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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”?

#171

Post by aetherson »

lupatus wrote: post #163
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…

Part of the explanation is the convoluted history of the people who lived in the British isles. Originally, it was inhabited by gaelic-speaking Celts. Some of their words that are still used today (): plaide -> plaid tàrmachan -> ptarmigan triubhas -> trousers peata -> pet Then, it was conquered by the Romans. Latin words that found their way into English ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_words_with_Engli…

Somebody once pointed out to me that you can see class distinctions written into the language this way. The words for farm animals tend to be Germanic (the conquered Germanic people were the farmers). So German kuh -> English cow. German schwein -> English swine. German huhn -> English hen.

But the words for prepared foods tend to be French in origin (the French conquerers were the ones who needed fancy terms for their food). So, as you pointed out, beef, mutton, veal, and pork are all French words.

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

#172

Post by rootbear »

As a former Southerner, who grew up with "y'all", and a fan of Shakespearean English, I have to say that I've always been sorry that English lost its distinct second person singular pronouns. We've had to come up with all sorts of work-arounds as a result.

I always thought it odd that Esperanto adopted this "feature", presumably from English:

                Singular        Plural
 first person    mi (I)          ni (we)
 second person	        vi (you)
 third person
    masculine   li (he)         ili (they)
    feminine    ŝi (she)
    epicene     ĝi (it, s/he)
Not one of Zamenhof's better choices, in my opinion. There is an informal second person singular pronoun, ci (thou), but as I recall it was only used in certain circumstances. If any Esperantists reading this know why Zamenhof used vi for both singular and plural, I'd love to know.

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

#173

Post by felxh »

yebyen wrote: post #150
felxh wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your observations of dutch being closer to English in some way than German, is correct. However, saying that Dutch is mix between German, English and French is quite wrong (disclaimer: I am not Dutch). English, Dutch and German are all classified as western germanic languages, meaning they probably derived from a single ancestor language some time ago. Note that 'germanic' has nothing to do with German or Germany, a…

I was with you until appel and toth, which don't seem to be English words at all... *apple and tooth

hmm yeah, was too preoccupied with getting the layout right, so some typos crept in :)

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

#174

Post by evincarofautumn »

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...

You need to change the conjugations as well.

Thou wouldst like Bob to give thee thy ball. It is thine, and then thou wilt feel good about thyself.

Art thou okay?

Generally thou forms ended in -st or -t: do/dost, are/art, shall/shalt, go/goest. Third-person forms ended in -eth: do/doth, go/goeth.

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

#175

Post by wtbob »

vidarh wrote: post #117
mokkol wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! I think Dutch (Mix between french, german and english) is even closer to English. I am not an expert, just thinking out loud. de -> the drie -> three (ie and ee got the same pronunciation) donder -> thunder ding -> ding daarvoor -> therefore dit -> this dat -> that donderdag -> thursday vader -> father moeder -> mother and a lot more similarities: school -> school week -> week weekend -> weekend maand ->…

I mentioned the similarly of Dutch in a different reply. You'll actually also find quite a few places where Dutch is more similar to Scandinavian languages than to English as well. Norway has two official languages, for the most part my examples are from Bokmål ("book language") which basically started out as a formalisation of Danish as used in Norway. I've prepended the Norwegian: tre -> drie -> three (ie and ee go…

Friesan is even more similar: Rye bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Friese.

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

#176

Post by ScottBurson »

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…

> [The page] seems to infer

You mean, it seems to imply. You're suffering from the common confusion between "infer" and "imply". Generally, a writer or speaker implies, while a reader or listener, or an observer of a situation, infers something about what was said or observed.

The confusion stems, I suspect, from the fact that there are contexts in which either word could make sense. Consider:

   (1) Are you inferring that layoffs are coming?
   (2) Are you implying that layoffs are coming?
It's easy to imagine a situation in which either of these questions could sensibly be asked. They are different questions, however. "Are you inferring" asks whether you have seen or heard clues that lead you to strongly suspect that layoffs are coming. "Are you implying", on the other hand, asks whether you have intentionally said something from which I might reasonably conclude that layoffs are coming.

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

#177

Post by jjtheblunt »

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…

It was eth (voiced th), not thorn (unvoiced th). But I was _very_happy_ to see someone else knew this.

The glyph for Eth looks like delta (as in calculus) with an extra cross atop it, so, distorted, looks very much like a script y.

You can see at least thorn still in use in Icelandic, by the way.

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

#178

Post by hvfl3 »

Grue3 wrote: post #109

I'm not even a native English speaker and I knew that. Is this really news to people here?

Take a random word. The proportion of people who know its etymology will be low. Is that really news to you? This is Hacker News, not Linguist News.

I don't really understand this attitude. I once made a joke about the Swedish word for sandwich - which is literally "butter goose" - and a humorless immigrant got all pissy about how Swedes are so ignorant, they don't even know that "butter goose" doesn't refer to actual geese etc etc. (Coincidentally, I did know the etymology but knowing it would not detract from the joke.)

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

#179

Post by kjs3 »

bane wrote: post #38
jychang wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'all is singular. "All y'all" is plural.

If the group being spoken to is exceptionally large, or it's clearly a group made of smaller groups (a group of groups), in some places "Alls y'all" is used. It's fascinating to note it when you hear it. edit also, if there's a possessive it gets pretty crazy, for example a tour guide, assembling several groups for a tour might say "Let's get together for alls y'all's tour".

Native of Georgia (US) here. We use "all y'all" as a possessive. I've never heard "alls y'all's" here, but have in the Southwest and thought it was linguistically slightly excessive. :-)

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

#180

Post by kjs3 »

jychang wrote: post #34
cobralibre wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow Texan here. "Y'all" is plural, but certainly not formal. I hasten to add that "y'all" is clearly not used exclusively by Texans.

Y'all is singular. "All y'all" is plural.

Y'all is most certainly plural where I'm from (Southeast US).
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