The Disappearance (and Survival) of 'Thou'
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- Опубліковано 22 вер 2024
- Blake, N. The Cambridge History of the English Language Vol II. 1992.
A Devonshire dialogue: archive.org/de...
Another bit of Devonshire dialect: archive.org/de...
The paper on the County Durham court transcripts: www.jstor.org/...
The 1920s source on 'thee' in quaker speech: www.jstor.org/...
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This channel's Patreon (thank you very much to anybody who donates): / simonroper
Very interesting, just wanted to point out that in NYorkshire & Teesside the following joke is still a thing:
"Where's the bin?"
"Oh, nowhere really, just the pub. Where's thou been?"
👍
😂
As a Canadian taught French from a young age, it blew my mind when I realized that "thou" was the English analogue to "tu", because the "thou became too informal or rude to ever use" theory also occurred to me then, and it struck me as a hilarious reversal that, in modern times, thee and thou are considered extremely formal or reverent entirely because the only places a modern English speaker is exposed to them are Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
Exactly. I can recall living in France and reading a bible in French for the first time, amazed to see God being referred to in the familiar form tu. From the English one had always assumed thou must be deferential, turns out to be the opposite.
That's exactly right. I can attest that from my own religious experience in my youth.
In German, God is also addressed informally with "Du"
In the King James Bible and older hymns and prayers, 'thee' and 'thou' were deliberately used in the informal, familial, sense to address the Lord as a father, but the retention of this language today is intended in a reverent sense. One of those reversals that often happens in speech over time.
@@andreasmetzger7619 italian too
I'm a Ph.D in English Medieval History...and I deeply appreciate your videos. You delve into subjects I wish I had the time to do so. Thank you for your scolarship.
What subjects do you delve into and is your delving publicly accessible in some form or other?
If you're in the process of taking, or have already taken, a PhD in English medieval history, I'm not sure what excuse you have for not having 'delved into' a subject of such fundamental importance thus far. It's a bit pathetic really.
@@patavinity1262 Are you always so harshly judgmental or do you reserve it strictly for time spent in UA-cam comment sections?
@@sarahbailey6723 I don't think the word 'judgmental' is very meaningful in this sense. If you mean to ask whether I'm always so critical or disparaging, I suppose that would differ depending on the context and my mood. I hope that satisfies your curiosity?
@@patavinity1262 My curiosity is rarely satisfied, but that isn’t your fault.
I suspect that were he to have earned a PhD in the history of Medieval English rather than English Medieval history, it would likely have come up, but for all I know his dissertation was on the fastenings of trebuchets or something equally esoteric and having little to do with language.
I’m glad you view this to be of fundamental importance, but in the grand scheme of things (while I do find it to be interesting) I’m not sure that it is.
And if your comment was actually meant ironically, I’m sorry that I missed it.
I’m a roofer in the West Country and some of the old lads still say thou and thine. “ ‘aand me thine ‘ammer” is a something I hear every day. They also say “hark” for listen, call birds of prey raptors, say “where be to?” (Where are you) every time I call them on my phone. They say “cassent” instead of can’t sometimes which is a really odd one.
I think "cassent" is from "canst not", ie cannot.
My Mum was working a nurse in East Devon in the 1980s and she nursed patients - often farming folk - who still used thee, thy and thou. There’s also the Devon dialect word ‘thikky’ which means ‘that’ and is still used by a handful the older generation.
In William Barnes' poetry in Dorset dialect you find "thik" which is used for "that" when referring to a countable noun
"we'll goo to vell thik tree down leäter on theäse a'ternoon"
"We'll go to fell that tree down later on this afternoon".
thicky or thiggy is still used by my husband who is a broad Devon speaker. so many other words too!
Funny enough, many of my older relatives think of (and use) Thee and Thou as the more formal version, because they belong an orthodox Protestant church that still uses the King James Bible. They equate the words to be more "holy" or solemn I guess, kind of the exact opposite of the Quaker approach. I once tried to explain the irony of it to them, but they weren't having any of that, especially from a kid :)
Your older relatives sound based
That was not the opposite of the Quaker approach, that was the Quaker approach. They thought themselves better than the rest of us, they still do. When they went on about "God's Elect" they meant themselves and f*** the rest of you
Same. Thickheaded family😅don't tell them the name "Lucifer" in Isaiah is talking abt the king of Babylon and not Satan (the passage talks about how the king, a man, shall die)
The translators of the first English Bible Wycliffe uses thee and thou when God is speaking to us, because God is speaking to His children, so He would uses the informal forms of second person pronoun. But this fact may have been lost to some of the Christians, but not all. I read the KJV, even though some phrases maybe hard to understand, but it's not difficult just to take a few minutes to look up what it means. Also, to memorize verses in KJV is always more beautiful.
@@gsmiro Same -- I find reading KJV similar to reading Shakespeare. It takes some extra effort, but it is easy to get used to, and it adds richness to the experience.
I made it one of my life goals to bring back thou. I've made zero progress whatsoever, but the hope is still alive.
'Tis a worthy goal thou hast.
Just read the KJV ad nauseam, 😛 thou shalt speak like that henceforth!
Yes thou canst!
I have often thought that if, say a rapper from Yorkshire, came out with 'olde English' lyrics, it would catch on, as in the film Clockwork Orange.
I'm american and I use thee/thy with my little children, my parents used it with me, but I usually say 'thee is' 'thee was' instead of 'thou art'. Go for it THEE, nothing's stopping thee from saying it!
In my wife's Derbyshire dialect (sadly dying out) they still use a modified form of thou. Nom and Acc are both "thee" which is almost the same as modern RPA "they" - with a hint of the vowel sound in "eye". Unstressed Acc thee is "thi" which rhymes with "this" without the final s. If one enquires after someone's health, the phrase is "Aah dust thi seem in thi sen?" = How do you seem in yourself? (Seem is midway between "same" and the vowel sound in "chime".)
One day my father-in-law watched me trying to clean out a sheep shed and remarked "If ah wuh thee ah wunna dow it." (If I were you I wouldn't do it.) "Dow" is midway between RPA "dough" and initial diphthong sound of RPA vowel in "cut".
Interesting. I am from NE Leicestershire and I would have easily understood what was said. Maybe it is an East Midlands thing?
It is used almost the same in Potteries. Derby and Stoke dialects are very similar (me duck/duck) anyway and mutually intelligible with a few vowel-shifts and different rhythms to them. It no longer has a "Talking down" sense and a person addressing you with thou derivatives implicitly invites you to reciprocate. It generally means mutual trust or someone about to ask for a favour.
That is utterly delightful
Joyous Monkey
All of that is very like the everyday language of my Yorkshire grandparents.
The language you describe is very similar if not the same to what my Grandparents used in South Yorkshire.
Sorry to hear about the plague. Hope you mend quickly! Stay well, Simon!
My husband got covid just before christmas 2020. It affected his sense of smell and taste and he only recently declared that everything seems to be back to normal again. My point is, don't be too alarmed if your changed sense of taste persists for a long while. It can still get back to normal even after longer than a year.
Get well soon. Love the video, as usual!
Thank you for the warning :) It seems to have mostly gone back to normal, luckily. I'm glad to hear your husband's smelling normally again!
It can get worse before it gets better. For me, strong smells like mint were simply dull for 1.5 years, then suddenly onions smelled like cat pee.
It seems as though many post-Covid symptoms do go away with time. My sense of balance was compromised for about two months after my bout with Covid- I couldn't walk in a straight line with my eyes closed for the longest time. But I've got it back again. Patience.
@@simonroper9218 Hubby went back to his usual smelly self again. Thank god for that!
My great-great grandmother was born in the 1860s in rural Newfoundland, she lived into the 1950s and I was told that she used "thee" and "thou" in everyday speech. She would have been descended from West Country English immigrants from the late1700s, I believe.
There is a common belief in the UK that thou and thee forms are still being actively used in remote pockets of the countryside in northern England, but I don't think that is actually true anymore, and perhaps only used among very elderly people, as in people around 95 years old and up.
@@elimalinsky7069 I would disagree with you, in my experience (obviously anecdotally) tha/thi are still used by many people in Yorkshire especially when speaking with other locals
I’m from Oldham and I grew up using “tha”/“thee” & which I guess is a variant of “thou”. I like it more than “you”, it sounds more natural and friendly. I like the way “me” and “thee” feel together, closer than “me “ and “you”, they feel like they jar together
I agree with thee
Funny how in America, where it was never widely used outside of the Bible and Shakespeare, it is often seen as something very stiff and formal, like knights in fantasy throwing around thous and thees while commoners talk like random people from the 20th century (or some horrible "Cockney" eye dialect).
@@tankermottind interesting. In England I would say it’s a thing only “commoners” would ever say, and then only working class people from some areas of the country. To me ears it sounds about as informal as English can sound
@@tankermottind Do we know how English colonists in America spole in the first half of the 17th century? If the thou-form was then still in use in England, it was likely in the English colonies in North America, too.
A total stranger on a train said to me the other day "I'm wasn't talking to you" meaning they were talking to someone but it wasn't me. I thought it sounded a bit rude to just use the word "you" in that way and wished another word existed for it.
i'm a Quaker in the US. i was excited to hear you mention plain speech, which is now far from plain with respect to its social context! i have never personally met any Friend who still practices it. several of my elder Friends who attended meetings during their upbringings have attested that they knew people who did. the practices of each individual meeting can vary widely, so i get the sense that it primarily persists in regions like Pennsylvania where Quaker roots run deeper into the past. i am also not well-traveled, so my sample size consists only of 3 different weekly meetings and 2 different yearly meetings. (most meetinghouses are associated with a yearly meeting that convenes several individual meetings together.) the practice of plain speech is very common in our historical literature, so it's great to hear such an informed explanation on the linguistics of thou and thee! i'm sorry to hear of your bout with COVID. i hope you recover quickly. to use a Friendly expression, i will hold you in the Light, Simon!
My father attended a Quaker school (Penn Charter) in the 1920s, and apparently some of the adults used "thee".
See my response that I just posted - I used thee with my family only growing up. Now my daughter uses you for singular and y'all for plural, which is the modern version that has evolved to fill the need.
@@glypnir I've also taken to a singular "you", and plural "y'all". The fact that some people are starting to use "y'all" as singular is an abomination.
@@MCLooyverse I read somewhere that "y'all" is singular, and "all y'all" is plural.
My experiences as an English Quaker correspond - I've not encountered anybody using thou/thee/thy - nor to my knowledge to any English Quakers refer to first-day, second-day etc.
My grandad, born 1906 and raised in Sheffield, said his parents (born in the 1880s) used 'thou' and 'thee'. My mother (born 1934) also remembered her grandparents arguing, using 'thee'. And prawn cocktail crisps are always disgusting. Get well soon.
I am originally from Doncaster and regularly heard locals use thee, thou and thy (possessive) in everyday speech. I worked with Sheffield natives 20 or 30 years ago and they used thee, thou and tha but the words thee and tha often sounded more like dee and da.
My dad grew up in Staffordshire and was born near there (actually in Derby hospital!) in 1948 but he doesn’t use these words. I’ve long been familiar with 2 phrases he taught me though:- “Thi cosna/cossnt/conna kick a bo agin a wo and yed it wi yed till thi bosses it” (you can’t kick a ball against a wall and head it with your head till you bust/burst it) and “thi conna tell me oat abaht eet cuz thi dunna know’st oat thisen”(you can’t tell me anything about it because you don’t know anything yourself). You’re wrong about prawn cocktail crisps though 🤤
I'm from Sheffield and use thee , tha , and much less thine , it is disappearing fast though
@@overlordnat As an American, I’m intrigued by the thought of prawn cocktail crisps.
Do they taste only of prawn, or also of sauce? We have a red tangy sauce here that we call cocktail sauce, but I have no idea if that’s a point of pan-Atlantic agreement. (In the US, there is no biscuit/cookie distinction. Yes, we’re savages, all of us. 🙃)
Are these crisps potato-based or is some other food the main ingredient?
Is the hue of the tasty dust sprinkled upon these crisps bright or subdued?
A biscuit is a big round muffin made of bread. As in: I bought a McDonalds biscuit sandwich
There's a fun but in Moby Dick where our man Ishmael is talking to the Quaker owners of the whaling ship and he mimicks them saying thee/ thou. They stare at him not sure if he's mocking
The 1980 song Upside Down by Diana Ross features her singing "I say to thee respectfully". 😊
The most honest, no-bullshit channel on UA-cam. Can't get enough.
In Thomas Hardy’s under the greenwood tree, a girl getting married admonishes her father not to use the word “thou” at her wedding because it is old fashioned. Maybe in some contexts, the language was actively changed by a younger generation.
I thee my father sometimes, I'm not too religious but he understands it from a religious perspective and HE HATES IT... therefore I logically keep thee'ing him. I guess it's my way of jabbing his ribs and playing with him?
I've read that book and wondered if Simon would mention that. Does seem that shaming speakers was part of the reason for change at least at a later date. Not sure if it was so much that she was younger though but more that she was educated and embarrassed at her father seeming uncouth? I could be wrong however or maybe it more-or-less amounts to the same thing?
Maybe of interest, there is also an example of language shaming in The Mayor of Casterbridge where the 'trumped up' mayor chastises his daughter for saying "bide where you be".
How great thou art.
Just discovered your channel Simon, wanted to comment on thee/thou. I'm a Black Country wench by upbringing and we still used thee and thou until the 70s: however that seemed to disappear with the advent of mass media, TV and radio. I moved to Barnsley in 1988 and lived there until 1999, and thee/thou was still in everyday usage then. Even now when I go back up there, my friends use them in my presence, things like "wass thaaaa wan?" (what do you want) and of course "Naaa den dee" (now then you).
The loss of the thou/thee/ye/you distinction is one of English's greatest pities in my judgement. I vote we bring it back.
If you mean the distinction between singular and plural in the second person, I 💯 agree with you. However, if you mean the T-V distinction, I strongly disagree; I very much appreciate the egalitarianism of English pronouns.
@@cogitoergosum9069 Addressing a single person with "you" is T-V distinction.
@@c.norbertneumann4986 No, a T-V distinction is the use of a different set of pronouns to convey formality/politeness/familiarity (e.g. Spanish _usted_ vs _tú_ and _ustedes_ vs _vosotros_ ).
@@cogitoergosum9069 Technically, usted derives from a Late Latin honorific title, vostra merces - grammatically third person, treated like 2nd person. I get your point, just wanted to add that since it was a different development.
@@cogitoergosum9069 Using thou then you would be easier and simpler than saying you then- you all, yous, you guys, y'all, etc. So clumsy. 😖
My dad is from West Yorkshire and only once in my life (when he was talking to his sister) did I hear him say "me and thee" instead of "we". It was in an affectionate context and I think he just slipped into a bit of dialect.
I'm american and I occasionally say "me and thee", it's a more cheeky way of saying "you and I"
You omit the usage of 'ee, as in "I'll give 'ee some advice". There are several expressions in the Birmingham and Black Country areas that still use "thee", as in "I'll see thee anon".
Those areas also frequently use "her" instead of "she", as in "Her was goin' home", which I see as a throwback to "heo".
Correct me if I am wrong, however I believe that She developed directly from Hēo. Hēo became something Hyo or Hye (like in hue) and then Hy became Sh. Which gives us She. Her on the other hand came from Heora, which was the dative and genitive form of Hēo. I could be wrong, but this is the theory that makes the most sense to me.
I can’t say I’ve heard “I’ll see thee anon” in Birmingham, not unless consciously used in a joking mock-Shakespearean way of course.
@@evan7391 I agree. I think the use of "her" in Brummy as the subject, rather than "she", comes from "heo", whereas "her" used correctly by those same people as the object, comes from "heora". In effect, they have two words now, both spelt "her".
@@overlordnat I don't know how old you are, but I've noticed that the Brummy accent has changed and smoothed out a lot compared to how my grandparents' generation, born in the 1880s, spoke. You don't here thick Brummy nowadays, probably because, as a giant conurbation, Birmingham has attracted people from other areas.
@@alanfbrookes9771 I was born in 1984, so maybe not old enough. My nan’s in her 90s and says ‘brock-you-low’ instead of ‘broccoli’ and I thought it was just a strange habit of hers but I did hear one other old Brummie on an episode on ‘Come Dine With Me’ say it in the same way, so it might be a nearly obsolete dialect pronunciation. Have you ever heard ‘broccoli’ said that way?
As others have commented, Shetland dialect still commonly uses du, dee, dy, dine. In Orkney when I was a child in the 1970s I remember my father (born 1925) and his relatives from one of the smaller islands all using thoo, thee, thine, but only when speaking among themselves. He never spoke to me or anyone else like that, nor did my mother (from a rural parish on the mainland (i.e. main island)) speak like that, and people in Kirkwall, the county town, did not speak like that either.
Hello from Texas. Thank You Simon. Speedy recovery to be able to enjoy your crisps.
In an early scene in “The Philadelphia Story,” James Stewart’s character finds himself being thee’d and thou’d by a suburban librarian. (Pennsylvania was famously settled by Quakers, among others.) To which he responded, “Dost thou have a washroom?”
I hope thou shalt be fully recovered soon, Simon.
I hope your illness passes easily. And here in the US, Quakers still use Thou and occasionally Thee.
I am 62 now and my father was Quaker. In the late 70's I visited a friend's family in Indiana. They were all Quakers, indeed most of the town was. They still used the thee form within the family and the town. It was used in both nominative and accusative; "is thee going to the store?" was a question I heard. However they used the you form with people not part of the Society of Friends. I found it interesting that something that had been originally intended to make everyone equal had evolved away from that.
My Grandmother was from Ashton under Lyne in what was then Lancashire, born in 1914. Thou evolved into tha and she used it and thee until the end of her life in 1991. Examples "tha'd better get going or tha'll be late" or "where's tha been".
Thee tended to be used in words like "thee-sel" for yourself (thi-sen in Yorkshire).
I still use both occasionally as do many here in Manchester. Certainly those in Lancashire towns
Oh yeah, other uses of thee still in use "I'll give thee a crack" "Is thee reet" (are you alright). "I'll see thee" (see you later).
My family is from Yorkshire and we say thi-sen a lot to each other as well as both thou and tha depending on context example thou art a jammy buggar.
@@anglosaxon4571 I've heard that. In Lancashire "thou is" is shortened to "tha's". Another classic Manchester/Lancashire phrase "Tha'd never stop a pig in a ginnel" meaning someone was bandy legged
@@anglosaxon4571 My favourite Yorkshire saying:
Hear all, see all, say nowt.
Eat all, sup all, pay nowt.
And if ever thou does owt for nowt
Make sure thou does it for thi-sen
my Granddad was born in Brierfield, near Burnley in the mid 1940s and he says things like "tha'll be late" or "where's tha been". He also says "coat" like "coit" and "cook, book and look" sound like the name "Luke". I'm a Londoner born and bred so, I could never tell whether it was "put on" or whether that's just how his generation sounded.
Fascinating. Can confirm that in the Dales an old boy, perhaps now only in drink, might say "if thou has any more pups out of that dog of thine, I want one". Or "hast tha' done it?"would still be commonly said
I think he would say "I want yan"😀
Simon mentions Jacques Bellot's "Familiar dialogues" (1586). The book was written to teach Huguenot refugees from France everyday English. This book includes a dialogue between three schoolchildren and their nanny before they go to school. In this dialog, they constantly address each other with "you", and not a single time with "thou". This seems to give evidence that "thou" had completely fallen out of use at the end of the 16th century, even within the family and among children. The book was directed to adult refugees who didn't go to school any more. Those refugees were to be taught how to have conversation with native adults, for example when shopping at the market. In such situations, it was obligatory to use the polite you-form. When at home, the Huguenot refugees would have spoken among each other (and to their children) in French language. Maybe Bellot considered it abundant to teach the French refugees the thou-form which they wouldn't use at all anyway. This does not necessarily mean the fiorm didn't exist any more in spoken contemporary English.
P.S.: By the way, it is very interesting to read Bellot's dialogues, since Bellot transcribes the written English into a pronounced form. So we get a picture of English pronunciation in London in 1586. For example, the pronunciation of the sentence "Peter, where layde you your nightcap?" is denounced: "Piter, houer led you yor neict kep". This shows that the "h" in "where" was still spoken at the beginning of the word, as was the case with the gh-sound in "night". The diphtong in "night" was pronounced else than it is today. To form questions with"to do" as auxiliary verb was not obligatory yet.
In Shetland we have _du_ /du/ and _dee_ /di/ which both hold strong today even for younger speakers in the country. We have the _I spaek/du spaeks/you spaek/(he/shø/it/hit) spaeks_ inflection as well.
Much appreciated, great video! Feel better.
Hi Simon, I can confirm that in Durham, "thou" is still used. Interestingly you will also hear it as "thous" meaning, "you have". Additionally, on Wearside "ye" is still used for "you". Something to look into?
I worked in Sunderland (North Hylton area but that's irrelevant) some 50 years ago. Even though I lived no more than 20 miles south of there, I had some problems understanding people speaking socially among themselves. I kept hearing the phrase "thoos mak'n gam" and in the end I had to admit defeat and ask what it was. It was "You're making game" (you're pulling my leg).
What percentage of people use those words?
I'm from the West Riding. I'm only in my early twenties, but I still regularly use 'tha' and less often 'thee' in informal language. "How'st tha bin?" as opposed to "How have you been?" for instance. Or "Did I give it thee?" instead of "Did I give it to you?".
The words of the song in Yorkshire dialect, "On Ilka moor baht 'at' - ' Where hast tha bin sin I saw thee?'
I have no idea why, but I like just listening to you talk about random stuff, not even about languages etc
You have a fascination about you
What a lovely surprise to hear you mention Alex Turner in one of your videos!
I've always felt that he was a great writer and noticed certain slang or jargon in his songs which always intrigue.
Quite strange to have this small overlap in such strong interests of mine.
Hope you're enjoying the new single if you're a fan, Simon.
I'll never forget as a student teacher in 1980 I arrived at my first school placement in a village near Doncaster and a boy looking me up and down and asking 'Is tha a teacher?'
Just wonderful! I so enjoy your videos. Thank you.
Your videos are always so interesting. Keep up the good work!
As always, a fascinating video. I’ve always thought of "thee" and "thou" as just being the English version of "du" from German, but you’ve brilliantly shown how the path to "thee," "thou," and "you" is far more complicated. Great work!
I’ve been living in Sheffield for 15 years. At some point since moving here I have heard that people from surrounding towns such as Rotherham and Barnsley, refer to people from Sheffield as Dee-Dars. This is because they think people in Sheffield pronounce thee and tha as dee and da. If correct this does suggest a form of thou does still persist in South Yorkshire.
Interesting - my mother (from Kent) used to refer to people who were pretentious or putting on airs as "la di da". You make me think that the "di-da" must originally have been an imitative reference to their use of "thee-tha". But where would the "la" have come from?
@@PWFSeattle The etymology I once encountered was quite different: a variant on 'lardy-dardy', an example of reduplication, where the first word carries the meaning and the second just emphasises it with a rhyme. In this case 'lardy' is/was thought to be a corruption of 'lord(y)', which makes sense, given its connotations of upper-class poshness ... If you're not convinced by this super-duper explanation, try googling a better one!
As a native dutch speaker, I can‘t help but notice how similar the vowel qualities of the spoken voice recordings of the Orton survey seem to certain dutch dialects in the northeast of the netherlands. Really interesting!
Me too, I found them strikingly similar to Frisian mostly.
@@winifsan3873 I have read that Frisian and Northumbrian fishermen could still understand each other at a reasonable level at the close of the 19th century if they ever met over the Dogger Bank.
I am originally from Sheffield and my late mother (b. 1932) always used thee and tha in her daily speech. She was from a mining village just outside Sheffield. People still use thee and tha at football matches in their chants e.g "Tha's gonna get tha (expletive deleted) head kicked in!"
I'm american and I seem to speak thee in the same manner as the yorkshire people, "thee is" "thee was" not "thou art", but hearing yall say it, yall sound so different from us, I sometimes say to my little children "tha gotta get thy coat!", I don't think brits say "tha gotta", maybe "tha have got to"? Also "tha gotta" is said more like "tha godda" in the glorious ridiculous american pronunciation! hahahaha
@@douglascrystal3837 "Thas gorra get thee coat." Is how I'd have said it in North Sheffield as a kid. "Daz gorra get dee coaht" if more central Sheffield.
I got covid in July, after 2 years giving it the slip...during the bloody hottest temperatures I have ever known in the UK! I lost my sense of smell for 3 weeks and it was really disconcerting. It was like someone turned a dimmer switch right down in my nose/brain. Fortunately, no taste loss or change. The first 3-4 days were really horrible, feeling feverish. Get well soon Simon!
Thanks a lot for this wonderful video, I have been wondering about this for the longest time!
I also have to say that your choice of the background colour is amazing - beautiful light cocoa shade, very soothing.
After two years of evading the virus, I tested positive for it about a month and a half ago. I only had a fever and a nagging dry cough for a only few days, but I kept testing positive for two whole weeks afterwards. Quite stubborn that virus was for me, and I'm glad no senses were affected. Glad to hear you're on the mend!
13:20: little note here Simon, the form [ðɐː] as you write it (though I personally would write it [ða]) is used only in the West Riding of Yorkshire since West Riding speech is essentially Midlands speech that moved north and so doesn't have the largely unshifted realisation of the House vowel kept from Middle English like truly Northern dialects such as Cumbrian or the North and East Riding Yorkshire dialects.
To take the sentence at 13:13 to compare a "typical" version of North and West Yorkshire dialect it'd be written something like this in traditional orthography:
In WR speech: naa, yor top-stooans is t'stooans at tha can't wall i t'wall when tha's/th'art wallin up.
And in NR speech: noo, yor top-steeans is t'steeans at thoo can't wall when thoo's wallin up.
Another note is that h-dropping is systematic in West Riding dialect so "haase" would be /a:s/.
I refuse to call that English. It's not mutually intelligible with standard english.
@@highgroundproductions8590 On that basis, there's a hell of a lot of different languages in the world.
This is all correct, except that I'd query the reason for linking this to being "essentially Midlands speech". Does anywhere south of Cheshire use ða in its traditional dialects?
If you can understand it, then it’s the same language you speak
@@EdwardAveyard in Derbyshire dialect from Castleton area it'd be "nah, yor top-stooans is t'stooans as tha cosna waw when th'art wawin up"
In Stokie dialect: "nye, yor top-stones is th'stones as tha cosna wow when th'art wowin up"
Nice camera work! Good choice on the zoomed-in view ☺️ Interesting and informative/intriguing as ever
My South-West County Durham dialect still sometimes uses thou as in both "thoo" (as in flew) and "thow" (as in plough), which is used by my mother and was used by my grandparents, it's pretty much dead now outside of my nerdy way of wanting to keep it alive.
Excellent, Mr Roper. Get well soon.
Get well soon, glad to see another video!
Recently come back to your channel. Really happy :)
Could we have a video about when and how the 3rd-person conjugation of verbs changed from -eth to -s (e.g. "thinketh" to "thinks"), and why this happened?
I know nothing about Old English, but your delivery is fascinating
I'm exactly the same after being subscribed for a couple years 🤣
@@benkolya
Lol , you need a toddler head, they catch languages like a bro in few months.
You're an artist Simon. Really. You give me hope.
Thankyou for video, hope you feel better quickly
Thou (pronounced 'thoo') is still used in the north east around Chester-le-street and Durham by those (like my family) who were brought up hearing and speaking Pitmatic (the language of coal miners). "Thou'll get caad if thou diz'nt wear thee coat" ("you will catch cold if you don't wear your coat" - "thee" is a corruption of "thine", meaning "your")
Love your work, here on ThouTube. I've been collecting Pitmatic words and phrases in spreadsheet for years (since moving south), I'll share it with you if you're interested.
Hi, I'm from Chester-le-Street! We'd say things like, "Whey whe'll dee that like? Thou!?" ("Well who''ll do that then? You!?"), with the 'thou' pronounced something like 'thoow' where the vowel sound is somewhere between an 'e' and an 'o'. I'd be more likely to use 'divven't' than 'dizn't' in your example although I've definitely heard that used before, might be more of a Sunderland pronunciation?
@@gaz5048 hi Gaz. My family are just outside Ch-le-St. It constantly astounds me that there are so many hyper-local accents and dialects in that area. You can almost pinpoint the street someone grew up on by their speech.
My dad’s side of the family are from Annfield Plain, near Stanley, and they always used “thou”, and it pretty much rhymes with “you” - so not “thow” or “thooo”.
Fascinating video. My dad (1922-2014) (and his family from E. Yorks) all used "thee" and "thou" and "ye". As a Brit currently in Argentina using "vos" for you singular in Spanish it is fascinating to know that "vos" may have once been used in this way in England too!!
I hope you recover soon Simon! Great video as always ❤
I remember a man from Delabole, North Cornwall in the early 90s who would use 'thy' in place of 'thou' as part of his regular speach. He was around 65, I'd say, so probably born around 1926.
You have made a fantastic video regarding this. I am currently studying German (B2) and these topics make learning more fun, relatable and easier to remember. Thanks Simon!
Your vids are always interesting, keep them coming.
Thanks for the video Simon: 2nd-person pronoun evolution (or more specifically T-V distinctions) is one of my pet topics and I'm always happy when someone can teach me something I didn't know about it.
I'd say there's good reason to think that the singular form had come to be perceived as rude at least by some in 16th century London. In one of Erasmus' letters, he shares a story from a German doctor friend of his who'd lived and practiced in England. This doctor was confronting a prior patient who was refusing to pay him, clearly an educated patient since their conversation was in Latin. When the doctor got a bit worked up and addressed the patient as "tu" in Latin, the patient took offence and said, "Vah! Homo Germanus tuissas Anglum?" (Och! Thou, a German, thou Thou'st an Englishman?) Of course, that doesn't tell us anything about usage in English directly, but if this guy felt like the singular in Latin was some kind of grave insult, that might give us a hint as to how the difference between Thou and You was perceived at the time.
‘thi’ and ‘thi’ for ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ is the version that appears in broad Staffordshire dialect, as in the famous phrase:- “Thi cossn’t yed a bo agin a wo ‘n’ yed it wi’ yed till thi bosses it” which means “You can’t head a ball against a wall and head it with your head till you bust it”. See the following video for an example of such speech ua-cam.com/video/PyDmlhlQCu0/v-deo.html
Get well soon! I once ordered a pint of lager (!) in a pub on Flamborough Head in the early '80s. A local guy asked, "Tha's not gonna sup that, are tha?"
My dad, born in 1962 in Sutton, remembers thou and thee being used by many people during his childhood
Thank you Simon!
West Riding, late 20's; I don't have much of a Yorkshire accent due to my dad's side of the family moving around a lot (grandfather was RAF), and my mum being from Bucks, but there are bits of dialect that I use frequently, notably "tha" and "thi". Basically nominative and accusative "you". And I'm not the only one around this neck of the woods to do so.
Generally I only use them in informal speach, and not even all of the time, but they definately show up; off the top of my head, "tha's" in place of "you're" happens frequently in my informal speach, and "see you" become "si thi". Oh, and if someone says/does something dumb, my "you're having a laugh, aren't/ain't you" is frequently "tha's avin a laugh, in't thi".
So "thee" and "thou" are stil alive, even with younger generations, in some parts of the world.
I've recently been learning more about my own legacy dialect, Wiltshire English, and from the literature I've read it seems like thou/thee survived until very recently even here, though mostly with thee having supplanted the nominative form. I so wish I could have been alive to hear that part of the dialect!
I'm also aware that the traditional third person masculine pronoun was he/hin, not he/him. I think I might still occasionally hear that one, if only in reduced form (I saw them talkin' to 'n).
"it" was a 15th century innovation, apparently, and several dialects (including the West Country and my native Suffolk) knew nothing of it. In the West of England dialects (and no doubt elsewhere) the reduced 'accusative' case is /'un/ (from Middle English /hine/), as in "Give 'un yer".
@@anthonyhearn6886 they do you plonker, it's just that it is used only to refer to uncountable nouns, the masculine pronouns are used to refer to countable nouns. As such in Dorset dialect "the house be a-miade o' stwone -> "the house be a-miade o't" BUT "I picked the stwone up" -> "I picked en up".
"It" has cognates in other germanic languages away from Old English descendants, West Frisian "it", Dutch "het", German "es"... So to say it's a 15th century innovation is preposterous
@@Fenditokesdialect I think you misunderstand me. The neuter pronoun was uncommon and is possessive 'its' was the innovation ('his' until the 15th century). I am not sure 'plonker' is helpful!
@@anthonyhearn6886 but that's not the original meaning of the comment you gave, I'm aware of the formation from it+'s, in fact in a lot of Northern dialects where 's is optional its is reduced to it. In the Cumbrian poem Simon did a recording of you get the line "an' t'leet iv it' ee was green glentin low, iv it' ee we mud say for it nobbut hed yan"
I was always taught to use thou and thee when reciting the rosary, specifically the Hail Mary prayer.
Hail Mary full of grace
The Lord is with thee
Blessed art thou amongst women
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus
Holy Mary mother of God & etc.
Having retired to the Philippines I discovered English speakers here use some of the forms of thee and thou, but not others, so I have had several informal classes teaching fellow devotees the proper use of the grammar.
I find it interesting I am continuing the use of these archaic words.
I haven't gotten a single video notification from ur channel even though I've subscribed
wonderful - thank you!
Get well, sir, and thanks for the video!
I'm from rural Missouri, typically the only exposure we regularly have to Thou and Thee (other than Shakespeare) is the Bible. I'm frankly quite surprised to hear that they were still (and still may be) in use as recently as the 20th century. I often wonder how diverse the language will be a century from now. Always love your videos Simon, it's scholars such as yourself that really push forward the intrigue of science and history in our modern era
Great use of the camera, both in the scenery as well as you speaking.
Bristolians kept 'thou' forms till relatively recently. An elderly neighbour in Bedminster, 1970s, emphatically: "Move thy car!" Very typically and commonly between mates or friends:"See dee Sat'd'y, den." "Dee" (there) widely replaced "thou": "Wa's dee do that for?" It could also be omitted with the second person singular verb: "Wha'st fink of 'e, den?" Two or three young men in a pub also in the 1970s in Willsbridge (just outside Bristol) we're the last of a younger generation I heard using 'thee".
I'm from Pudsey in Yorkshire and when my Dad was an apprentice in the early 1950s he was told off by his boss for being too familiar with his superior/elder..
"Don't thee thou me lad", he was told!
Love the channel.
Cheers
Hello from something like 8000 km away Simon! UA-cam every now and then will recommend me gems, one of which has been your channel. Having subbed and watched a few of your videos now, I am hooked. I wish you continued health and well-being, if only so we can continue to get videos. I joke! Best
I found this a very interesting post. In Afrikaans we have an interesting situation where both the Germanic/European forms (the equivalents of “thou” and “you” or the French “tu” and “vous”) co-exist with an influence from South-East Asian languages: that the designation can function as a pronoun. So, in highly formal/archaic language, one could say “Pa, weet u waar ma is?” (“Dad, do you know where mom is?”), in a more intermediate/contemporary Afrikaans “Pa, weet pa waar ma is?” (“Dad, does dad know where mom is?”), and in contemporary Afrikaans “Pa, weet jy waar ma is?” (“Dad, dost thou know where mom is?”). The first one is so dated no one would be likely to use it in an everyday situation, the last two are still very common. But the first two are falling away completely, because they have connotations of being used to show respect to an elder (and no-one wants to be marked as older anymore).
This video was incredible
Wonderful, thanks
Let's bring back thou! Thou for singular familiar, y'all for plural, and you for formal
Without thou and ye, we’ve actually made it more difficult to understand what we are saying having to use ‘you’.
Love all your yoitube teachings fella!. I lived in a place between sunderland and durham for a while. 'Thoo' and 'yay' ('a' like play in northern sound), were both the most common words for 'you'. 'Thine' means yours. Older people there say 'thou'. As well as many other older english/scottish pronunciations, or somewhere in between, still in use in informal conversation. Your lesson on ye and the recently, shed some light on the y and th sound interchanging. Hope you recover from covid quickly. I had the same taste issue with it at xmas, so stopped drinking pricy special beers until it started to fade away gradually around a month later. Looking forward to your next vid. Cheers!
wow, you have just dredged up a childhood memory of mine. Watching and reading this, I thought I had known some people who certainly said "thine" and mabye more others, but I couldn't place it. Now I have been struck by figurative lightning. They were an elderly group of people from Bishop Auckland.
@@flannerypedley840yes i'd expect they say that down in Bishop. I was raised 3 mile west of durham city and southern durham accents like bishop, sounded a tad Teesside or N. Yorkshire to me, though still using most of our more geordie slang words (though we have a very noticable difference (locally i guess) between us and newcastle for most pronunciations
Most informative as ever and at a difficult time, my best wishes for a speedy recovery
Thee and thou very common in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire back in the day, also "tha" as in "is tha reet", a sort of shortened thee. I also encountered the use of thine as in "is that mine or thine"
There’s also a theory out there that thou and thee fell out of favour thanks to urbanisation. As more people moved into large settlements in the high and late Middle Ages, it became less and less likely that you’d know every single person in your area personally, and so everyone just started to use you instead. It’s a similar idea to how people stated using hello as a way to avoid confusion over the phone as an alternative to “good morning” or “good evening”, but it then became the default.
I don’t know how truthful this idea is though. I’ve certainly not heard anyone mention it in a very long time, so whether it holds any water or not is beyond my knowledge.
It makes sense to me, similar situation happens in France and Spain, which use vous and usted respectively to in politeness, honorary contexts (though Spanish usted derives from an honorary title, not the 2nd plural pronoun vos)
This might have been a factor but I think there must have been more. The reason is that for the German language this did not happen although urbanization also happened. It still works the same way as Old English did and uses several different words where modern English is only using "you", for example "du" (thou) and "dich" (thee). These singular forms are used in every day German while 'sie' (a plural form) is used if you want to address someone in a polite way. Therefore when translating the first examples of the video "you see a sparrow" is "Du siehst einen Spatz" and "a sparrow sees you" is "Ein Spatz sieht dich". Also the 3rd form of the example still exist in German. "Hlewageastiz gives you an apple" is "Hlewageastiz gibt dir einen Apfel".
If just urbanization would have been the reason for this process in the English language then German would have lost these words too.
Londoners have taken it a stage further: they don't speak to strangers at all: or if they do, you have to wonder if they are a bit mad, or want to convert you to some weird cult. There's the single exception of "sorry" when you jostle someone or are jostled by them.
It takes time to adjust when you move back out of the city, and people you walk past on the way to the shops nod or say "Good Morning," and everyone thanks the driver as they get off the bus.
Really interesting - thanks very much! And hope you are feeling fully recovered soon😊
That thou art now of the opinion that prawn cocktail crisps are (indisputably) disgusting should render thee immensely grateful to the mild variant of an innocuous virus.
I've just discovered your channel, Simon, and I'm bingeing heavily.
Thank you.
I always enjoy your take on the evolution of words and phrases. Thank you, well done!
I'm so glad I stumbled across your videos again! I'll be subscribing this time so I won't miss out any more.
Thee and thou are still used in Shetland dialect (which is derived from the Anglian/Northumbrian form of middle English by way of 17th century Scots), however in Shetlandic the English/Scots "th" mutates to "d" making them "dee" and "du"
Get well, Simon!
Brilliant. Perfect summation.
That's very interesting. Could you also talk about words "frozen" in different cases (like who and whom) maybe even in other languages as well.
Good idea - 'two' vs Northern ' 'tway' might be good as an example, with German 'zwo' 'zwei' as a similar model.
-bury and -borough, mead and meadow
In German many place-names actuelly derive from "frozen" oblique cases
Near Vienna there's a mountain, called "Kahlenberg" (that's where Jan Sobieski ambushed the Turks who were besieging Vienna in 1683). The name stems from "kahl" ("bald") + Berg ("mountain") and "der kahle Berg" ("the bald mountain") could refer to any mountain which is "bald" (probably lacking tree-growth). To refer to *this particular* bald mountain both words were smashed together into one, just like in English "the black bird" may mean any bird that is black; but "the blackbird" is a quite specific species.... anyways...
But where does the 'n' in the middle come from, if it is "der kahle Berg". The explanation comes from the declension paradigm. It is...
der kahle Berg = the bald mountain
des kahlen Berges = of the bald mountain
(auf) dem kahlen Berg = (on/at) the bald mountain
An example in English for a noun whose modern version derives from an oblique case is "grave". The reason is quite similar to the German placenames. A grave (mostly) doesn't do anything and thus isn't the subject of a sentence. You may look up the word on "etymonline".
@@Galenus1234 the nominative and accusative of grave were the same in OE. This is not a good example.
Fascinated by the history of the English language! Wishing you a good recovery.....take good care of yourself!
Thank you for providing such interesting content. I hope you'll get better soon!