Thou

Starting in the 1300s, thou and thee were used to express familiarity, formality, or contempt, for addressing strangers, superiors, or inferiors, or in situations when indicating singularity to avoid confusion was needed; concurrently, the plural forms, ye and you, began to also be used for singular: typically for addressing rulers, superiors, equals, inferiors, parents, younger persons, and significant others.

Many dialects have compensated for the lack of a singular/plural distinction caused by the disappearance of thou and ye through the creation of new plural pronouns or pronominals, such as yinz, yous[6] and y'all or the colloquial you guys ("you lot" in England).

from -es to modern English -est, which took place separately at around the same time in the closely related German and West Frisian languages, is understood to be caused by an assimilation of the consonant of the pronoun, which often followed the verb.

[citation needed] Thou originates from Old English þū, and ultimately via Grimm's law from the Proto-Indo-European *tu, with the expected Germanic vowel lengthening in accented monosyllabic words with an open syllable.

Thou is therefore cognate with Icelandic and Old Norse þú, German and Continental Scandinavian du, Latin and all major Romance languages, Irish, Kurdish, Lithuanian and Latvian tu or tú, Greek σύ (sy), Slavic ты / ty or ти / ti, Armenian դու (dow/du), Hindi तू (tū), Bengali: তুই (tui), Persian تُو (to) and Sanskrit त्वम् (tvam).

[3] 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.

[citation needed] Fairly suddenly in the 17th century, thou began to decline in the standard language (that is, particularly in and around London), often regarded as impolite or ambiguous in terms of politeness.

It persisted, sometimes in an altered form, particularly in regional dialects of England and Scotland farther from London,[4] as well as in the language of such religious groups as the Society of Friends.

However, Samuel Johnson himself was born and raised not in the south of England, but in the West Midlands (specifically, Lichfield, Staffordshire), where the usage of thou persists until the present day (see below), so it is not surprising that he would consider it entirely ordinary and describe it as such.

[16] Thou persisted in a number of religious, literary and regional contexts, and those pockets of continued use of the pronoun tended to undermine the obsolescence of 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 sociocultural elements of Early Modern English texts, such as many character interactions in Shakespeare's plays, which were mostly written from 1589 to 1613.

Although Shakespeare is far from consistent in his writings, his characters primarily tend to use thou (rather than you) when addressing another who is a social subordinate, a close friend or family member, or a hated wrongdoer.

[17] Many European languages contain verbs meaning "to address with the informal pronoun", such as German duzen, French tutoyer, Spanish tutear and vosear, Swedish dua, Dutch jijen en jouen, Ukrainian тикати (tykaty), Russian тыкать (tykat'), Polish tykać, Romanian tutui, Hungarian tegezni, Finnish sinutella, etc.

A formerly common refrain in Yorkshire dialect for admonishing children who misused the familiar form was: And similar in Lancashire dialect: Many conservative Christians use "Thee, Thou, Thy and Thine when addressing God" in prayer; in the Plymouth Brethren catechism Gathering Unto His Name, Norman Crawford explains the practice:[5] The English language does contain reverential and respectful forms of the second person pronoun which allow us to show reverence in speaking to God.

[19][20][21] As William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in the early 16th century, he preserved the singular and plural distinctions that he found in his Hebrew and Greek originals.

This was done to preserve the tone, at once intimate and reverent, that would be familiar to those who knew the King James Version and read the Psalms and similar text in devotional use.

[25] The 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is still an authorized form of worship in the Church of England and much of the Anglican Communion, also uses the word thou to refer to the singular second person.

[28] This was started at the beginning of the Quaker movement by George Fox, who called it "plain speaking", as an attempt to preserve the egalitarian familiarity associated with the pronoun.

Except where everyday use survives in some regions of England,[37] the air of informal familiarity once suggested by the use of thou has disappeared; it is used often for the opposite effect with 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,[38] a skylark,[39] Achilles,[40] and even The Mighty Thor.

In Diana Ross's song, "Upside Down", (written by Chic's Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards) there is the lyric "Respectfully I say to thee I'm aware that you're cheatin'."

[45] In traditional dialects, thou is used in the English counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, Durham, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, and some western parts of Nottinghamshire.

[46] The Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects, which began in 1968,[47] found that thou persisted in scattered sites across Clwyd, Dyfed, Powys, and West Glamorgan.

[48] Such dialects normally also preserve distinct verb forms for the singular second person: for example, thee coost (standard English: you could, archaic: thou couldst), in northern Staffordshire.

[49] In Lancashire and West Yorkshire, ta [tə] was used as an unstressed shortening of thou, which can be found in the song "On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at", although K.M.

The word "thou" has been reported in the North Northern Scots Cromarty dialect as being in common use in the first half of the 20th century and by the time of its extinction only in occasional use.