Thou
|
Most modern English speakers think of "thou" as a relic of Shakespeare's day |
The word
thou (pronounced
IPA ) is a
second person singular pronoun of the
English language.
Thou is the
nominative case form; the
oblique/
objective (functioning as both
accusative and
dative) is
thee, and the
genitive is
thy or
thine.
In standard
modern English thou is little used. It continues to be used only in certain contexts:
*In some regional dialects of
England or
Scotland (sometimes spelt
tha or
thoo to represent
dialectal
pronunciation).
*In some religious contexts (often capitalized when referring to
God).
*In certain fixed phrases, e.g. "holier than thou", "fare thee well".
*By
Quakers.
*As an
archaism.
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
Latin,
French,
Spanish,
Catalan,
Italian,
Irish,
Lithuanian,
Latvian,
Portuguese, and
Romanian tu or
tú, modern
German,
Norwegian,
Swedish and
Danish du,
Greek σύ,
Russian ты (ty),
Slovenian ti,
Armenian դու,
Hindi,
Persian تُو (to), and
Sanskrit tvam. A cognate form of this pronoun exists in almost every other Indo-European language.
[Entries for thou and tu, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language]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; it 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 genitive case of it as well as 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:
Examples (infinitive, present, past)
to know,
thou knowest,
thou knew(e)stto drive,
thou drivest,
thou drovestto make,
thou makest,
thou madestto love,
thou lovest,
thou loved(e)stThe
es enclosed in parentheses are optional; this was typical of early English spelling which had not yet been standardized.
A few verbs have irregular
thou forms:
to be,
thou art,
thou wast (or
thou wert; originally
thou were)
to have,
thou hast,
thou hadstto do,
thou dost (or
thou doest, in non-
auxiliary use) and
thou didstshall,
thou shaltwill,
thou wiltMost of these verb forms are very similar or identical to
German and
Frisian (which is considered one of the closest languages to English) conjugations, e.g.:
| Middle English | Frisian | German | Dutch | Modern English |
|---|
| Thou hast | Do hast | Du hast | Jij hebt | You have |
| Thou goest | Do giest | Du gehst | Jij gaat | You go |
| Thou dost | Do dochst | Du tust | Jij doet | You do |
| Thou be'st (variant of art) | Do bist | Du bist | Jij bent | You are |
| She hath | Sy hat | Sie hat | Zij heeft | She has |
| What hast thou? | Wat hasto? | Was hast du? | Wat heb je? | What do you have? |
| What hath she? | Wat hat sy? | Was hat sie? | Wat heeft zij? | What does she have? |
These endings are related to the Indo-European "s" and "t". (Cf. Russian знаешь,
znayesh, you know; знает,
znayet, he knows)
The endings in
-(e)st are omitted as usual in the
subjunctive and
imperative moods, except that
thou wert is used in the past tense of the subjunctive:
If thou be Johan, I tell it thee, right with a good advice . . .;
[Middle English carol: ]
If thou be Johan, I tell it the
Ryght with a good aduyce
Thou may be glad Johan to be
It is a name of pryce.
:Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart . . .
[Eleanor Hull, Be Thou My Vision, 1912 translation of traditional Irish hymn, Rob tu mo bhoile, a Comdi cride.]:I do wish thou wert a dog, that I might love thee something . . .
[Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, act IV, scene 3.]Some later authors use
thou be'st or
thou best as a subjunctive, which is contrary to
Middle English usage. Traditionally, the subjunctive is
be, without any verb ending:
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
-th into
-s.
Before the
Norman Conquest,
thou was governed by a fairly simple rule. It did not differ in usage from
ye/
you;
thou addressed a single person,
ye more than one. Due to influence from other European languages, the plural
you was thought for a time to be more respectful and formal than singular
thou; the perceived abruptness of
thou curtailed its use. For most contemporary English users,
thou now carries an almost exactly opposite
connotation of solemn formality:
thou is still sometimes used in ritual, to address the Deity, in older literature, and in recent texts that imitate older styles.
The T-V distinction in English
From French, English acquired the habit 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, it came to pass that
tu was intimate, condescending, and to a stranger potentially insulting, while the plural form
vous was reserved and formal. In languages that use pronouns this way, it is called the
T-V distinction.
Something of this did appear in English. At the trial of Sir
Walter Raleigh in 1603, Sir
Edward Coke, prosecuting for the Crown, reportedly sought to insult Raleigh by saying,
I thou thee, thou traitor![Reported, among many other places, in H. L. Mencken, The American Language (1921), ch. 9, ss. 4., "The pronoun".[1]]here using
thou as a verb meaning "to call thou". However, the practice never took root in standard English the way it did in French (cf. the French verb
tutoyer or German
duzen or Spanish
tutear). However, there are examples of this practice in dialectal speech in the north of England. A formerly common refrain in Yorkshire to young, overly familiar, children was,
Don't thee tha them as thas thee!In the
18th century,
Samuel Johnson, in his
A Grammar of the English Tongue, wrote: "...in the language of ceremony... the second person plural is used for the second person singular..." For most speakers of southern British English,
thou had fallen out of everyday use, even in familiar speech, by approximately the year
1650.
[Entry for thou in The Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage.] 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.
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.
[David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography. (Yale, 1995) ISBN 0300068808. See also David Daniell, The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. (Yale, 2003) ISBN 0300099304.] 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.
[Preface to the Revised Standard Version 1971] 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.
[NRSV: To the Reader] Quakers formerly used
thee as an ordinary pronoun; the stereotype has them saying
thee for both nominative and accusative cases.
[See, for example, The Quaker Widow by Bayard Taylor] 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"; it was not heard that way, and seemed instead to be an affected attempt at speaking like the King James Bible. 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.
[David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford, 1991). ISBN 0195069056]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
Thou in 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 [Psalm 90 from the Revised Standard Version], a
skylark [Ode to a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley],
Achilles [The Iliad, translated by E. H. Blakeney, 1921], and even
The Mighty Thor [The Mighty Thor 528]. 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.
Most modern writers have no experience using
thou in daily speech; they are therefore vulnerable to what would originally have been considered
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 also occurs, using the second person singular ending
-est for the third person ("So sayest Thor!" — spoken by Thor). This usage often shows up in modern
parody and
pastiche.
[See, for example, Rob Liefeld, "Awaken the Thunder" (Marvel Comics, Avengers, vol. 2, issue 1, cover date Nov. 1996, part of the Heroes Reborn storyline.)] The forms
thou and
thee are often transposed (as in
Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose).
Thou is also 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.
After the 2nd person singular forms "thou, thee, thy/thine" passed out of use in other parts of the English-speaking world, "you", previously a 2nd person plural pronoun, became the accepted standard for both the singular and plural forms. However, it eventually became evident that there was still a need for distinction between the two forms. This failing has caused different regions of the world to create their own form of 2nd person plural by morphological analogy.
British Isles
Persistence of second person singular
In Modern English in some parts of northern England,
tha is still used as a familiar pronoun in everyday speech. In particular throughout rural
Yorkshire, the old distinction between Nominative and Objective is preserved. Genitive 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 | | 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.
Thoo has also been used in the Orcadian Dialect in place of the singular informal
thou.
Neologisms for second person plural
In dialect of English spoken in Northern Ireland,
yous or
yousuns is frequently heard for the informal nominative plural and accusative plural, whilst either
your or
yousuns' is the possessive adjective. However, it is rare and would sound odd to hear the same form repeated with a different meaning within the same sentence.
e.g. Have yousuns heard the racket your dog is making?! (Very informal speech)
e.g. Have yous heard the racket yousuns' dog is making?! (Very informal speech)
e.g. Have youse heard the racket your dog is making?! (Ordinary speech, most dialects)
e.g. Have you heard the racket your dog is making?! (Formal speech, Ordinary speech in some dialects)
The case is similar in Scotland, with
youse (and most often written with that spelling) being widely recognized as the plural.
In much of provincial
Ireland ye 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 southern states of the US,
y'all is a widely accepted form of 2nd person plural. In the
Midwest,
you'uns or
yinz is sometimes used, especially around
Pittsburgh. In the north,
yous or
youse (i.e.
youse guys) is sometimes used, especially around
New York. 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 | Objective | Possessive | | singular | You | You | Your / Yours |
|---|
|''plural| You [Y'all, Yous, Yinz] | You [Y'all, Yous, Yinz] | Your / Yours [Y'all's, Youses, Yinz's] |
*
T-V distinction*
Archaism*
English personal pronouns*Burrow, J. A., Turville-Petre, Thorlac.
A Book of Middle English. ISBN 0631193537
*Daniel, David.
The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. ISBN 0300099304.
*Smith, Jeremy.
A Historical Study of English: Form, Function, and Change. ISBN 041513272X
*Trudgill, Peter. (1999) Blackwell Publishing.
Dialects of England. ISBN 0631218157
Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English by Katie Wales (Author) ISBN 0521471028
*
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
