Most modern English speakers think of "thou" as a relic of
Shakespeare's day.
The word '''thou''' (pronounced
IPA ) 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.
[1] 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 "" and "". 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'' (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 . . .;
[2]
:Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart . . .
[3]
:I do wish thou wert a dog, that I might love thee something . . .
[4]
:And thou bring Alexander and his paramour before the Emperor, I'll be Actaeon . . .
[5]
:O WERT thou in the cauld blast, . . . I'd shelter thee . . .
[6]
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.
[7]
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.
[8] ''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.
[9]
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!''
[10] 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.
[11]
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.
[12] 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.
[13] 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.
[14] 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.
[15] 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''.
[16]
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,
[17] a
skylark,
[18] Achilles,
[19] and even ''
The Mighty Thor''.
[20] 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.
[21] 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
Notes
1. Shorrocks, 433–438.
2. 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.
3. Eleanor Hull, ''Be Thou My Vision'', 1912 translation of traditional Irish hymn, ''Rob tu mo bhoile, a Comdi cride.''
4. Shakespeare, ''Timon of Athens'', act IV, scene 3.
5. Christopher Marlowe, ''Dr. Faustus'', act IV, scene 2.
6. Robert Burns, ''O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast''(song), lines 1–4.
7. Entries for ''thou'' and
★ ''tu'', in ''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language''
8. Entry for ''thou'' in ''The Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage.''
9. Act 1 Scene 4, including the murder of Clarence. [1]
10. Reported, among many other places, in H. L. Mencken, ''The American Language'' (1921), ch. 9, ss. 4., "The pronoun".
11. David Daniell, ''William Tyndale: A Biography''. (Yale, 1995) ISBN 0-300-06880-8. See also David Daniell, ''The Bible in English: Its History and Influence''. (Yale, 2003) ISBN 0-300-09930-4.
12. Preface to the ''Revised Standard Version'' 1971
13. NRSV: To the Reader
14. See, for example, ''The Quaker Widow'' by Bayard Taylor
15. David Hackett Fischer, ''Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America'' (Oxford, 1991). ISBN 0-19-506905-6
16. Ezra Kempton Maxfield, "Quaker "Thee" and Its History," ''American Speech'', Vol. 1, No. 12 (Sept. 1926), pp. 638-644.
17. from the Revised Standard Version
18. ''Ode to a Skylark'' by Percy Bysshe Shelley
19. ''The Iliad'', translated by E. H. Blakeney, 1921
20. 528
21. 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.)
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
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