Thou

For other uses, see Thou (disambiguation).

Most modern English speakers think of "thou" as a relic of Shakespeare's day.

The word thou (pronounced IPA [ðaʊ]) was a second person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in almost all contexts by "you". Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee (functioning as both accusative and dative), and the possessive is thy or thine. Almost all verbs following thou have the endings -st or -est; e.g., "thou goest". In Middle English, thou was sometimes abbreviated by putting a small "u" over the letter thorn: .

Originally, thou was simply the singular counterpart to the plural pronoun ye, derived from an ancient Indo-European root. In imitation of continental practice, thou was later used to express intimacy, familiarity, or even disrespect while another pronoun, you, the oblique/objective form of ye, was used for formal circumstances (see T-V distinction). After thou fell out of fashion, it was primarily retained in fixed ritual settings, so that for some speakers, it came to connote solemnity or even formality. Thou persists, sometimes in altered form, in regional dialects of England and Scotland. In standard modern English, however, thou continues to be used only in religious contexts, in literature that seeks to capture an archaic sense of formality, and in certain fixed phrases such as "holier than thou" and "fare thee well". The disappearance of the singular-plural distinction has been compensated for through the use of neologisms in various dialects. Colloquial American English, for example, contains plural constructions that vary regionally, including y'all, youse, and you guys.

Grammar

Because thou has passed out of common use, its traditional forms are often confused by those attempting to imitate older manners of speech.

Declension

When thou was in common use, personal pronouns had standardized declension according to the following table.

		Nominative	Objective	Genitive	Possessive
1st Person	singular	I	me	my / mine1	mine
	plural	we	us	our	ours
2nd Person	singular informal	thou	thee	thy / thine1	thine
	plural or formal singular	ye	you	your	yours
......	..	...	..	......
3rd Person	singular	he / she / it	him / her / it	his / her / his (its)2	his / hers / his (its)2
	plural	they	them	their	theirs

¹ In a deliberately archaic style, the forms with /n/ are used before words beginning with a vowel sound (thine eyes). This practice is irregularly followed in the King James Bible, and may have emerged as a later nicety. Otherwise, thy and thine correspond with my and mine; that is, the first is attributive (my/thy goods), and the second predicative (they are mine/thine).

² In the early Middle English period, his was the possessive of it as well as of he. Later, the neologism its became common. Both can be found in the 1611 King James Bible.

Conjugation

Verb forms used after thou generally end in -st or -est in the indicative mood in both the present and the past tenses. These forms are used for both strong and weak verbs:

Typical examples of the standard present and past tense forms follow. The e in the ending is optional; early English spelling had not yet been standardized. In verse, the choice about whether to use the e often depended upon considerations of meter.

• to know: thou knowest, thou knewest
• to drive: thou drivest, thou drovest
• to make: thou makest, thou madest
• to love: thou lovest, thou lovedest

A few verbs have irregular thou forms:

• to be: thou art (or thou beest), thou wast (or thou wert; originally thou were)
• to have: thou hast, thou hadst
• to do: thou dost /dʌst/ (or thou doest, in non-auxiliary use) and thou didst
• shall: thou shalt
• will: thou wilt

The second- and third-person singular verb endings derive from the Indo-European "s" and "t" (cf. Russian знаешь, znayesh, you know; знает, znayet, he knows). The resemblance between the verb forms of English and those of the closely related German and Frisian languages is apparent, as the following table demonstrates. The three languages belong to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages, of which Frisian is the closest to English.

Comparison

Early Modern English	Modern Frisian	Modern German	Modern English
Thou hast	Do hast	Du hast	You have
She hath	Sy hat	Sie hat	She has
What hast thou?	Wat hasto?	Was hast du?	What do you have?
What hath she?	Wat hat sy?	Was hat sie?	What does she have?
Thou goest	Do giest	Du gehst	You go
Thou dost	Do dochst	Du tust	You do
Thou be'st (variant of art)	Do bist	Du bist	You are

In the subjunctive and imperative moods, the ending in -(e)st is dropped, although it is generally retained in thou wert, the second-person singular past subjunctive of the verb "to be". The subjunctive forms are used when a statement is doubtful or contrary to fact; As such, they frequently occur after "if" and the poetic "and".

If thou be Johan, I tell it thee, right with a good advice . . .;

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart . . .

I do wish thou wert a dog, that I might love thee something . . .

And thou bring Alexander and his paramour before the Emperor, I'll be Actaeon . . .

O WERT thou in the cauld blast, . . . I'd shelter thee . . .

Some later authors use thou be'st or thou best as a subjunctive, which is contrary to the Middle English usage:

If thou be'st born to strange sights . . . (John Donne);

If thou best a miller . . . thou art doubly a thief. (Sir Walter Scott)

In modern regional English dialects that use thou or some variant, it often takes the third person form of the verb -s. This comes from a merging of Early Modern English 2nd person singular ending -st and third person singular ending -s into -s.

Etymology

Thou originates from Old English þú, and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European *tu, with the expected Germanic vowel lengthening in open syllables. Thou is therefore cognate with Icelandic and Old Norse þú, Latin, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, Irish, Lithuanian tu, Latvian, Spanish, and Romanian tu or tú, modern German, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish du, Greek σύ (su), Serbo-Croatian ti, Russian ты (ty), Slovak ty, Slovenian ti, Armenian դու (dow), Hindi, Persian تُو (to), and Sanskrit tvam. A cognate form of this pronoun exists in almost every other Indo-European language.

History

In Old English, thou was governed by a fairly simple rule: thou addressed one person, and ye more than one. After the Norman Conquest, which marks the beginning of the French vocabulary influence that characterized the Middle English period, thou was gradually replaced by the plural ye as the form of address for a superior and later for an equal. For a long time, however, thou remained the most common form for addressing an inferior.

The practice of matching singular and plural forms with informal and formal connotations is called the T-V distinction, and in English is largely due to the influence of French. This began with the practice of addressing kings and other aristocrats in the plural. Eventually, this was generalized, as in French, to address any social superior or stranger with a plural pronoun, which was felt to be more polite. In French, tu was eventually considered either intimate or condescending (and, to a stranger, potentially insulting), while the plural form vous was reserved and formal.

In the 18th century, Samuel Johnson, in A Grammar of the English Tongue, wrote: "...in the language of ceremony... the second person plural is used for the second person singular...", implying that the second person singular was still in everyday use. By contrast, The Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage says that for most speakers of southern British English, thou had fallen out of everyday use, even in familiar speech, by sometime around 1650. Thou persisted in a number of religious, literary, and regional contexts, and those pockets of continued use of the pronoun tended to undermine the T-V distinction.

One notable consequence of the decline in use of the second person singular pronouns thou, thy, and thee is the obfuscation of certain elements of Early Modern English texts, such as many character interactions in Shakespeare's plays. In Richard III, for instance, the conversation between The Duke of Clarence and the two murderers takes on a very different tone if it is read in light of the social connotations of the pronouns used by the characters.

Use as a verb

Many Indo-European languages contain verbs meaning "to address with the informal pronoun", such as the German duzen, the French tutoyer and the Spanish tutear. Although uncommon in English, the usage did appear, such as at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603, when Sir Edward Coke, prosecuting for the Crown, reportedly sought to insult Raleigh by saying,

I thou thee, thou traitor! here using thou as a verb meaning "to call thou". Although the practice never took root in standard English, it occurs in dialectal speech in the north of England. A formerly common refrain in Yorkshire, which admonished overly familiar children, declared:

Don't thee tha them as thas thee!

Religious uses

As William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in the early 1500s, he sought to preserve the singular and plural distinctions that he found in his Hebrew and Greek originals. Therefore, he consistently used thou for the singular and ye for the plural regardless of the relative status of the speaker and the addressee. By doing so, he probably saved thou from utter obscurity, and gave it an air of solemnity that sharply distinguished it from its French counterpart. Tyndale's usage was imitated in the King James Bible, and remained familiar because of that translation.

The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which first appeared in 1946, retained the pronoun thou exclusively to address God, using you in other places. This was done to preserve a reverent tone that would be familiar to those who read the Psalms and similar text in devotional use. The New American Standard Bible (1971) made the same decision, but the revision of 1995 (New American Standard Bible, Updated edition) reversed it. The New Revised Standard Version (1989) omits thou entirely, and notes that it is incongruous and contrary to the original intent of the use of thou in Bible translation to adopt a distinctive pronoun to address the Deity. When referring to God, "thou" is often capitalized.

Quakers formerly used thee as an ordinary pronoun; the stereotype has them saying thee for both nominative and accusative cases. This was started by George Fox at the beginning of the Quaker movement as an attempt to preserve the egalitarian familiarity associated with the pronoun, who called it "plain speaking". Most Quakers have abandoned this usage. At its beginning, the Quaker movement was particularly strong in the northwestern areas of England, and particularly in the north Midlands area. The preservation of thee in Quaker speech may relate to this history. Modern Quakers who choose to use this manner of "plain speaking" often use the "thee" form without any corresponding change in verb form, for example, is thee or were thee.

More recently, the philosopher Martin Buber has been translated into English as using the words I and Thou to describe our ideal familiar relationship with the Deity. Most languages which maintain both a formal and familiar second person pronoun address God with the familiar pronoun, since its usage derives from older times when the distinction between the pronouns was in number only, not in degree of familiarity. Because in current English usage, thou is perceived as more reserved and formal than you, the translation does not convey the intended meaning well.

Literary uses

Shakespeare

William Shakespeare occasionally seems to use thou in the intimate, French style sense, but he is by no means consistent in using the word that way, and friends and lovers call each other ye or you as often as they call each other thou. In Henry IV, Shakespeare has Falstaff mix up the two forms speaking to Prince Henry, the heir apparent and Falstaff's commanding officer, in the same lines of dialogue. It might be said here that the Prince combined the roles of prince and drinking companion:

PRINCE: Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldest truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? …

FALSTAFF: Indeed, you come near me now, Hal … And, I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art a king, as God save thy Grace – Majesty, I should say; for grace thou wilt have none –

More recent uses

Except where everyday use survives in some regions of England, the air of informal familiarity once suggested by the use of thou has disappeared; it is used in solemn ritual occasions, in readings from the King James Bible, in Shakespeare, and in formal literary compositions that intentionally seek to echo these older styles. Since becoming obsolete in most dialects of spoken English, it has nevertheless been used by more recent writers to address exalted beings such as God, a skylark, Achilles, and even The Mighty Thor. In Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader, speaking to the Emperor, says, "What is thy bidding, master?" These recent uses of the pronoun suggest something far removed from intimate familiarity or condescension, while they could be seen as mirroring the mode of address used with the Deity in the Bible as discussed above.

Most modern writers have no experience using thou in daily speech; they are therefore vulnerable to what prescriptive grammarians call solecism through the misuse of the traditional verb forms. The most common mistake in artificially archaic modern writing is the use of the old third person singular ending -eth with thou, for example thou thinketh. The converse—the use of the second person singular ending -est for the third person—also occurs ("So sayest Thor!"—spoken by Thor). This usage often shows up in modern parody and pastiche. The forms thou and thee are often transposed (as in Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose).

Some translators render the T-V distinction in English with "thou" and "you", particularly in places where you appears in the place of expected thou, or vice versa. This practice has largely fallen out of use. Ernest Hemingway, in his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, uses the forms "thou" and "you" in order to reflect the relationships between his Spanish-speaking characters.

Thou is also sometime used in Metallica's songs; for example, the song "Of Wolf And Man" contains the phrase "Seek the wolf in thyself". Fantasy role-playing games also make frequent use of the word.

In their latest album, Manowar, uses ye, and thee. An excerpt from the song Hymn Of The Immortal Warriors goes: "Take thy shield, take thy sword, all thy weapons to the sky/Ye shall need them, when Odin bid thee rise..."

Thou is often falsely interpreted as having been formal; its use today can give an impression of stiltedness. In reading passages with thou and thee, many modern readers stress the pronouns and the verb endings. Traditionally, however, the e in -est ought to be obscure, and thou and thee should be no more stressed than you.

Current usage

You is now the standard English second-person pronoun, and encompasses both the singular and plural senses. In some dialects, however, "thou" has persisted, and in others the vacuum created by the loss of a distinction has led to the creation of new forms of the second-person plural. The forms vary across the English-speaking world.

British Isles

Persistence of second-person singular

In Modern English, a T-V distinction persists in the traditional dialects of Cumbria, Durham, North and West Yorkshire, parts of South Yorkshire, the West Midlands, and South West England. Such dialects normally also preserve distinct verb forms for the singular second person, for example thee coost (standard English: you could, archaic: thou couldest) in northern Staffordshire. Throughout rural Yorkshire, the old distinction between nominative and objective is preserved. The possessive is often written as thy in local dialect writings, but is pronounced as an unstressed tha, and the possessive form of tha has in modern usage almost exclusively followed other English dialects in becoming yours or the local word your'n (from your one):

		Nominative	Objective	Genitive	Possessive
2nd Person	singular	tha	thee	thy (tha)	yours / your'n

The apparent incongruity between the archaic nominative, objective and genitive forms of this pronoun on the one hand and the modern possessive form on the other may be a signal that the linguistic drift of Yorkshire dialect is causing tha to fall into disuse; however, a measure of local pride in the dialect may be counteracting this. In Sheffield, the pronunciation of the word was somewhere inbetween a /d/ and a /th/ sound, with the tongue at the bottom of the mouth; this led to the nickname of the "dee-dahs" for Sheffield folk, although it is now rare to hear such speech in the city.

Thoo has also been used in the Orcadian Scots dialect in place of the singular informal thou.

Neologisms for second-person plural

In the dialect of English spoken in Northern Ireland, yous or yousuns is frequently heard for the informal nominative plural and accusative plural, while either your or yousuns is the possessive adjective.

• Have yousuns heard the racket your dog is making?! (Very informal speech)

• Have yous heard the racket yousuns' dog is making?! (Very informal speech)

• Have youse heard the racket your dog is making?! (Ordinary speech, most dialects)

• Have you heard the racket your dog is making?! (Formal speech; ordinary speech in some dialects)

The case is similar in Scotland, where youse (and most often written with that spelling) is used in informal speech in some southern Scottish dialects.

In much of provincial Ireland ye or yez is used as the nominative and accusative plural with yeer as the possessive. In Dublin, youse is used in the nominative and accusative plural.

North America

In the American South, y'all is a widely accepted form of 2nd person plural. In rural Appalachia, yenz and yunz are common in casual speech. In Pennsylvania, you'uns or yinz is sometimes used around Pittsburgh. In the north, yous, youse, or you guys is sometimes used, especially in much of lower Michigan and around New York, though in New York, "youse guys/youse guys's" are more common objective and possessive forms. These usages may be the American variants of British coinages noted above. You guys is widespread throughout English-speaking North America as a means of indicating the plural (this term is used to address both men and women). However, these grammatical expressions are considered colloquialisms and are not used in formal speech or writing. The table below shows standardised 2nd person pronouns of today, with informal regional usage shown in brackets.

		Nominative	Accusative	Genitive/Possessive
2nd Person	singular	You	You	Your / Yours
	plural	You [Y'all, Yenz, Yous, Yinz, You guys, Yous guys]	you [Y'all, yunz, yous, yinz, you guys]	Your / Yours [Y'all's, Yunz', Youses, Yinz's, You guys', Yous guys']

See also

• T-V distinction
• Archaism
• English personal pronouns

References

• Baugh, Albert C., and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language, 5th ed. ISBN 0-13-015166-1
• Burrow, J. A., Turville-Petre, Thorlac. A Book of Middle English. ISBN 0-631-19353-7
• Daniel, David. The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. ISBN 0-300-09930-4.
• Shorrocks, Graham. "Case Assignment in Simple and Coordinate Constructions in Present-Day English." American Speech, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Winter, 1992).
• Smith, Jeremy. A Historical Study of English: Form, Function, and Change. ISBN 0-415-13272-X
• "Thou, pers. pron., 2nd sing." Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989). [2].
• Trudgill, Peter. (1999) Blackwell Publishing. Dialects of England. ISBN 0-631-21815-7

Bibliography

• Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English by Katie Wales (Author) ISBN 0-521-47102-8

External links

• A Grammar of the English Tongue by Samuel Johnson - includes description of 18th century use of thou
• Contemporary use of thou in Yorkshire
• Thou: The Maven's Word of the Day
• You/Thou in Shakespeare's Work (archived forum discussion)
• A Note on Shakespeare's Grammar by Seamus Cooney