Mark in Indianapolis, Indiana, wonders about the history of the second person singular and plural in English. At one time, thee and thou were singular, and you and ye were plural. By the early 17th century, thou and thee as familiar terms of address had been replaced almost entirely, except in certain dialects. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Thee, Thou, You, and Ye”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Mark calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.
Hello, Mark. Welcome to the show. What’s up?
Well, hey, I wanted to talk to you guys. I recently heard a story about the words they and them being added to the Oxford English Dictionary as singular pronouns when referring to people who are gender fluid, etc. And I heard in the context of the story that the word you was not always used as a singular pronoun, but it was only used as a plural pronoun. And my question was, what was the singular form of the word you?
Yeah, yeah, these pronouns have gone through some evolution over time. Boy, howdy. Yeah, if you go back to Old English, the language that Beowulf was written in, one person would be thew. That would be the equivalent of you. It was thew. And if you’re addressing more than two people, it would be ye, and it’s spelled G-E. And as time went on, we developed thou and thee for the singular. Thou being the subject, like how great thou art. And thee being the object, like I bid thee adieu or something like that. And the plural was ye and you. And so the ye would function as a subject, like hear ye, hear ye, or seek and ye shall find. And the you in the plural would be an object form.
And in a lot of languages, people show respect by addressing their superiors in the plural. And we were influenced by the Norman conquest and the fact that French does this. French is one of those languages that uses the second person plural, vous, to show respect. And you also see a trace of that plural being respectful in the royal we.
I was going to ask, yeah, the royal we, was that derived from?
Yeah, it’s the same idea of showing respect to royals. And that’s why the queen might say, we are not amused when she’s just talking about herself. And then as time went on, thou and thee began replacing that formal plural you. And this polite plural began to be used for more and more people so that by the early 17th century or so, thou and thee, as familiar forms of address, had been replaced almost entirely, except in certain dialects of English.
And an interesting side note is the Quakers rebelled against this because they had this sort of egalitarian idea that, you know, everybody should be treated equally and you shouldn’t have superiors. And so they rebelled against that distinction between formal and informal. And on purpose, they called everybody the and thou. And that’s why you have pockets of the and thou, particularly in Quaker language.
Well, that’s very interesting.
Yeah, does that make sense?
It absolutely does, yeah. But you’re right, the evolution of those terms over time is very interesting how that became more familiar, I suppose.
Yeah, yeah, it’s complicated and fascinating, and it’s tended to simplify. In fact, in Old English, there was a dual. There was something that was spelled G-I-T that you would apply to two people. Isn’t that wild? And now that’s dropped out. And so all of that is simplified. So when people think about pronouns being more complicated now than they were in the past, that’s completely wrong.
Yes, the other way around. It’s always been a muddle.
All right. Well, I appreciate that. That’s really wonderful information. Thank you so much.
Glad to help.
Thanks for calling, Mark. Take care.
All right. Thank you. Bye.
All right. Bye-bye.
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