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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”?

#81

Post by pacaro »

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…

Some English dialects retain these distinctions leading to (somewhat forced) sayings like

"Don't thee tha me, tha them that tha's thee" - a Yorkshire admonishment against over familiarity.

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

#82

Post by justforonereply »

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…

Maybe addressing God informally is a sign of trust and spiritual intimacy.

By the way in the Hungarian language the informal 'te' is used to address not just friends, family and God, but also the king/queen. (Well, was used when there was a Hungarian monarch.)

Apparently almost every language has its own way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction

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

#83

Post by pacaro »

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…

I was always under the impression that it was meant to be the more personal/intimate form in the Lords Prayer to reflect the use of Abba for 'father'

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

#84

Post by davidw »

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 Italian, the informal 'tu' is used. No idea why, or what the history of that is.

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

#85

Post by RamiK »

nolanpro wrote: post #42

I know a guy who got to meet Queen Elizabeth. He was required to go through a royal customs seminar before meeting her. Apparently, you NEVER use "you" when talking to the queen. You can't say "Would you like some tea?". You must say "Would Your Majesty like some tea?". Hows that for formal.

Older English man still use indirect speech when referring to themselves and the person they're talking to if there's a significant class difference or even gender. Sometimes they'll even avoid posing questions altogether: "One would like to request your company for tea if it not too inconvenient...".

Makes everyone sound like a wedding invitation. :)

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

#86

Post by e12e »

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…

There are some similar mechanism in Japanese. "Anata" is generally considered to mean "you" (more formal than the informal"omae") -- but it is too familiar for general use (it can often be translated as "dear", depending on context). The safest approach is usually name+san.

Japanese is also often used without pronouns (in general it can be a surprisingly terse language for having rather few grammatical markers).

I have no knowledge of Sinhalese -- but from the description above it sound surprisingly similar to Japanese. Incidentally, Japanese is so different (grammatically) from many other languages that it is allowed as a "other" language when studying linguistics -- along with Maori and certain tribal languages. I wonder if Sinhalese wouldn't qualify as well.

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

#87

Post by davidw »

_ZeD_ wrote: post #16

As an aside note, italian has "two" formal versions of "you". The informal one, "tu", is common on all the peninsula. The formal version "voi" (2nd person plural) is more common in the south of the Italy (it's a reminiscent of the spanish invasions). The formal version "lei" (3rd person singular) is more common in the north of the Italy.

I live in the north, but when learning Italian, we were taught that 'lei' is the correct one, while 'voi' is sort of archaic. You see/hear it in, say, comic books like this one, set in the 1800's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_Willer

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

#88

Post by davidw »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #18
rcruzeiro wrote: post #14

In Portuguese and German there are still the formal and informal cases: Formal : Você, Informal: Tu The same thing in German: Formal : Sie, Informal: Du I am not a linguistics guy but I think that Thou, Du, Tu have all the same origin as they sound so similar.

The Roman empire spread latin far and wide.

> I think that Thou, Du, Tu have all the same origin as they sound so similar.

I think they're all Indo-European in origin, not a result of the Roman empire:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages

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

#89

Post by Gigablah »

eridius wrote: post #52
Gigablah wrote: post #48

Regarding the comment on the Chinese character 您 at the bottom of that page: it's still very much in use (formal letters, ceremony speeches, etc). I can't add a reply though, because apparently I need 50 reputation. I can't upvote, because I need 10 reputation. You know what, StackExchange? I'll just stay away from your site with all the barriers to participation that you throw up.

You say barriers to participation, I say anti-spam measures. Have you really never used any StackExchange site, though? Once you've used one, you get 100 free rep when signing up on any other StackExchange site, which is enough to perform all the basic actions (posting, commenting, voting, etc).

I have an account on StackOverflow and I linked it to my new english.stackexchange.com account, but I didn't get any free rep.

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

#90

Post by xbadxapple »

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…

It was a whatthehell moment for me too. I started learning German a bit later than English (we had to learn 2 foreign languages at school). Pronunciation exercises brought the epiphany here, haha. Was strange at first but then we thought - hell, after all, these languages have much in common going back some centuries.

God but I hated pronouncing the umlauts.

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