formal circumstances (see T-V distinction). In Sociolinguistics, a T-V distinction describes the situation wherein a Language has second-person Pronouns that distinguish varying levels of In the 17th century, thou fell into disuse in the standard language but persisted, sometimes in altered form, in regional dialects of England and Scotland. This is a list of varieties of the English language. Dialects are linguistic varieties which differ in Pronunciation, Vocabulary and England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland Scotland ( Gaelic: Alba) is a Country in northwest Europethat occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. ^[2], as well as in the language of such religious groups as the Society of Friends. In standard modern English, thou continues to be used only in formal religious contexts, in literature that seeks to reproduce archaic language, and in certain fixed phrases such as "holier than thou" and "fare thee well". Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift, completed in roughly 1550 For this reason, many associate the pronoun with solemnity or formality, connotations at odds with the word's history. Many dialects have compensated for the lack of a singular-plural distinction caused by the disappearance of thou through the creation of new plural pronouns or pronominal constructions, such as y'all, yinz, youse, you lot, and you guys. Yinz is a second-person Plural pronoun used mainly in southwest Pennsylvania including Pittsburgh, but it is also found throughout the Appalachians These vary regionally and are usually restricted to colloquial speech.

Grammar

Because thou has passed out of common use, its traditional forms are often confused by those attempting to imitate older manners of speech.

Declension

The English personal pronouns have standardised declension according to the following table:

Conjugation

Verb forms used after thou generally end in -st or -est in the indicative mood in both the present and the past tenses. In Linguistics, declension (or declination) is the occurrence of Inflection in Nouns Pronouns and Adjectives indicating Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive Verb forms that are used to signal modality. Present Tense is the first Sagittarius album released in 1968 by Columbia Records. The past tense is a Verb tense expressing action activity state or being in the past of the current moment (in an Absolute tense system or prior Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at during or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs These forms are used for both strong and weak verbs:

Typical examples of the standard present and past tense forms follow. The e in the ending is optional; early English spelling had not yet been standardized. In verse, the choice about whether to use the e often depended upon considerations of meter. In Poetry, the meter or metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse.

• to know: thou knowest, thou knewest
• to drive: thou drivest, thou drovest
• to make: thou makest, thou madest
• to love: thou lovest, thou lovedest

A few verbs have irregular thou forms:

• to be: thou art (or thou beest), thou wast (or thou wert; originally thou were)
• to have: thou hast, thou hadst
• to do: thou dost /dʌst/ (or thou doest, in non-auxiliary use) and thou didst
• shall: thou shalt
• will: thou wilt

In Old English, the second-person singular verb inflection was -es. In Linguistics, an auxiliary (also called helping verb, helper verb, auxiliary verb, or verbal auxiliary) is a Verb functioning This came down unchanged from Indo-European and can be seen in quite distantly related Indo-European languages: Russian знаешь, znayesh, thou knowest; Latin amas, thou lovest. Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. (This is parallel to the history of the third-person form, in Old English -eþ, Russian, знает, znayet, he knoweth, Latin amat he loveth. ) The anomalous development from -es to modern English -est, which took place separately at around the same time in the closely related German and Frisian languages, is understood to be caused by an assimilation of the consonant of the pronoun, which often followed the verb. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. West Frisian ( Frysk) is a Language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland ( Fryslân) in the north of the Netherlands. In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal This is most readily observed in German: liebes du > liebstu > liebst du (thou lovest). The three languages belong to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages, of which Frisian is the closest to English. The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic family of Languages and include languages such as English

Comparison

In the subjunctive and imperative moods, the ending in -(e)st is dropped, although it is generally retained in thou wert, the second-person singular past subjunctive of the verb "to be". Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period (the latter half of the 15th century to 1650 West Frisian ( Frysk) is a Language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland ( Fryslân) in the north of the Netherlands. New High German (NHG is the term used for the most recent period in the history of the German language. Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift, completed in roughly 1550 In Grammar, the subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a Verb mood that exists in many languages Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive Verb forms that are used to signal modality. The subjunctive forms are used when a statement is doubtful or contrary to fact; As such, they frequently occur after "if" and the poetic "and".

If thou be Johan, I tell it thee, right with a good advice . . . ;^[5]

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart . . . ^[6]

I do wish thou wert a dog, that I might love thee something . . . ^[7]

And thou bring Alexander and his paramour before the Emperor, I'll be Actaeon . . . ^[8]

O WERT thou in the cauld blast, . . . I'd shelter thee . . . ^[9]

In modern regional English dialects that use thou or some variant, it often takes the third person form of the verb -s. This comes from a merging of Early Modern English second person singular ending -st and third person singular ending -s into -s. Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period (the latter half of the 15th century to 1650

Etymology

Thou originates from Old English þú, and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European *tu, with the expected Germanic vowel lengthening in open syllables. The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds Thou is therefore cognate with Icelandic and Old Norse þú, modern German, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish du, Latin, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, Irish, Lithuanian, Latvian and Romanian tu or tú, Greek σύ, (sy), Slavic ты / ty or ти / ti, Armenian դու (dow), Hindi तू (tū), Bengali: তুই (tui), Persian تُو‎ (to), and Sanskrit त्वम् (tvam). Cognates in Linguistics are words that have a common origin They may occur within a language such as shirt and skirt as two English words descended from Icelandic ( is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. Old Norse is the North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age New High German (NHG is the term used for the most recent period in the history of the German language. Norwegian ( norsk) is a North Germanic Language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language Swedish ( is a North Germanic language spoken by more than nine million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the Danish ( d̥ænsɡ̊ is one of the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. Catalan ˈkætəˌlæn ( català kətəˈla or) is a Romance language, the national and official language of Andorra, and a co-official Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. Irish (ga ''Gaeilge'' is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish. Lithuanian ( lietuvių kalba) is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognised as one of the official languages of the European Union. Latvian language (latviešu valoda is the official state language of Latvia. Romanian or Daco-Romanian ( dated: Rumanian or Roumanian; self designation limba română, ˈlimba roˈmɨnə is a Romance Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages) a group of closely related Languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages The Armenian language (hy հայերեն լեզու hajɛɹɛn lɛzu —, conventional short form) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian Hindi ( Devanāgarī: hi [[wiktहिन्दी हिन्दी]] or hi [[wiktहिंदी हिंदी]] IAST:, IPA:) is Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical A cognate form of this pronoun exists in almost every other Indo-European language. ^[10]

History

þ^u, abbreviation for thou, from Adam and Eve, circa 1415, England. Circa (often abbreviated c, ca, ca or cca and sometimes Italicized to show it is Latin) means "about"

In Old English, thou was governed by a fairly simple rule: thou addressed one person, and ye more than one. Ye ( IPA: /jiː/ or traditionally /ðiː/ was the second-person, plural, Personal pronoun ( Nominative) in Old English After the Norman Conquest, which marks the beginning of the French vocabulary influence that characterized the Middle English period, thou was gradually replaced by the plural ye as the form of address for a superior and later for an equal. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people Middle English is the name given by Historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of For a long time, however, thou remained the most common form for addressing an inferior.

The practice of matching singular and plural forms with informal and formal connotations is called the T-V distinction, and in English is largely due to the influence of French. In Sociolinguistics, a T-V distinction describes the situation wherein a Language has second-person Pronouns that distinguish varying levels of This began with the practice of addressing kings and other aristocrats in the plural. Aristocracy is a form of Government, where rule is established through an internal struggle over who has the most status and influence over society and internal relations Plural is a Grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the Referent in the real world Eventually, this was generalized, as in French, to address any social superior or stranger with a plural pronoun, which was felt to be more polite. In French, tu was eventually considered either intimate or condescending (and, to a stranger, potentially insulting), while the plural form vous was reserved and formal.

In the 18th century, Samuel Johnson, in A Grammar of the English Tongue, wrote: ". Samuel Johnson (often referred to as Dr Johnson) (18 September . . in the language of ceremony. . . the second person plural is used for the second person singular. . . ", implying that the second person singular was still in everyday use. By contrast, The Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage says that for most speakers of southern British English, thou had fallen out of everyday use, even in familiar speech, by sometime around 1650. Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage is a Style guide in Dictionary form published by Merriam-Webster, Inc Southern English English is a phrase given to describe the different dialects and accents of English English spoken in southern England. ^[11] Thou persisted in a number of religious, literary, and regional contexts, and those pockets of continued use of the pronoun tended to undermine the T-V distinction.

One notable consequence of the decline in use of the second person singular pronouns thou, thy, and thee is the obfuscation of certain sociocultural elements of Early Modern English texts, such as many character interactions in Shakespeare's plays. Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period (the latter half of the 15th century to 1650 William Shakespeare ( baptised In Richard III, for instance, the conversation between the Duke of Clarence and the two murderers takes on a very different tone if it is read in light of the social connotations of the pronouns used by the characters. Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1591 ^[12]

Use as a verb

Many Indo-European languages contain verbs meaning "to address with the informal pronoun", such as Dutch jouen, German duzen, French tutoyer and Spanish tutear. Although uncommon in English, the usage did appear, such as at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603, when Sir Edward Coke, prosecuting for the Crown, reportedly sought to insult Raleigh by saying,

I thou thee, thou traitor!^[13]

here using thou as a verb meaning "to call thou". Sir Walter Raleigh or Ralegh (c 1552 – 29 October 1618 was a famed English writer Poet, Soldier, Courtier and Explorer Sir Edward Coke (pronounced "Cook" ( 1 February 1552 &ndash 3 September 1634) was an early English colonial Entrepreneur Although the practice never took root in standard English, it occurs in dialectal speech in the north of England. A formerly common refrain in Yorkshire, which admonished overly familiar children, declared:

Dun't thee tha them as tha's thee!

Religious uses

As William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in the early 1500s, he sought to preserve the singular and plural distinctions that he found in his Hebrew and Greek originals. Yorkshire is a historic county of Northern England and the largest in Great Britain. Tyndale redirects here For the English family see Tyndall. For other uses see Tyndale (disambiguation. The Tyndale Bible generally refers to the body of biblical translations by William Tyndale. Biblical Hebrew, also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language in which the Hebrew Bible and various Israelite inscriptions Koine Greek (Κοινὴ Ἑλληνική, "common Greek" or, ciˈni ðiˈale̞kto̞s "the common dialect" is the popular form of Greek which emerged in Therefore, he consistently used thou for the singular and ye for the plural regardless of the relative status of the speaker and the addressee. In Linguistics, an addressee is an intended direct recipient of the speaker's communication By doing so, he probably saved thou from utter obscurity and gave it an air of solemnity that sharply distinguished it from its French counterpart. Tyndale's usage was imitated in the King James Bible, and remained familiar because of that translation. ^[14]

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is still an authorized form of worship in the Church of England, retains the 17th-century language and uses the word thou to refer to the singular second person. The Book of Common Prayer is the common title of a number of prayer books of the Church of England and used throughout the Anglican Communion. The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican The Book of Common Prayer is treasured among worshippers because of the beauty of its language, which is considered one of the greatest works in English. ^[15]

Quakers formerly used thee as an ordinary pronoun; the stereotype has them saying thee for both nominative and accusative cases. ^[16] This was started by George Fox at the beginning of the Quaker movement as an attempt to preserve the egalitarian familiarity associated with the pronoun, who called it "plain speaking". George Fox (July 1624 – 13 January 1691 was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers Egalitarianism (derived from the French word égal, meaning equal) is a political doctrine that holds that all people should be treated as equals and have Most Quakers have abandoned this usage. At its beginning, the Quaker movement was particularly strong in the northwestern areas of England, and particularly in the north Midlands area. The North Midlands is a loosely-defined area of England. It is typically held to include the northern parts of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and The preservation of thee in Quaker speech may relate to this history. ^[17] Modern Quakers who choose to use this manner of "plain speaking" often use the "thee" form without any corresponding change in verb form, for example, is thee or were thee. ^[18]

In Latter-Day Saint prayer tradition, the terms "thee" and "thou" are always and exclusively used to address Deity, as a mark of respect. A Latter See also List of deities A deity is a Postulated Preternatural or Supernatural Being, who is always ^[19]

The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which first appeared in 1946, retained the pronoun thou exclusively to address God, using you in other places. The Revised Standard Version (RSV is an English translation of the Bible published in the mid-20th century God is the principal or sole Deity in Religions and other belief systems that worship one deity. This was done to preserve the tone, at once intimate and reverent, that would be familiar to those who knew the King James Version and read the Psalms and similar text in devotional use. Psalms ( Hebrew: Tehilim, תהילים, or "praises" is a book of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) included ^[20] The New American Standard Bible (1971) made the same decision, but the revision of 1995 (New American Standard Bible, Updated edition) reversed it. The New American Standard Bible (NASB is an English Translation of the Bible. The New Revised Standard Version (1989) omits thou entirely, and claims that it is incongruous and contrary to the original intent of the use of thou in Bible translation to adopt a distinctive pronoun to address the Deity. The New Revised Standard Version ( NRSV) of the Bible, released in 1989, is a thorough revision of the Revised Standard Version (RSV The Bible has been translated into many languages from the Biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek. ^[21] When referring to God, "thou" is often capitalized for clarity and reverence. While Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic (the languages of the Bible) do not have a special orthography (such as capitalization) for indicating that the Deity is being referred to, their grammars are more successful than English in making noun/pronoun agreement unambiguous. Aramaic is a Semitic language with Capitalization (or capitalisation &mdash see spelling differences) is writing a word with its first letter as a Majuscule (upper case letter

More recently, the philosopher Martin Buber has been translated into English as using the words I and Thou to describe our ideal familiar relationship with the Deity. Martin Buber ( 8 February 1878 – 13 June 1965) was an Austrian Israeli Jewish Philosopher, translator Ich und Du, usually translated as I and Thou, is a book by Martin Buber, published in 1923 and first translated to English in 1937 Most languages which maintain both a formal and familiar second person pronoun address God with the familiar pronoun (the Dutch language is an exception here), since its usage derives from older times when the distinction between the pronouns was in number only, not in degree of familiarity. Because in current English usage thou is perceived, however wrongly, as more reserved and formal than you, the translation does not convey the intended meaning well - a closer, colloquial translation of the idea would be Us or You and me, or in Australian English, "Mates". Australian English ( AuE, AusE, en-AU) is the form of the English language used in Australia.

Literary uses

Shakespeare

William Shakespeare occasionally seems to use thou in the intimate, French style sense, but he is by no means consistent in using the word that way, and friends and lovers sometimes call each other ye or you as often as they call each other thou. William Shakespeare ( baptised ^[22][23][24] In Henry IV, Shakespeare has Falstaff mix up the two forms speaking to Prince Henry, the heir apparent and Falstaff's commanding officer, in the same lines of dialog:

PRINCE: Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldest truly know. Henry IV Part 1 is a History play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written no later than 1597 Sir John Falstaff is a Fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare as a companion to Prince Hal the future King Henry V. Henry V (16 September 1386 &ndash 31 August 1422 was one of the most significant English warrior kings of the 15th century What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? …

FALSTAFF: Indeed, you come near me now, Hal … And, I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art a king, as God save thy Grace – Majesty, I should say; for grace thou wilt have none –

More recent uses

Except where everyday use survives in some regions of England, the air of informal familiarity once suggested by the use of thou has disappeared; it is used in solemn ritual occasions, in readings from the King James Bible, in Shakespeare, and in formal literary compositions that intentionally seek to echo these older styles. A ritual is a set of actions often thought to have Symbolic value the performance of which is usually prescribed by a Religion or by the Traditions Since becoming obsolete in most dialects of spoken English, it has nevertheless been used by more recent writers to address exalted beings such as God,^[25] a skylark,^[26] Achilles,^[27] and even The Mighty Thor. God is the principal or sole Deity in Religions and other belief systems that worship one deity. The Skylark ( Alauda arvensis) is a small Passerine Bird species "Achilleus" redirects here For the emperor with this name see Achilleus (emperor. Thor is a Fictional character that appears in Comic books published by Marvel Comics. ^[28] In Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader addresses the Emperor with the words: "What is thy bidding, my master?" In Leonard Cohen's song Bird on a Wire, he promises his beloved that he'll reform, saying "I will make it all up to thee. Star Wars Episode V The Empire Strikes Back is a 1980 Space opera Film directed by Irvin Kershner. Anakin Skywalker Darth Vader is a fictional character in George Lucas ' Science fiction saga Star Wars. Palpatine is a Fictional character in George Lucas 's Science fiction saga Star Wars. " And in Diana Ross's song 'Upside Down' we hear the lyric "Respectfully I say to thee I'm aware that you're cheatin'. " These recent uses of the pronoun suggest something far removed from intimate familiarity or condescension, while they could be seen as mirroring the mode of address used with the Deity in the Bible as discussed above.

Most modern writers have no experience using thou in daily speech; they are therefore vulnerable to confusion of the traditional verb forms. In Linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a Verb, Noun or Adjective from its Principal parts by Inflection The most common mistake in artificially archaic modern writing is the use of the old third person singular ending -eth with thou, for example thou thinketh. The converse—the use of the second person singular ending -est for the third person—also occurs ("So sayest Thor!"—spoken by Thor). This usage often shows up in modern parody and pastiche^[29] in an attempt to make speech appear either archaic or formal. A parody (ˈpɛɹədiː US, [ˈpaɹədiː] UK) in contemporary usage is a work created to mock comment on or poke fun at an original work its subject The word pastiche describes a literary or other artistic Genre. The latter is ironic as thou was historically informal, you being the formal form. The forms thou and thee are often transposed (as in Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose). Wallace Earle Stegner ( February 18, 1909 — April 13, 1993) was an American Historian, Novelist, Short story For the engineering term see Angle of repose. Angle of Repose is a 1972 Pulitzer Prize winning novel

In the fictional teenage ideolect nadsat, invented for Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange (and the film adaptation), Alex and his droogs regularly use "thou", which fits in with their semi-Edwardian clothing. An idiolect is a variety of a Language unique to an individual Nadsat is a constructed Language used by the teenage subculture also called Nadsat in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess (February 25 1917 — November 22 1993 was an English Novelist, Critic, Composer, Librettist, Poet A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 Satirical Science fiction Film adaptation of a 1962 novel of the same name, by Anthony For example, when fighting a rival gang, Alex addresses them thus (note the mixing of "you" and "thou" for the third person):

Well, well, well! Well if it isn't fat stinking Billy goat Billy Boy in poison! [i. e. , in person] How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou!^[30]

Some translators render the T-V distinction in English with "thou" and "you", particularly in places where you appears in the place of expected thou, or vice versa. French fries ( North American English; sometimes not capitalized chips ( British English) fries or French-fried potatoes (formal The testicle (from Latin testiculus, diminutive of testis, meaning "witness" virility plural testes) is the male A eunuch (ˈjuːnək is a Castrated man in particular one castrated early enough to have major hormonal consequences the term usually refers to those castrated in order to This practice has largely fallen out of use. Ernest Hemingway, in his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, uses the forms "thou" and "you" in order to reflect the relationships between his Spanish-speaking characters. Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21 1899 — July 2 1961 was an American novelist short-story writer, and Journalist. For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940

Thou is often falsely interpreted as having been formal; its use today can give an impression of stiltedness. In reading passages with thou and thee, many modern readers stress the pronouns and the verb endings. Traditionally, however, the e in -est ought to be unstressed, and thou and thee should be no more stressed than you.

Current usage

You is now the standard English second-person pronoun and encompasses both the singular and plural senses. In some dialects, however, "thou" has persisted,^[31] and in others the vacuum created by the loss of a distinction has led to the creation of new forms of the second-person plural. The forms vary across the English-speaking world and between literature and the spoken language. ^[32]

British Isles

Persistence of second-person singular

In traditional dialects, thou is used in the counties of Westmorland, Durham, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and some western parts of Nottinghamshire. Westmorland (formerly also spelt Westmoreland, an even older spelling is Westmerland) is an area of north-west England and one of the 39 Historic counties Durham (ˈdʌrəm in RP, locally ˈdʏrəm is a small city and main settlement of the City of Durham district of County Durham, England Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England, bounded to the west by the Irish Sea Yorkshire is a historic county of Northern England and the largest in Great Britain. Cheshire (or archaically the County of Chester) is a county in North West England. Staffordshire (abbreviated Staffs) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. History The area that is now Derbyshire was first visited probably briefly by humans 200000 years ago during the Aveley Interglacial as evidenced by a Middle Nottinghamshire (abbreviated Notts) is an English county in the East Midlands, which borders South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire ^[33]Such dialects normally also preserve distinct verb forms for the singular second person, for example thee coost (standard English: you could, archaic: thou couldest) in northern Staffordshire. Throughout rural Yorkshire, the old distinction between nominative and objective is preserved. The possessive is often written as thy in local dialect writings, but is pronounced as an unstressed tha, and the possessive form of tha has in modern usage almost exclusively followed other English dialects in becoming yours or the local word your'n (from your one):

The apparent incongruity between the archaic nominative, objective and genitive forms of this pronoun on the one hand and the modern possessive form on the other may be a signal that the linguistic drift of Yorkshire dialect is causing tha to fall into disuse; however, a measure of local pride in the dialect may be counteracting this.

There are some other variants that are specific to certain areas. In Sheffield, the pronunciation of the word was somewhere in between a /d/ and a /th/ sound, with the tongue at the bottom of the mouth; this led to the nickname of the "dee-dahs" for Sheffield folk. Sheffield ( is a city and Metropolitan borough in South Yorkshire, England In Lancashire and West Yorkshire, ta was used as an unstressed shortening of thou, which can be found in the song On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at. On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at ( Standard English: On Ilkley Moor without a hat) is a popular Folk song from Yorkshire, England. These variants are no longer in use.

The use of the word "thee" in the hit song I Predict a Riot by Leeds band Kaiser Chiefs ("Watching the people get lairy / is not very pretty, I tell thee") caused some comment^[34] by people who were unaware that the word is still in use in the Yorkshire dialect. " I Predict a Riot " is a song by Kaiser Chiefs, appearing on their debut album Employment. Leeds ( is located on the River Aire in West Yorkshire, England Kaiser Chiefs are an English Indie rock band who formed in 1997 The Yorkshire dialect refers to the varieties of English used in the Northern England historic county of Yorkshire.

The use persists somewhat in the West Country dialects, albeit somewhat affected. The West Country dialects and West Country accents are generic terms applied to any of several English Dialects and accents used by much of the Some of the Wurzels songs include: Drink up Thy Cider & Sniff Up Thy Snuff. Adge Cutler and The Wurzels, renamed The Wurzels after Cutler's death are a British Scrumpy and Western band ^[35]

Thoo has also been used in the Orcadian Scots dialect in place of the singular informal thou. Orcadian dialect is a Dialect of Insular Scots, itself a dialect of the Scots language. Scots ( The Scots leid) refers to Anglic varieties derived from early northern Middle English spoken in parts of Scotland and Northern In Shetlandic, the other form of Insular Scots, du is used. Shetlandic is a Dialect of Insular Scots spoken in the Shetland Islands, north of mainland Scotland. Insular Scots comprises varieties of Lowland Scots generally subdivided into Shetlandic Orcadian It should

Loss of second person plural

English once drew a clear distinction between the singular and plural forms of the second person pronoun. As discussed above, thou and thee were the subjective and objective forms of the singular second person. With some important exceptions, thou is no longer used in the modern language. Ye and you were the plural subjective and objective forms of the second person pronoun. Perhaps even more than thou, ye is almost completely dead as a linguistic expression. It survives in archaisms such as "what say ye" and "hear ye," and in deliberate efforts at humour, such as in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which the knights are warned by an enchanter:

These lines present an interesting mixture of old and new styles. To establish the antiquity of the scene, the actor (John Cleese) uses the ancient form ("if ye be men of valor"), then, having accomplished this with one ye, he switches back to the modern forms, saying "if you do doubt your courage" and "death awaits you all"). John Marwood Cleese (ˈkliːz born 27 October, 1939) is a British Actor, Comedian, Writer, Film producer The lack of a modern distinction between singular and plural you created a need for you all to make it clear that the actor is addressing the entire company of knights.

Neologisms for second-person plural

In the dialect of English spoken in Northern Ireland, yous or yousuns is frequently heard for the informal nominative plural and accusative plural, while either your or yousuns is the possessive adjective. Northern Ireland (Tuaisceart Éireann Ulster Scots: Norlin Airlann) is a Country within the United Kingdom, lying in the northeast of ^[36]

• Have yousuns heard the racket your dog is making?! (Very informal speech)

• Have yous heard the racket yousuns' dog is making?! (Very informal speech)

• Have youse heard the racket your dog is making?! (Ordinary speech, most dialects)

• Have you heard the racket your dog is making?! (Formal speech; ordinary speech in some dialects)

The case is similar in Scotland (and North East England), where youse (and most often written with that spelling) is used in informal speech in some southern Scottish and northern English dialects. North-East England is one of the nine official Regions of England and comprises the combined area of Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear

In much of provincial Ireland ye or yez is used as the nominative and accusative plural with yeer as the possessive. Ireland (pronounced /ˈaɾlənd/ Éire) is the third largest island in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world In Dublin, youse and yiz are used in the nominative and accusative plural, with yer or yizzer^[37] as the possessive. Dublin (ˈdʌblɨn/ /ˈdʊblɨn or /ˈdʊbəlɪn/, bˠalʲə aːha klʲiəh or cliə(ɸ is both the largest city and capital of Ireland.

North America

In Southern American English and in African American English throughout the US, y'all is a widely accepted form of second-person plural. Southern American English is a group of Dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Southern African American Vernacular English ( AAVE) – also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Y'all, sometimes spelled as " Ya'll " " Yawl " or " Yaw " and archaically spelled " You-all " ^[38] In rural Appalachia, yenz and yunz are common in casual speech. Appalachia is a term used to describe a region in the eastern United States that stretches from southern New York state to northern Alabama, In Pennsylvania, you'uns or yinz is sometimes used around Pittsburgh. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ( often colloquially referred to as PA (its abbreviation by natives and Northeasterners is a state located in the Northeastern Yinz is a second-person Plural pronoun used mainly in southwest Pennsylvania including Pittsburgh, but it is also found throughout the Appalachians ^[39] In the north, yous, youse, or you guys is sometimes used, especially in much of lower Michigan and around New York, though in New York Dialect, "youse guys/youse guys's" are more common objective and possessive forms, although these are probably minority usages, and are highly stigmatized, your guys or your guys's being more common. The Lower Peninsula of Michigan is surrounded by water on all sides except its southern border which it shares with Ohio and Indiana. New York ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous The New York dialect of the English language is spoken by most European Americans and some non-European Americans who were raised in New York City and These usages may be the American variants of Irish and British coinages noted above. You guys is widespread throughout English-speaking North America as a means of indicating the plural (this term is used to address both men and women). However, these grammatical expressions are considered colloquialisms and are not used in formal speech or writing. A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal speech, writing or Paralinguistics. The table below shows standardised second-person pronouns of today, with informal regional usage shown in brackets.

See also

• English personal pronouns

Notes

References

• Baugh, Albert C. , and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language, 5th ed. ISBN 0-13-015166-1
• Burrow, J. A. , Turville-Petre, Thorlac. A Book of Middle English. ISBN 0-631-19353-7
• Daniel, David. The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. ISBN 0-300-09930-4.
• Shorrocks, Graham. "Case Assignment in Simple and Coordinate Constructions in Present-Day English. " American Speech, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Winter, 1992).
• Smith, Jeremy. A Historical Study of English: Form, Function, and Change. ISBN 0-415-13272-X
• "Thou, pers. pron. , 2nd sing. " Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989). [1].
• Trudgill, Peter. (1999) Blackwell Publishing. Dialects of England. ISBN 0-631-21815-7

Bibliography

• Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English by Katie Wales (Author) ISBN 0-521-47102-8

External links

• A Grammar of the English Tongue by Samuel Johnson - includes description of 18th century use of thou
• Contemporary use of thou in Yorkshire
• Thou: The Maven's Word of the Day
• You/Thou in Shakespeare's Work (archived forum discussion)
• A Note on Shakespeare's Grammar by Seamus Cooney