It are ye

George   Wed Mar 14, 2007 6:45 pm GMT
"it are ye" is correct. "it is you" is wrong.
Guest   Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:29 pm GMT
No, because "ye" is a plural pronoun. It should be "it art thou"
Buddhaheart   Sun Mar 18, 2007 4:06 am GMT

“Ye” might even be “the”!!

Let’ perform a tag test: "it is you," isn’t it? The subject is the element that is either “proformed” or copied in a question tag. Therefore, "it are ye" is incorrect, "it is you" is right.
Skippy   Sun Mar 18, 2007 10:55 am GMT
"ye" probably doesn't mean "the." "The" was never pronounced w/ a /j/, although this is a common mistake.

When the printing press was brought to England, they had no way to represent the "th" sound, which had formerly been spelled with the consonant thorn (which looks like a lowercase "p" with a stem that goes as high as it goes low). To solve this problem, they used the letter that resembled it the most in their minds, which ended up being "y."

The definitive article in English has never been pronounced with a /j/.
Buddhaheart   Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:24 am GMT
I meant to say "ye" as, quoting my dictionary, “an old way of writing the definite article ‘the’.” I don’t mean the pronunciation of it. Sorry.
Travis   Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:39 am GMT
Skippy, you ignore the fact that "ye", pronounced [ji:] and distinct from the definite article written as "ye", the nominative case second person plural pronoun before it merged with the oblique case second person plural pronoun "you".