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Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?

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Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?

#71

Post by sabbatic13 »

sabbatic13 wrote: post #68
astrobe_ wrote: post #56

About the top answer: Latin as no pronouns, but it has 2 distinct forms for singular and plural second person in conjugation. I don't remember, though, if the plural form was used as a polite form at least in the texts we have.

What I think you meant to say is that Latin does not use pronouns in its verbal conjugations. That's a feature of most ancient Indo-European languages. It did, of course, have a full suite of pronouns used in other contexts.

Oh, and no, the plural wasn't used as a formal singular. It was idiomatic to occasionally use the first person plural to refer to oneself (you can see this in Cicero's letters), but it had nothing to do with formality or some sort of "royal we."

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?

#72

Post by sabbatic13 »

moskie wrote: post #39

This relates well to one of the fascinating things I realized while learning German: the fact that so many English and German words and sounds have phonetic connections, coming from their common Germanic ancestry. For example, the letter "d" in German corresponding to "th" in English: die/der/das -> the drei -> three Donner -> thunder Ding -> thing daher -> therefore and, most relevant to this discussion: du -> thou…

The last class I got to help teach in Grad School was The Nature and History of the English language. Leading undergrads to this epiphany is also very gratifying (that and being able to explain the weirdness that is English orthography).

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?

#73

Post by kristiandupont »

moskie wrote: post #39

This relates well to one of the fascinating things I realized while learning German: the fact that so many English and German words and sounds have phonetic connections, coming from their common Germanic ancestry. For example, the letter "d" in German corresponding to "th" in English: die/der/das -> the drei -> three Donner -> thunder Ding -> thing daher -> therefore and, most relevant to this discussion: du -> thou…

In Spanish and French, hora or heure means hour, but it also means time. If you go north, to Germany, uhr means o'clock, and watch/clock. Further north, in Scandinavia, ur simply means watch/clock, whereas time means hour. It's quite fascinating and gives you a sense how information and knowledge spread in ancient times.

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?

#74

Post by sabbatic13 »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #7

Nice to see English on here. I’m one of the more active users there (Jon Purdy) and it’s a great resource. :)

It's also the first time all the work that went into my doctoral exam in Proto-Indo-European Verbal Morphology has been relevant to, well, anything on HN. O.K., it's pronouns, but I had to study those too.

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?

#75

Post by ghayes »

sabbatic13 wrote: post #71
sabbatic13 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think you meant to say is that Latin does not use pronouns in its verbal conjugations. That's a feature of most ancient Indo-European languages. It did, of course, have a full suite of pronouns used in other contexts.

Oh, and no, the plural wasn't used as a formal singular. It was idiomatic to occasionally use the first person plural to refer to oneself (you can see this in Cicero's letters), but it had nothing to do with formality or some sort of "royal we."

Wait, I definitely learned of the royal "we" in Latin. Specifically, this came up in Apollo and Daphne[1], with much of Apollo's first speech in the first-person plural referring exclusively to himself. We were taught in class that it was related to his arrogance to use a royal "we", which is a large theme of the story.

[1] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Daphne_and_Apollo

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?

#76

Post by sentenza »

davedx wrote: post #54
fsck--off wrote: post #28

Second person used to be: Singular----|----Plural Thou Ye, You Thee You Thine Yours Thy Your Which correspond to the nominative, objective, and possessive cases accordingly. By the way, the "Ye" is not related to the "Ye" in store signs that say "Ye Olde...". Y was sometimes used by typographers instead of the Old English letter Þ(Thorn), which makes a "Th" sound, so those store signs should be pronounced as " The Ol…

Interesting. So the way we learned the Lord's Prayer, it seems to use the informal: "Thy will be done". But that doesn't correlate with addressing God as "LORD", does it? Edit: I looked this up and found this page: http://brandplucked.webs.com/theeandye.htm It seems to infer that "thou, thee" etc. are only about distinguishing between singular and plural. There's no mention of them being an informal form, at least no…

Curiously, unlike Dutch, German uses informal. "Dein Wille geschehe..."

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?

#77

Post by Todd »

tunesmith wrote: post #64
fsck--off wrote: post #28

Second person used to be: Singular----|----Plural Thou Ye, You Thee You Thine Yours Thy Your Which correspond to the nominative, objective, and possessive cases accordingly. By the way, the "Ye" is not related to the "Ye" in store signs that say "Ye Olde...". Y was sometimes used by typographers instead of the Old English letter Þ(Thorn), which makes a "Th" sound, so those store signs should be pronounced as " The Ol…

Cool. Singular: Thou would like Bob to give thee thy ball. It is thine, and then thou will feel good about thyself. Plural: Ye would like Bob to give you your ball. it is yours, and then ye will feel good about yourselves. Not really sure how to ask "Are you okay?" of a singular person, though...

Art thou okay?

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?

#78

Post by StavrosK »

merkitt wrote: post #65

Greetings from a speaker of a linguistic oddity that doesn't have a universal form of the word "you". My native language -- Sinhalese -- has two forms: written and spoken. The written form, which has a grammar very similar to Latin, does have a universal "you", but the spoken form, which is largely grammer-less except for tense, does not. You literally cannot address someone without knowing their status/relationship…

That's extremely interesting! So people speak in the third person ("did mother want me to get mother's groceries"), or is this a second person still?

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?

#79

Post by david927 »

davedx wrote: post #54
fsck--off wrote: post #28

Second person used to be: Singular----|----Plural Thou Ye, You Thee You Thine Yours Thy Your Which correspond to the nominative, objective, and possessive cases accordingly. By the way, the "Ye" is not related to the "Ye" in store signs that say "Ye Olde...". Y was sometimes used by typographers instead of the Old English letter Þ(Thorn), which makes a "Th" sound, so those store signs should be pronounced as " The Ol…

Interesting. So the way we learned the Lord's Prayer, it seems to use the informal: "Thy will be done". But that doesn't correlate with addressing God as "LORD", does it? Edit: I looked this up and found this page: http://brandplucked.webs.com/theeandye.htm It seems to infer that "thou, thee" etc. are only about distinguishing between singular and plural. There's no mention of them being an informal form, at least no…

In German, the informal is used and I was told it's because it is "God the father."

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?

#80

Post by lostlogin »

sabbatic13 wrote: post #67
mattlutze wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value does abbreviation "PIE" add to a discussion for relative laymen? I'm guessing it stands for "Proto-Indo-European", a phrase I'll bet nearly no one outside advanced degree word nerds (invoked lovingly) uses or has heard. Sorry for the soapbox.

If you ever have studied comparative-historical linguistics, you know the abbreviation is frequent and necessary. So, the question is, what are the chances that someone familiar with it might use it and not even think about it? Your response assumed it was fully conscious. In any event, we're in the land of acronym pandemonium here, between CS, Data Science, Web terms, etc. PIE is a drop in a big bucket.

Medical, wow. The same abbreviation is used within different sub specialities frequently. The fact that any patients leave any facility alive when their doctor sends them for a test, with a referral that spouts acronyms, abbreviations and generally aliterate scrawl is amazing. Eg. Phx COPD, Ca 10/12 Tx RT. C+ CT ?PE. And assuming you can read it, this is a good one. Some specialists even invent their own abbreviations, diligently reusing existing ones. And then they are surprised when asking for an MRA gets an MR angiogram rather than an MR arthrogram. Medical abbreviations must die.
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