Why did formal and informal forms of address leave English?

iox   Tue Jan 03, 2006 9:10 pm GMT
From what I understand, "you" was the polite way of addressing someone and "thou/thee" was used to speak to those you know.

Anybody know why they fizzled out?
Guest   Tue Jan 03, 2006 9:19 pm GMT
Maybe the distinction was not important enough to warrant the added complexity? (They also got rid of "ye", BTW).
JJM   Tue Jan 03, 2006 9:38 pm GMT
They just did.

By the 16th Century, "you" was on a roll.

By the 19th Century, "thou" was more or less relegated to the King James Bible and the Society of Friends.

What IS interesting is that, despite the demise of "thou," the distinction between the singular and plural second person refuses to die out, notwithstanding all efforts to impose so-called "Standard English."

"youse," "you-all' and 'y'all" insist on popping up in regional dialects.
Uriel   Wed Jan 04, 2006 1:53 am GMT
There is one vestige of formality left, although it's not very common -- the practice of addressing someone in the third person to convey deference -- "Would sir care to have his meal at six o'clock?" It's not unlike the Spanish use of "usted", where you also use the third person conjugation of the verb.
Travis   Wed Jan 04, 2006 9:50 am GMT
>>The "Thee" and "Thou" thing goes back to the Feudal period when nobles talked to peasants. That kind of all ended with the rise of merchant middle classes in the 16th and 17th centuries though the Quakers still continued the custom. The Slavic and Romance languages and German have been more conservative and haven't abolished these distinctions yet. Of course, feudalism or some vestiges of it lasted longer in many countries where these languages were spoken than it did in England.<<

Do you have *any* actual knowledge about what you are speaking about? Do you even know how "thou" and "you" were actually used in Early Modern English in the first place? Such was more a function of familiarity or lack thereof than just relative social status alone in practice, contrary to what nonsense you spewed out above. Anyways, the reason that "thou" died out in English has nothing at all to do with what you are blathering about above, but rather is purely linked to lexical drift in English, in particular with respect to change in the level of familiarity required for it to be socially "safe" to use "thou".

What happened is that "thou" became increasingly informal in nature, and as it was often "safer", when in doubt, to be more formal than to be less formal, "you" came to be used in a wider range of contexts and "thou" came to be used in a more limited range of contexts. Over time, "thou" became simply too informal to use in most contexts in everyday speech, and consequently was simply supplanted altogether by "you".
Kirk   Wed Jan 04, 2006 10:47 am GMT
<<The "Thee" and "Thou" thing goes back to the Feudal period when nobles talked to peasants. That kind of all ended with the rise of merchant middle classes in the 16th and 17th centuries though the Quakers still continued the custom. The Slavic and Romance languages and German have been more conservative and haven't abolished these distinctions yet. Of course, feudalism or some vestiges of it lasted longer in many countries where these languages were spoken than it did in England.>>

Sorry, but that's not a very accurate description of it, Brennus. Please check your facts before you post (and now I assume you even have the power to go back and edit errant information).

For English, the "thou/you" distinction has its roots in much more distant history than the age of feudalism, tho it's not surprising that the already-present distinction was neatly grafted onto a feudalist framework during that period. However, if the distinction died out in English because of rising merchant middle classes, why did such distinctions not die out in other countries' languages when they eventually experienced similar growth in merchant classes? The fact is that semantic drift eventually led to the "thou/you" distinction to be one less of "singular/plural" as in older forms of English but one of "familiar-intimate (even condescending)/polite-formal-expected." Once "you" had crossed the person barrier to include a singular person there became less of a reason to keep two singulars around. Now, this doesn't mean that it was destined to die just because of this, but it does lay the groundwork for a more plausible explanation for "thou"'s passing.

Let's look at another language. This happened in several varieties of Spanish--for instance, "vos" used to be the 2nd singular plural pronoun but it eventually shifted over to become singular. In Argentine Spanish, which has preserved "vos," (as a 2nd-person singular pronoun), "tú" and its forms are almost unheard of. I never heard it once while living in Argentina (indeed, one of my Argentine friends told me that "tú" sounded "poetic" to him, much as "thou" would seem to English speakers today). Back to English, I just wanted to show that the process leading to the disappearance of "thou" has near-perfect analogies in other languages, so it's not really anything special in English.

<<What IS interesting is that, despite the demise of "thou," the distinction between the singular and plural second person refuses to die out, notwithstanding all efforts to impose so-called "Standard English."

"youse," "you-all' and 'y'all" insist on popping up in regional dialects.>>

Yes, which is completely unsurprising, because with a semantic void to fill, language will naturally fill it. Most English varieties (whether we're talking about dialect or sociolect) have come up with various ways to fill the 2nd-person plural pronoun void.
Adam   Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:29 pm GMT
"You" being the English equivalent of the French formal "Vous" shows that English is a much polite language than most other European languages.
Adam   Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:47 pm GMT
Thou, contrary to popular belief, has not left the English languageand is still found in some accents of England, but is hardly found at all in other English-speaking countries -



Thou

Most modern English speakers think of "thou" as a relic of Shakespeare's day

Thou is a second person singular pronoun of the English language. Thou is the nominative case; the oblique/objective (functioning as both accusative and dative) is thee, and the genitive is thy or thine.

In modern English thou continues to be used only in some of the regional dialects of England, some religious contexts (referring to God when capitalized) and in certain specific phrases, e.g. "holier than thou", "fare thee well". Otherwise, its contemporary use is an archaism.





Etymology

Thou represents the expected outcome of Old English þú, which, with expected Germanic lengthening of the vowel in an open syllable, represents Indo-European *tu. Thou is therefore cognate with Latin, French, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Latvian, Portuguese, and Romanian tu, modern German, Norwegian and Danish du, Russian ты (ty), and Persian تو (to). A cognate form of this pronoun exists in almost every other Indo-European language.



Usage
When thou was in common use, personal pronouns had standardized declension according to the following table.

1st person
(singular)
Nominative - I
Objective - Me
Genitive - My/Mine
Possessive - Mine

(plural)
Nominative - We
Objective - Us
Genitive - Our
Possessive - Ours


2nd person

(singular informal)
Nominative - Thou
Objective - Thee
Genitive - Thy/Thine
Possessive - Thine

(plural or singular formal)
Nominative - Ye
Objective - You
Genitive - Your
Possessive - Yours

So now, English has mainly got rid of all the singular ones and has just kept the plural and formal ones - you, your, yours - except ye.
Rick Johnson   Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:53 pm GMT
"Thee", "thou", "thy" can still be heard in some parts of Yorkshire.
Adam   Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:58 pm GMT
So the Elizabethans said things such as -

"I will give thee an apple" (singular informal) (Mostly extinct)
"I will give you an apple" (plural) or (singular formal) (Modern English)

"That apple is thine" (singular) (Mostly extinct)
"That apple is yours" (plural or singular formal)) (Modern English)

So now, we use "yours" for EVERYONE, and it's plural and singular.

But it used to be that "yours" was used only for plural or singular formal and "thine" was used at any other time.

With all these words that we would have had to try and decide which to use, I can see why English dropped most of them, and how much of a nightmare it is for the native speakers of others languages, such as French and Italian, that still have them.
Adam   Wed Jan 04, 2006 8:04 pm GMT
2nd person

(singular informal)
Nominative - Thou
Objective - Thee
Genitive - Thy/Thine
Possessive - Thine

(plural or singular formal)
Nominative - Ye
Objective - You
Genitive - Your
Possessive - Yours

So "you" is not the plural or singular formal of "thou". "You" is the plural or singular formal of "thee."
Damian   Wed Jan 04, 2006 8:04 pm GMT
Thee, thou, hast, art, canst, wilt..etc etc are still used in religious contexts ....in the UK anyway - Church services and in many forms of prayer. Thou wilt see such words if thou wilst only scan through any Church hymnal, missal, prayerbook which thou hast in your possesion. If thou hast not such an item then thou must take my word for it.

The Hail Mary is evidence of that.
Adam   Wed Jan 04, 2006 8:13 pm GMT
Thou in modern writing is vulnerable to solecism, and modern speakers often misuse the traditional verb forms. These verb forms generally end in -st or -est and are used both in the present tense and the preterite forms. They are used on all verbs, both strong and weak.

Some examples of regular forms: to know, thou knowest, thou knew(e)st; to drive, thou drivest, thou drovest; to make, thou makest, thou madest; to love, thou lovest, thou loved(e)st.

Forms used with irregular verbs and auxiliaries: to be, thou art, thou wast; to have, thou hast, thou hadst; to do, thou dost (or thou doest, if not used as an auxiliary) and thou didst; with shall, thou shalt; and with will, thou wilt.

Most of these verb forms are very similar or identical to German conjugations, e.g.:

Middle English German Modern English
Thou hast Du hast You have
Thou goest Du gehst You go
Thou dost Du tust
You do
Thou be'st (variant of art) Du bist You are
She hath Sie hat She has
What hast thou? Was hast du? What do you have?
What hath she? Was hat sie? 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 . . .;
Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart . . .
I do wish thou wert a dog, that I might love thee something . . .
Some later authors use thou be'st or thou best as a subjunctive:

If thou be'st born to strange sights . . . (John Donne);
If thou best a miller . . . thou art doubly a thief. (Sir Walter Scott)
This is not the way it was originally done in Middle English. Some later authors also use thou thinketh and similar forms with the old third person singular ending in -eth with thou. This is a mistake, and usually crops up in writing using thou in later parody.

Thee (from the Indo-European "te") corresponds with the oblique or accusative form me in the first person, and is used as a direct or indirect object. 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).

In modern regional English dialects that use 'thou' or some variant, it generally takes the third person form of the verb. This comes from a merging of Early Modern English 2nd person singular ending'-st' and 3rd person singular ending '-th' into '-s'.

[edit]
Thou's Verbs
Like the German language English's verbs once relied heavily on the subject. So for Thou the words were modified in the following ways:

Are turned into Art.
Were turned into Wast or Wert.
Will turned into Wilt.
Have turned into Hast.
Might turned into Mighst or Might'st
Do turned into Dost
.   Wed Jan 04, 2006 9:47 pm GMT
Travis   Wed Jan 04, 2006 9:47 pm GMT
>>Re: "Anyways, the reason that "thou" died out in English has nothing at all to do with what you are blathering about above." --- Travis

Er, uh-hum, not to be unkind but you, Travis, are not well-read. Before discussing linguistics or language topics on a web site, why don't you open up some books about the subject and actually read?<<

Now, how did we get to this point in the conversation to begin with (I don't remember mentioning anything about anyone's reading habits), and how do you know what I have and haven't read in the first place? Basically, if all you can do is irrelevant weak attempts at ad hominem attacks, then you must not be able to defend your position to begin with.