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Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
- helsinkiandrew 3y agoThee and Thou are still used in Northern England (Yorkshire and Lancashire). Although probably only by older people and often spoken as Thi and Tha.
- eyphka 3y agoInteresting, and are those used as the informal you? Or in reference to singular?
- helsinkiandrew 3y agoI think Thee would be for family, friends, or someone of equal social status and thou is more formal (but much less used now - only as tha: “tha's gonna get it“).
- BobaFloutist 3y agoThat's fascinating , because it's originally a subject/object divide (equivalent to he/him)
- jameshart 3y agoDefinitely a formal/informal distinction. Old Yorkshire phrase for telling children to mind who they address as 'thee / tha': "Don't thee tha them as thas thee" - kind of a similar sense as 'mind your Ps and Qs'.
- Caligatio 3y agoI feel like this must be fading because I lived in North Yorkshire for almost 5 years and never heard a thee/thou used. On the other hand, English dialects are hyper localized so there might be villages where it is normal.
- EGreg 3y agoGo to Amish country!
- tibbydudeza 3y agoDon't they use Pennsylvania Dutch ???.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoYou're more likely thinking of Quakers. At least those still a part of the mid-Atlantic tradition historically use "thou" to avoid power distinctions. Not many still do this in daily speech, but it's not absolutely lost, and is sometimes used for emphasis in a conversation in which matters of power and equality are lurking.
- stordoff 3y agoI definitely heard it more from my Grandfather, but I still hear it here in South Yorkshire. It seems to be most often used in common phrases, such as "What's tha want for tha tea?" or "What's tha doing?" (tha = thou/thy), or used for emphasis ("I'll tell thee what"), rather than as a general alternative though. > English dialects are hyper localized On a vaguely related note, has anyone else (particularly in Yorkshire) use "seef"/"seefing" to mean "see if"/"seeing if" (as in "I was seefing/seeing if it was in the car")? I hear it all the time from my immediate family, but I've never been able to find it referenced beyond that.
- aryonoco 3y agoIt is fading, and it hasn't been in widespread use for quite some time. However when I was in the UK, I definitely heard "tha" and "thissen" (yourself) on numerous occasions, mostly in common idioms and phrases, in South Yorkshire, especially around Barnsley and Rotherham. I don't think I ever heard it in major metropolitan areas like Manchester or Liverpool though.
- moffkalast 3y agoVerily.
- HeckFeck 3y agoIt's not the most common, but 'ye' survives in Northern Ireland. 'What about ye?' - would be a friendly way of asking 'how do you do?'
- sampo 3y ago"You" is the formal version. But as the answers explain, English did also have the informal version.
- denton-scratch 3y agoYes. We think of "thee" and "thou" as being formal, because nowadays they are mainly found in religious texts. But they used to be informal, used when addressing friends and children. As the top answer explains, "thee" and "thou" eventually came to be considered rude.
- bdw5204 3y agoIt isn't so much that they're mainly found in religious texts as that the most common English translation of the Bible is still the King James Version which is over 400 years old and "thou" was still part of the English language back then. The other other English text most people are familiar with that is older than the KJV would be the works of Shakespeare which arguably need to be translated to modern English at this point. English language works older than Shakespeare such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Beowulf are pretty much always read in translation.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoTo be fair though, Beowulf in its original form would be incomprehensible even to well read native English speakers. Old English and Modern English are so different that they're no longer mutually intelligible even. Same goes for a lot of languages if you compare them to themselves a millennium apart. Or if their common ancestor was milennia ago. E.g Icelandic and Faroese aren't really mutually intelligible with Norwegian today, despite both being evolved directly from Old Norwegian, because both places were originally settled by Norwegian vikings. Shakepeare is essentially just very old school, yet still Modern English. This still feels within the realm of understanding of current day native speakers equipped with a good dictionary.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
- dahart 3y agoI 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 thought.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoEth is the character you’re thinking if, not thorn. Eth has voice on and thorn voice off.
- dahart 3y agoThis says it really was thorn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde#History 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’.
- n_plus_1_acc 3y agoAFAIK thorn and eth were used in free variation, as there is rarely any possibility of confusion.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoI would recommend consulting Prokosh Comparative Germanic Grammar. It’s a very old reference and may not be online, but what my germanic linguistics professor used with us Germanic linguistics grad students. He was a world renowned expert on the various futhark versions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_H._Antonsen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_H._Antonsen
- jjtheblunt 3y agoProkosch's book is still available https://a.co/d/0u4S28Y https://a.co/d/0u4S28Y
- k__ 3y agoIn German, we use "sie" the German equivalent of "they". Thus, to be polite, you address someone as many people that aren't part of the conversation.
- yurishimo 3y agoDutch is similar with “U” being both singular and plural. Verb conjugation is the same for both cases. This has been interesting as an English speaker learning Dutch! Luckily I never really latched on to sms-speak but I can imagine some cohorts of English speakers have to break the habit of reading “u” as shorthand for the the full word.
- JW_00000 3y agoThis lead me down a short Wikipedia rabbit-hole that is quite interesting (at least to me). Apparently Dutch originally had "du" as 2nd person singular and "gij" as 2nd person plural. From the 16th century, "gij" started being used as singular polite form. (Possibly under the influence of Latin and French.) Later, "du" disappeared. Up to this point, the progression is similar to English. "gij" then transformed to "jij" in the northern part of the Dutch language area and in written language; while it remained "gij" in Flemish spoken language. However, then in the 17th century people started using "Uwe Edelheit" ("Your Nobility") as a new formal form in letters. This evolved into the current formal pronoun "u". (Note also that the accusative form of "gij" is also "u", but is not related to the formal "u".) Sources: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gij https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gij, https://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/gij https://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/gij, https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_(voornaamwoord) https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_(voornaamwoord), https://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/u https://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/u
- native_dirch 3y agoNative Dutch speaker here. These days one doesn't capitalise the "u" except at the start of a sentence, however in older texts (40+ years?) it was usual to see the "U" pronoun capitalised at all times. Sorry if I'm mansplaining but I noticed you capitalising it and thought I'd point it out, because it would stand out to a modern Dutch reader. As for sms-speak, I'd be flabbergasted if you encountered the u-form anywhere in text messages except maybe in automated OTP messages from your bank. So I would guess that's something you needn't worry about :). Good luck in your language-learning journey. Assuming you're living in the Netherlands, I'm curious as to how your integration is going? My observation is that Dutch culture can be insanely hard for foreigners to get a foothold in, partly because of the "polite" tendency of most locals to insist on speaking English around non-native Dutch. I feel like that gesture, which may seem accommodating on the surface level, can almost be an exclusionary dynamic in itself.
- propter_hoc 3y agoSecond person pronouns are so fascinating! Not only is "you" the formal, polite plural form, but calling someone "thou" was also seen as so informal as to be rude (in verb form, to "thou" someone). This has a modern equivalent in the term "tutoyer" in French. https://www.etymonline.com/word/thou https://www.etymonline.com/word/thou An interesting counterpoint is the usage in Japanese of sarcastically polite forms like お前 and 貴様, where you use a pronoun with a surface meaning of extreme respect, as a form of insult.
- Geisterde 3y agoShipmate is used to describe someone who you crew a ship with, such as in the navy, and is supposed to convey comradery. E xcept in its real world use, where its the social equivalent of referring to someone as "s**head".
- mgbmtl 3y agoI guess like "comrade", any kind of imposed social norm becomes an object of satire?
- Geisterde 3y agoI think so, I remember a joke bill burr made about any term used to describe the mentally underdeveloped will inevitably be used satirically.
- javajosh 3y agoInteresting. I wonder if the similarity of the words "ship" and "shit" contributed to the development. Out of curiosity, what is the non-pejorative replacement for shipmate?
- Geisterde 3y agoJust common english slang, bro, dude, whatevers on their nametag or a first name/nickname if they have one; nothing dissimilar to civilian life and I think thats largely the point, even last names are commonly referred to as "slave names". Formal speech is all ranks, "hey chief", "yes petty officer".
- ghaff 3y agoThe page also gets into the plural form being used for the singular over time (as is increasingly the case with English, at least in the US, when you want to avoid specifying a masculine or feminine third-person singular).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yawaramin 3y ago'Thou' is also used in English prayers ('Thy kingdom come, thy will be done'), as a mark of a personal closeness to God.
- tom_ 3y ago"You" would be ambiguous anyway, and might imply that you are addressing more than one, contravening the first commandment.
- dustincoates 3y agoThat's really more due to the influence of the King James Version than anything else. For example, ESV uses you: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206%3A5-14&version=ESV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206%3A5... In French, however, God is always referred to with the informal tu, which surprises second language learners. But it makes sense when you realize that using plural for formal came about well after the Hebrew Bible, and because it was to implicitly refer to multiple people (sort of like the royal We), which obviously wouldn't be acceptable in Christianity.
- MrsPeaches 3y agoAlso informal in English (c.f. The use of thou in the Lord’s Prayer)
- yawaramin 3y agoIt wouldn't surprise South Asian (e.g. Bengali) Muslims who grow up hearing clerics address God as 'tui' (informal 'you' like French 'tu').
- erutuon 3y agoGood insight that I hadn't thought of. To flesh that out, the KJV translators used thou as singular and ye as plural consistently to render the second person singular-plural distinctions found in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The translators never intended a usage of thou in the KJV to imply informality, only that the original language used the second person singular. That would naturally carry over into prayers and hymns that don't come from the KJV Bible. However, common people at the time who couldn't know the translators' chosen convention might have then read closeness into the pronoun used to address God, which wouldn't be a bad thing theologically.
- dwheeler 3y agoMore info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou This should be common knowledge for native English speakers. It's hard to read Shakespeare without knowing this. But for non-native speaker, this would be mysterious.
- baxtr 3y agoAccording to the article “you” was formal and “thou” informal.
- fsckboy 3y agofrom the spelling i assume they were pronounced the same, but hopefully they both rhymed with thou.
- o11c 3y agoNote 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)
- zirgs 3y agoYes - and this is how it is in a lot of other Indo-European languages too.
- 6stringmerc 3y ago[flagged]
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- neaden 3y agoThe Goblin Emperor by Sarah Monette (writing as Katherine Addison) is a secondary world fantasy that uses you/thou as a way of incorporating formality. It's interesting way of helping understand the whole manner/formality system of the setting.
- Semiapies 3y agoAlso the royal "we".
- mococa 3y agoThe 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).
- simtel20 3y agoOh, interesting, is vosmicê a mispronouncing of vós mercês too?
- mococa 3y agoI believe so, and tuh (or thu, don’t remember) linked in the article has the same sound
- mito88 3y agovossa mercê, vosmecê, vossemecê.
- mderazon 3y agoIn European Portuguese the two forms are still equally used
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- samvoar 3y ago>tu', is rarely used (only in the South) even in places and situations where 'tu' is used it's mostly still conjugated as if it were second person singular. 'EU BEM QUE TE AVISEI - TU EMPINOU ELE PEI'
- gugagore 3y agoYou mean it's conjugated like the third person singular, i.e. like você or ele or "a coisa" (the thing).
- deleted 3y ago
- kawa 3y ago"Thou" sounds very similar to german "du" which is the current informal form. In older german the second person plural ('Ihr', similar to "vous" french from which "you" may come) was also the formal form, but it's out of fashion for a few centuries now.
- LAC-Tech 3y agoIndeed, it's the same word! In the ancestor language of both English and German (and also Dutch, Low German, and many others) it's been reconstructed as "þū".
- amelius 3y agoWhat is the ancestor language, and how do you pronounce þū?
- pvg 3y agoproto-West Germanic by current thinking (at least, by Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languages#Validity_of_West_Germanic_as_a_subgroup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languages#Validi...
- hinkley 3y agoFor flowery speech we escalate to sentence fragments. Your Grace, Your Eminence, Madam President, Your Honor. Or honorifics in front of or around proper names, like Mister Rogers, Doctor House, Nurse Ratched (anarchic now, the doctors have one that PR campaign) or “General Granger, Sir”. There are some parliamentary ones that pretty much only show on in Congress and on CSPAN.
- verditelabs 3y agoIn 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 greeting _and_ an inquiry, so in some cases it's redundant, and others it isn't, depending on the listener.
- lokar 3y agoSee also: yinz
- lstamour 3y agoThat’s interesting. As a non-Texan, I’d assumed that since y’all is a contraction that it would signify a more casual tone in the same way that “He’ll” is less formal than “He will”, etc.
- J_Shelby_J 3y agoY’all is a perfectly cromulent gender neutral way to address a group of people in a professional setting.
- lupusreal 3y agoIf you're not Southern and/or an AAVE speaker, then saying yall is cringe.
- bxparks 3y agoWait, wat? I always thought that "y'all" was a contraction of "you all", so meant the "plural you" instead of the "singular you".
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoI think you have to say “all y’all” for the plural.
- jesprenj 3y agoSlovene has three levels of politeness: * ti (second person singular) * vi (second person plural) * oni (third person plural) -- archaic
- dkga 3y agoIt’s just like Southwestern Brazilian Portuguese uses “você” as the informal second person singular, while ironically the origin of this word is the formal version of this pronoun. Currently the formal second person singular is actually a third-person pronoun, “o senhor” or “a senhora” depending on the gender. Although there is incredible differences in how the formal/informal pronouns are applied: in my family we were taught to only use the informal with everybody no matter what, and in some of my friends’ families the practice is to use the formal even when addressing one’s parents.
- whynotmaybe 3y agoThere must be some links between French and English where in French, the formal version is "vous" which sounds like "you" and the informal is "toi" which maybe sounded like "thou" in the past. (The 'th' has no equivalent in French)
- retrac 3y agoYes. The tu and thou pronouns are related. So are me and moi, nos and ours. In Hindi me and you are mai and tu. In Russian they are menya and tubya. (Sorry for errors in transliteration.). English I and Fench je are related too. Old English ich and Latin ego make the link more obvious. Pronouns tend to be some of the most fixed words in a language, up there with numbers and basic words like for "water" or "mother". They undergo sound change, and shifts like how English lost thou, but they are almost never replaced wholesale. All those languages are in fact descended from a common language spoken several thousand years ago. About half of the world today speaks a language in the Indo-European language family.
- nicole_express 3y agoThe English T-V distinction seems to have originated after the Norman Conquest, where French became the language of the aristocracy; wouldn't be surprised if that was exactly the source.
- rahen 3y agoFrench and English coexisted as neighbor languages for more than a millenium, so there are a lot of both subtle and obvious similarities between the two.
- madhadron 3y agoThat's because they're very closely related languages. English is a mix of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, after the Norman invasion of England in the 11th century. Norman French is how the Norse diaspora in Normandy mixed their Germanic tongue with the local dialects of Latin. And the Romance and Germanic languages are both pretty closely related branches of Indo-European, which is also a pretty narrow language family to start with. For example, 'tu' from French comes from mixing Norse 'du' with Latin 'tuus'...both of which come from deeper roots. Proto Indo-European reconstructs this as 'tuH'.
- ashton314 3y agoThere’s a part in Hamlet where Claudius (Hamlet’s uncle, the one who killed Hamlet’s father and married his mother Gertrude and became king) tells Gertrude, “go talk to your son” after Hamlet angers him. Note that it’s not “our son” or even “thy son”—the choice of “you” here is really biting once you know the distinction.
- slyall 3y agoThere is a scene in The Lord of the Rings (Book) where Éowyn switches to using "thou" and "thee" when begging Aragorn to take her with him when he takes the Paths of the Dead. If you don't know (as I didn't for a long time) that she has switched to intimate/informal language then the scene has less impact. Especially since Aragorn keeps things formal in his reply. http://coco.raceme.org/literature/lordoftherings/returnking/quotes/eowyn.php http://coco.raceme.org/literature/lordoftherings/returnking/...
- calvinmorrison 3y agoAlso see, the sun also rises because hemmingway transliterated a ton of Spanish, including thees, thous, some colloquialisms
- panarky 3y agoYou might be thinking of Hemingway's novelization of his experience supporting antifascists in the Spanish Civil War, "For Whom the Bell Tolls". He uses "thee" and "thou" to simulate the informal Spanish "tú".
- calvinmorrison 3y agoYes. That is the one! Good to read both
- retrac 3y agoThis is a very common misinterpretation. A major factor behind such misinterpretation is probably the King James Bible. It heavily influences our sense of style even today. God is traditionally addressed with thou due to the intimate relationship, and today this is often misinterpreted as formal style. E.g. > Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
- entuno 3y agoThis is very noticeable in the Athrabeth, where Finrod switches between "you" and "thou" when talking to Andreth throughout the conversation. Tolkien also talks in Appendix F of The Return of the King about how hobbits had largely lost the distinction between "you" and "thou" - so when Pippin speaks to Denethor in Minas Tirith and addresses him with the familial term, people assume that he must be royalty himself to address the Steward in such an informal manner.
- huytersd 3y ago“Tum” for you in Hindi when you’re informal/talking to a peer. “Aap” for formal/elder/respected person.
- LAC-Tech 3y agoJust looked it up. Looks like Tum comes from the same root as English "you". Guess a few millennia can do crazy things.
- hilbert42 3y agoAfterthought: the post below illustrates the paucity of modern English in that nowadays in modern English no distinction is made between the second and third person 'you' whereas in other languages such as German it still is. __ I've mentioned on HN previously when discussing languages that when my father was learning German his old textbook had the English thee, thou, and thine/thy as the second person for the German second person du. One of the faux pas for English speakers when learning German is the incorrect usage of du. They mistakenly use du instead of sie because it's more informal than sie not realizing that in German it is reserved for the closest of relationships such as family, lovers etc. Essentially, in German du — the equivalent form of the second person English thou — is still a part of the living language whereas in English thou is now archaic. The correct usage of du became immediately obvious to me after seeing my father's textbook. For the life of me I cannot understand why modern English textbooks simply substitute you for du, it's just crazy as it leads to much confusion. Thou and variants are understood by most native English speakers even if the term is now archaic so it makes sense to use it instead of you in textbooks for learning German. Just one additional paragraph would be needed to explain and clean up the you/du mess. I have been trying for years to find out why the authors of modern (current) textbooks now use you instead of thou. I'd be most grateful if someone who knows the rationale behind it would post the reason. Incidentally, my father's textbook was published sometime around 1930, so this you substitution is a relatively recent phenomena.
- baxtr 3y agoI've heard that “Sie Asshole” is the proper way to insult someone while staying polite.
- atoav 3y ago"Sie Arschloch" is funny in that it highlights that one: 1. has enough manners to not call people you don't know "du" (and you are not letting emotionality override those manners) 2. yet you know that person well enough to judge their behaviour and call them out as an asshole It is a bit like punching someone with velvet gloves.
- biztos 3y ago
- mgaunard 3y agoyou is the formal version.
- mewpmewp2 3y agoI'm from a country where there is a different version and I hate it because it makes me overthink every time about which one is appropriate to use now with people I don't know. Maybe I should completely ditch it, and use the informal one with everyone new, just with the hopes of building immediate rapport. I must not be the only one to hate it, and surely those people who would mind me using the informal one are not worth my time in the first place. Luckily we don't have gendered pronouns though, so we can avoid that problem altogether. I think in the end best and most scalable language is the one that avoids having any implications in the "you" or "pronouns". We are all humans after all.
- NewsyHacker 3y agoIf 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 distinction, too, and I don't like strangers addressing me with the informal just like that. Every sociolinguistic setting is different, but using just the informal might not automatically create rapport but the opposite. Saying people like myself aren't worth your time sounds like sour grapes, and it might rob you of some opportunities.
- mewpmewp2 3y agoI had a psychologist diagnose me, and I was almost on the spectrum according to the test (with points), but not quite to give me the diagnosis. Obviously the questionnaires are ambiguous with their questions enough to have so many different ways of interpreting the questions that to me makes many of those questions non-sensical in the first place. But actually, I have been to mental institutions multiple times, and in many cases the evaluators have mentioned "autistic tendencies". In the end - am I on the spectrum? I don't know, but I still would feel like I would benefit from it if I would just try to make a joke and then become warm and call them with the informal and singular "you" in my language. I hope it could show that we are all in this together.
- wmil 3y agoThese days, thanks to streamers, some of the young'uns have started using "chat" as a fourth person plural pronoun.
- easton 3y agoMaybe I’m getting old, but I don’t understand how you could use chat in real life without it being a joke. (Or maybe I’m being whooshed)
- shafyy 3y agoAlso interesting: Apparently, "they" started being used as singular long "you" for singular: https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/singular-nonbinary-they https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/singular-nonbinary-...
- dang 3y agoRelated: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7215834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7215834 - Feb 2014 (193 comments)
- snidane 3y agoAs 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 want to keep a perception of superiority to you for eg. being older, more tenured, etc. Often you'd rather choose not to even engage in a conversation and just keep your thoughts to yourself. Better than ending up in a inferior position when choosing the safe V, or risking insulting someone when using the informal T form. This felt to me like one of the reasons why English became the dominant language for business over time. Together with simplified morphology (you only need to learn the plural by adding 's' at the end, vs. 5+ other tenses of each word) it just ended up being much easier to pick up and less risky to engage in conversations and therefore higher chances of adoption by non-speakers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction
- mytailorisrich 3y agoEnglish 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.
- softfalcon 3y agoYeah, I feel like people forget about that whole British Imperialism thing too easily. We all speak English because at one point the English practically owned the entire planet.
- junofan 3y agoThe competition was very aggressive, escalating into several Anglo-Dutch wars. The VOC absolutely outcompeted the EIC most of the time. How do you explain the staying power of English given that “imperialism” is the more appropriate context, not “British Imperialism”?
- partiallypro 3y agoI'm trying to learn German and though it's probably frowned upon, I would prefer to just use "Sie" for everything because it's less to remember and just simplifies so many things. I wonder if my ancestors had the same thoughts, which is how the formal "You" just took over as the only thing we really use in English.
- scotty79 3y agoIt's weird how plural form is seen as polite. Maybe it was because if you were meeting unknown person you might verbally assume they are a part of some group. Either to put them at ease so they know they are not perceived as lonely prey or to safeguard yourself by communicating that you are aware and prepared that more of them might be hiding in the bushes.
- flint 3y agoI'm gonna use this: "Thou art a jammy bugger!"
- lordnacho 3y agoWhat a lovely Christmas present. I did not think I would ever write anything that ended up on the top of HN.
- mmaunder 3y agoGreat question.
- jaspax 3y agoI'm the author of the top answer, and I believe that this is the top-voted thing that I ever posted on any StackExchange site. It was a lovely surprise to see it here today, and I hope that everyone else enjoyed reading it. Merry Christmas!
- lordnacho 3y agoEvery few weeks or so the last decade, someone has upvoted the question. Always interesting to see the difference between this question and essentially everything else I've ever written. Thanks for the answer btw, it was enlightening. I can't help but remember the first lines in my mind each time I get the upvote notification ("Drumroll... !").
- peter303 3y agoOf course. You was formal while thou was informal.
- astrea 3y agoI think about what’s discussed often as it relates to euphemisms. For example, exonyms for minorities or disabled people changes all the time. My theory is that euphemisms are “disposable” in that they start “clean” with no external meaning or definition and therefore can’t be perceived as negative. Over time, it absorbs meaning and context and eventually it becomes as “dirty” as word it supplanted and the cycle continues.
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoHuh, so there is precedent for the singular “they.”
- jon_richards 3y agoI’d hardly say this is “precedent” for something that’s been done since the beginning of the language. (The Canterbury Tales are generally considered the threshold between old and modern English and they use singular “they”.)
- mise_en_place 3y agoHindi has 3: aap, tum, and tu.
- verisimi 3y agoThe formal thing is the lesser issue in my view. The larger issue, is the lack of distinction between the singular and plural - 'you' stands in for both.
- poszlem 3y agoThis is kind of interesting when you think of what would happen if someone decided to "impose" the use of "you" instead of "thou". In English it happened organically. Take communist Poland, for example. The ruling party was all about changing how people talked, pushing words like "comrade" and all. But their attempt to make people use the plural form for a single person totally backfired (as did the use of "comrade"). It felt so out of place that when communism fell, the old way of speaking came roaring back and the distinction between "thou" and "you" is now stronger than ever before. Just goes to show, some things you just shouldn't be forced. Language change is definitely one of those things. Makes me wonder in what interesting ways the current wave of English language manipulation (neo-pronouns, "blocklists" etc.) will backfire.
- rekoros 3y agoI grew up in the Soviet Union, and once when I was being particularly terrible my mom informed me that English-speaking children are probably much better, and that they even address their parents as вы (you-polite).
- mderazon 3y agoI am learning European Portuguese, which very much still has formal vs informal and interestingly, using Você (formal singular second person) can actually be insulting, as I think it means you think the other person is old. So they drop the Você but still use the formal verb conjugation. Navigating cultural language rules can be hard...
- Tommstein 3y agoNot somewhere I would've ever expected to run into Peter Shor (of Shor's algorithm; one of the highlighted comments on the top answer).
- tus666 3y agoImagine a language with an entire system of honorific speech required when speaking to one's superiors. Oh wait...they already exist.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago> This explains a peculiarity of traditional Quaker speech, which one often hears in films set in the early Americas. The Quakers opposed making any distinctions of rank, so they insisted on addressing everyone as thou, not as you. The irony is that today we perceive thou to be archaic and formal, while the original intent is to be more informal. In german, the distinction between formal and informal address is disappearing into the informal address. It's interesting that the Quakers also tried this, but that in english (the first language were this distinction disappeared?) it ultimatly disappeared into the formal address.
- pictureofabear 3y agoI feel like the word "sir" has also been gradually sliding into informality as well.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoI wonder if it in part has to do with English's overall status as a "second class" or even "lower class" language even in its own native land during the years after the Norman invasion. Up until a certain point the aristocracy spoke mostly Norman French, and even after they switched to English they did so with a form heavily filled with French loans and written with French-derived orthography. What I mean to say is, if the language is on the whole not the language of the nobility, even the formal pronouns would not be perceived as elevated, really. If you really wanted to impress, you'd switch to French (or even Latin, etc.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- largbae 3y agoThee? Thou must assuredly have encountered thine pronoun in formal works before...
- Daub 3y ago'Thou' was used to refer to someone of a lower social rank and also to indicate intimacy or familiarity. AFAIK 'thee' was used in a similar way. In some parts of the UK, thou is still used. Certainly I have been addressed in this way in the past.
- chaorace 3y agoReminds me of the Japanese pronoun 君 (pronounced "ki-mi"). The nuance is surprisingly similar (appropriate for lovers & underlings, almost never strangers), cultural & geographical gaps notwithstanding. Makes you wonder what kind of wires must get crossed in the human id for intimate pronouns to function this way.
- meepmorp 3y agoThou and thee are the same pronouns in different cases - like I/me, she/her, we/us, they/them. Thou seest me, I see thee.
- wkat4242 3y agoI thought "you" was the formal version and "thou" was informal. Didn't read the article though. No time right now but I'll do so later. I'm happy more languages drop this formal stuff though. In Dutch it's also pretty uncommon now to say "U". And I like it. In fact it used to be much worse, when I was young every agenda came with a whole page of formal verbiage for people of different roles (like ministers, judges and other officials). I don't think anyone uses that stuff anymore.
- InCityDreams 3y ago"Where hast tha bin since ah saw thee....?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8MWb1FlODQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8MWb1FlODQ
- adamkochanowicz 3y agoKnowing that "you" is the formal and "thou" is the informal is hard to grasp. I can't imagine saying "f--- thou, buddy!"
- xerox13ster 3y agoSure, of course that's weird. You'd say "thou ought know thyself".
- bradley13 3y agoIn German, we have the formal "Sie" and the informal "du". The formal means of address is dying incredibly fast. It's been a huge change just in the past 10 years or so. I'm not a linguist, but I'm pretty sure this is due to the influence of English, which is everywhere. Just as an example: as a gray-haired professor, I use "du" and my first name with my students. I may be an outlier in my generation, but that is entirely normal for younger colleagues. 10 years ago, that would have been...strange. 20 years ago, it was unheard of.
- boernard 3y agoI think English definitely has it's influence but I think another big factor is the general idea that this hierarchic thinking just gets outdated and younger Germans strive to have a sense of equality.
- MandieD 3y agoI used “Sie” with my now mother- and father-in-law until the first time I visited them after we got engaged and my mother-in-law brought out a bottle of sparkling wine and asked if we could be on “du” terms. That was when I started using their first names. That was in 2008, and was, from what I gather, already rather old-fashioned. It was common enough in the past that there’s a verb for it that my mother-in-law used when making the offer: duzen.
- Tistron 3y ago317 comments, and nobody pointing out that the comments on the accepted answer has a comment by the Peter Shor.
- DeathArrow 3y agoThe more complex a language is the easier is to express complex ideas. Imagine a language with just two words. Can you think or say anything in it? Sure, but it isn't going to be easy.
- the_omegist 3y agoOn a side note, I always thought the absence of "formal you" made english-speaking countries more laid-back. This is usually a good thing, because it makes ideas and information circulate more smoothly. But like everything, it has some drawbacks : the constant need to level everything and to some kind of hypocrisy. I have nothing to back my intuition on, just some Sapir-Whorfish reasoning...
- rand1239 3y agoThere is no you. It's just an illusion in consciousness. Disagree? Try to find and locate the you in the next 5 mins. There are only sensations, images, thoughts and sound which rises and go in consciousness. No you. Unless a thought comes and says thats you. But it's again just a thought.
- davzie 3y agoOnly the formless.