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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”?

#191

Post by henderson101 »

vidarh wrote: post #97
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…

Mix in another Germanic language, and it gets even more fun. Take Norwegian: "the" doesn't have a direct equivalent in modern Norwegian - we add the article as a suffix instead (a car = en bil; the car = bilen), but for the rest: drei -> three / tre Donner -> thunder / torden Ding -> thing / ting daher -> therefore / derfor du -> thou / du Older Danish is even more similar to German, though I don't remember it off ha…

Frisian is even closer to English than Dutch. I always liked the rhyme : "bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Fries", which in Frisian is "Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk". There's a hilarious video on Youtube where the comedian Eddie Izzard attempts to talk to a Frisian Farmer in Old English and gets surprisingly far. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeC1yAaWG34

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

#192

Post by henderson101 »

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…

I think you'll find that the majority of the British isles, including some of what is now Scotland, was populated by one of two peoples - pre Celts (Picts traditionally being named as one of those peoples) and P-Celtic speakers. The P-Celtic languages are the forefathers of Welsh, Breton and Cornish. Gaelic is not directly related to these languages[1], and indeed the Gaelic speakers in Scotland mostly migrated from Ireland - Scottish and Irish Gaelic being extremely closely related. Your list of "loan words" is therefore pretty late in acquisition. You can probably list the amount of actual P-Celtic loan words in regular use on 10 fingers. There's a massive body of evidence that the P-Celtic languages took a while to die out. A Celtic language was spoken in Cumbria (Cumbria itself coming from the same Celtic root word as Cymru, the Welsh name for the country "Wales"), and the traditional Shepherd counting systems[2] based on the P-Celtic counting system are still used even today to a certain extent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_languages [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_tan_tethera

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

#193

Post by henderson101 »

nisse72 wrote: post #44

Swedish has du (singular) and ni (plural). Prior to the "du-reform" in the late 1960's however, ni was also used as a formal singular form, but for the last 40 or so years the formal form has been dropped, leaving ni for plural only. In fact many older people would find it mildly insulting to be addressed singular ni today. Of course there are a few exceptions, most notably when addressing members of the royal family…

I read in an old grammar book that ni was actually a fairly late construct and that in Swedish history, there was another extremely archaic word ('I'?) which is directly related to U in Dutch and You in English. In fact, Wikipedia supports this "ni is derived from an older pronoun I, 'ye', for which verbs were always conjugated with the ending -en. I became ni when this conjugation was dropped; thus the n was moved from the end of the verb to the beginning of the pronoun."

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

#194

Post by henderson101 »

RamiK wrote: post #85
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. :)

I still use "One" quite a lot in writing (especially forums) when I need to discuss your personal opinion without implying that I'm speaking for the other parties in the conversation. i.e.

"You often see cars speeding along this road" "One often sees cars speeding along this road" <- unambiguous.

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

#196

Post by [deleted] »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #177
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.

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by fsck--off »

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…

I'm posting this for posterity because this thread has long since fallen off the front page.

I was wrong about the pronunciation of "Ye Olde". When it is used as a spurious indication of antiquity, the Oxford English Dictionary says it should be pronounced (jiː əʊld) or (jiː ˈəʊldiː).

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

#198

Post by Gigablah »

eridius wrote: post #185
Gigablah wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have any StackOverflow rep? I would assume it only gives you MIN(100, otherAccountRep), so if your SO rep is 0 I'm guessing your new account also gets 0.

I do, 131 rep on my SO account.

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

#199

Post by phaemon »

mattlutze wrote: post #190
phaemon wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew what it meant and don't have any advanced degree. I suspect that's because the very first comment to the linked question is, literally, "PIE = Proto-Indo-European" If you don't read the page people are talking about, don't be surprised if you can't follow the conversation.

That comment was added after this thread started, as I read through the comments before adding my own.

"25 PIE = Proto-Indo-European – hydrogen Jan 26 '11 at 2:57"

I'm referring to the linked page. That's the one you're supposed to read, not just the HN comments.

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

#200

Post by fractallyte »

fsck--off wrote: post #197
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…

I'm posting this for posterity because this thread has long since fallen off the front page. I was wrong about the pronunciation of "Ye Olde". When it is used as a spurious indication of antiquity, the Oxford English Dictionary says it should be pronounced (jiː əʊld) or (jiː ˈəʊldiː).

Since posterity is for a long time, you should know that you were correct in the first instance.

The OED merely reflects the fluidity of the English language, even when that language picks up idiocies such as 'Ye' being pronounced 'ji'.

Thorn is a fascinating letter, and I'm glad you drew attention to it in your original post. Sometimes I wish English would begin to re-incorporate some of those old words, or (as in this case) a letter.

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