Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

english.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 441 posts

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#111

Post by mytailorisrich »

snidane wrote: post #109

As someone coming from a culture with T-V distinction [1], I always wished we dropped one of the branches like English did in the past. The informal T vs formal V causes confusion in conversation with semi-strangers. Eg. At work you never really know which way to speak to someone at a watercooler. If you choose the informal T you make them your equal. Ehich might be perceived as insulting to them, since they might wa…

English became the dominant business language for reasons unrelated to the English language itself but because of the relative power of the people who spoke the language.

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#112

Post by trealira »

panarky wrote: post #97
flappyeagle wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are many still-popular and important literary works like those of Shakespeare and the King James Bible which benefit from understanding the distinction.

For most of my life I've quietly despised the people in the church of my youth for switching to thee/thou/thy in public prayers. I always thought this was grandstanding performance of piety, or cargo cult mumbo jumbo, or both. It just seemed so silly to think that God only understands archaic English. Now it turns out these people I despised were only being respectful, and trying to use the formal forms? However, sin…

> However, since it seems that "thee" and "thou" are the informal forms of "you", now I'm really confused why they do this.

Unnecessary reverence of the King James Bible translation, probably.

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#113

Post by NewsyHacker »

brnt wrote: post #99
NewsyHacker wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If negotiating the tu / vous distinction takes major mental effort, are you on the spectrum? Difficulty with understanding social cues and (these distinctions are also about creating distance) other people’s space is a typical trait of autism. These linguistic innovations wouldn't spread – and often quickly, within a couple of generations – if the neurotypical masses found them burdensome. I'm in a country with this…

In the Netherlands, it is very regional whether or not you use the polite form. In the capital region, it is not used, and use is a signifier you are from the countryside, if your accent wasn't enough. There are courses on how to get rid of your accent (or rather, get one of the capital region), and ceasing the employ of the polite form is featured.

I’m surprised to read this, inasmuch as when I briefly lived in Rotterdam (if “capital region” comprises it, too) some years ago, my local acquaintances coached me in where to use the formal, and where to use the informal, and the distinction seemed very much alive.

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#114

Post by simtel20 »

delduca wrote: post #34

The same happened with Portuguese in Brazil, 'Vós Mercês', which is formal, is used throughout the country as (simplified) 'você'. And the informal form, 'tu', is rarely used (only in the South).

Oh, interesting, is vosmicê a mispronouncing of vós mercês too?

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#115

Post by o11c »

fsckboy wrote: post #66
baxtr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article “you” was formal and “thou” informal.

from the spelling i assume they were pronounced the same, but hopefully they both rhymed with thou.

Note that "you" is actually the object form, so the table is unfortunately not arranged the obvious way:

    single  plural  used in contexts of
    thou    ye      nominative (subject), vocative (preceded by the word "O"). For the singular, this implies that the relevant verb takes the "-[e]st" suffix.
    thee    you     all object forms (direct object, indirect object, object of preposition)
    thy     your    possessive determiner, before consonant sounds - thy will, thy God
    thine   your    possessive determiner, before vowel sounds (including 'h') - thine enemy, thine head
    thine   yours   possessive pronoun - not my will but thine, all that I have is thine
(the last distinction used to by used for my/mine, and is still used for a/an)

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#116

Post by naniwaduni »

bxparks wrote: post #65
verditelabs wrote: post #46

In my native Texan English, "y'all" can certainly act as a singular polite "you" (EDIT: though it is not terribly common). I often use "Howdy, how y'all doin?" as a polite greeting to people I don't know regardless of the number of people I am addressing, though switch to just "you" after making acquaintance. Funny enough, "howdy" is a contraction of the older "how do ye" and some people still consider it both a gree…

Wait, wat? I always thought that "y'all" was a contraction of "you all", so meant the "plural you" instead of the "singular you".

It would hardly be the first time a second-person plural turned into a formal second-person singular...

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#117

Post by LAC-Tech »

dahart wrote: post #5

I had never until just now considered the possibility that “you” might be the thorn misprint of “thou”, just like how in “ye olde shoppe” was (according to legend) pronounced “the old shop” because Y got used in printing presses as a stand-in for the thorn “Þ” character they didn’t have, that looks kinda-sorta like a Y. Seems like the answers suggest I’m just imagining something that didn’t happen, but it was a fun t…

That seems unlikely. From wiktionary:

From Middle English you, yow, ȝow (object case of ye), from Old English ēow (“you”, dative case of ġē), from Proto-Germanic iwwiz (“you”, dative case of jīz), Western form of izwiz (“you”, dative case of jūz), from Proto-Indo-European yūs (“you”, plural), yū́.

Gutenbergs printing press was the mid 15th century, well into the Middle English era.

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#118

Post by blown_gasket »

dahart wrote: post #36
jjtheblunt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eth is the character you’re thinking if, not thorn. Eth has voice on and thorn voice off.

This says it really was thorn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde#History Ð/ð (eth) certainly is the voiced th in Old English and modern Icelandic. I’m not sure why thorn was being used for ‘the’.

I'm not huge on taking the Wikipedia entry at face value and prefer to look at the references used for the entry. In this case the reference CHAPTER 25 TYPOGRAPHY AND THE PRINTED ENGLISH TEXT, page 6, does mention that y/ye was used in place of both eth and thorn.

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#119

Post by lnxg33k1 »

NewsyHacker wrote: post #95
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik it was because the “Lei” was considered elitist and because in the roman latin culture they had only the “tu” up to caesar introduced the “voi”, so maybe you know fascists had some sort of fetish for the roman empire so they chose to bring the culture as close as possible closer to what roman culture was

Caesar didn't "introduce the voi ". Is this an urban myth that Italians believe? The tu / vous distinction in Romance languages arose in medieval times. Not only did it not exist in Caesar's time, it is absent from the centuries of Imperial-era literature in Latin. There is a wide literature on Latin forms of address. Eleanor Dickey's monograph published by Oxford University Press is a good survey.

I am not an historian but it seems so, I’ve found in the past few minutes two sources that attribute Voi to romans, its in italian but sure it can be translated, going to paste the original links unaltered

https://www.elisamotterle.com/galateo-del-tu-del-lei-e-del-v...

https://www.treccani.it/magazine/atlante/cultura/Diamoci_del...

Beware the treccani is the most used/influential encyclopaedia in italy, so I’d tend to say that i trust them a lot

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treccani

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#120

Post by janandonly »

panarky wrote: post #97
flappyeagle wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are many still-popular and important literary works like those of Shakespeare and the King James Bible which benefit from understanding the distinction.

For most of my life I've quietly despised the people in the church of my youth for switching to thee/thou/thy in public prayers. I always thought this was grandstanding performance of piety, or cargo cult mumbo jumbo, or both. It just seemed so silly to think that God only understands archaic English. Now it turns out these people I despised were only being respectful, and trying to use the formal forms? However, sin…

As far as I know, you actually is the formal, originally plural version (ye/you/your) and thou was the informal version (thou/thee/thy/thine). Over time, thou became impolitely informal and is now no longer used, though interestingly enough, nowadays it might even be perceived as more formal than you because it's archaic and survives almost exclusively in liturgical language.
Post reply on HN