Thou
The word thou is a second-person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in most contexts by the word you, although it remains in use in parts of Northern England and in Scots. Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee ; the possessive is thy or thine ; and the reflexive is thyself. When thou is the grammatical subject of a finite verb in the indicative mood, the verb form typically ends in -st, but in some cases just -t.
Originally, thou was simply the singular counterpart to the plural pronoun ye, derived from an ancient Indo-European root. In Middle English, thou was sometimes represented with a scribal abbreviation that put a small "u" over the letter thorn: þͧ. Starting in the 1300s, thou and thee were used to express familiarity,
informality, or contempt, for addressing strangers, superiors, or inferiors, or in situations when indicating singularity to avoid confusion was needed; concurrently, the plural forms, ye and you, began to also be used for singular: typically for addressing rulers, superiors, equals, inferiors, parents, younger persons, and significant others. In the 17th century, thou fell into disuse in the standard language, often regarded as impolite, but persisted, sometimes in an altered form, in regional dialects of England and Scotland, as well as in the language of such religious groups as the Society of Friends. The use of the pronoun is also still present in Christian prayer and in poetry.
Early English translations of the Bible used the familiar singular form of the second person, which mirrors common usage trends in other languages. The familiar and singular form is used when speaking to God in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and many others. In addition, the translators of the King James Version of the Bible attempted to maintain the distinction found in Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek between singular and plural second-person pronouns and verb forms, so they used thou, thee, thy, and thine for singular, and ye, you, your, and yours for plural.
In standard Modern English, thou continues to be used in formal religious contexts, in wedding ceremonies, in literature that seeks to reproduce archaic language, and in certain fixed phrases such as "fare thee well". For this reason, many associate the pronoun with solemnity or formality.
Many dialects have compensated for the lack of a singular/plural distinction caused by the disappearance of thou and ye through the creation of new plural pronouns or pronominals, such as yinz, yous and y'all or the colloquial you guys. Ye remains common in some parts of Ireland, but the examples just given vary regionally and are usually restricted to colloquial speech.
Grammar
Because thou has passed out of common use, its traditional forms are often confused by those imitating archaic speech.Declension
The English personal pronouns have standardized declension according to the following table:Conjugation
Verb forms used after thou generally end in -est or -st 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 lovedst
- to want: thou wantest, thou wantedst
- can: thou canst
- could: thou couldst
- may: thou mayest
- might: thou mightst
- should: thou shouldst
- would: thou wouldst
- ought to: thou oughtest to
- to be: thou art, thou wast
- to have: thou hast, thou hadst
- to do: thou dost and thou didst
- shall: thou shalt
- will: thou wilt
- must: thou must
There are some speakers of modern English that use thou/thee but use thee as the subject and conjugate the word with is/was, i.e. thee is, thee was, thee has, thee speaks, thee spoke, thee can, thee could. However this is not considered standard.
Comparison
In Dutch, the equivalent of "thou", du, also became archaic and fell out of use and was replaced by the Dutch equivalent of "you", gij, just as it has in English, with the place of the informal plural taken by jullie.In the subjunctive and imperative moods, the ending in -st is dropped. 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.
In modern regional English dialects that use thou or some variant, such as in Yorkshire and Lancashire, it often takes the third person form of the verb -s. This comes from a merging of Early Modern English second person singular ending -st and third person singular ending -s into -s.
The present indicative form art goes back to West Saxon Old English and eventually became standard, even in the south. For its influence also from the North, cf. Icelandic þú ert. The preterite indicative of be is generally thou wast.
Etymology
Thou originates from Old English þū, and ultimately via Grimm's law from the Proto-Indo-European *tu, with the expected Germanic vowel lengthening in accented monosyllabic words with an open syllable. Thou is therefore cognate with Icelandic and Old Norse þú, German and Continental Scandinavian du, Latin and all major Romance languages, Irish, Kurdish, Lithuanian and Latvian tu or tú, Greek σύ, Slavic ты / ty or ти / ti, Armenian դու, Hindi तू, Bengali: তুই, Persian تُو and Sanskrit त्वम्. A cognate form of this pronoun exists in almost every other Indo-European language.History
Old and Middle English
In Old English, thou was governed by a simple rule: thou addressed one person, and ye more than one. Beginning in the 1300s thou was gradually replaced by the plural ye as the form of address for a superior person and later for an equal. For a long time, however, thou remained the most common form for addressing an inferior person.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, while the plural form vous was reserved and formal.
General decline in Early Modern English
Fairly suddenly in the 17th century, thou began to decline in the standard language, often regarded as impolite or ambiguous in terms of politeness. It persisted, sometimes in an altered form, particularly in regional dialects of England and Scotland farther from London, as well as in the language of such religious groups as the Society of Friends. Reasons commonly maintained by modern linguists as to the decline of thou in the 17th century include the increasing identification of you with "polite society" and the uncertainty of using thou for inferiors versus you for superiors amidst the rise of a new middle class.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 thou was still in everyday familiar use for the second-person singular, while you could be used for the same grammatical person, but only for formal contexts. However, Samuel Johnson himself was born and raised not in the south of England, but in the West Midlands, where the usage of thou persists until the present day, so it is not surprising that he would consider it entirely ordinary and describe it as such. By contrast, for most speakers of southern British English, thou had already fallen out of everyday use, even in familiar speech, by sometime around 1650. Thou persisted in a number of religious, literary and regional contexts, and those pockets of continued use of the pronoun tended to undermine the obsolescence of 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 sociocultural elements of Early Modern English texts, such as many character interactions in Shakespeare's plays, which were mostly written from 1589 to 1613. Although Shakespeare is far from consistent in his writings, his characters primarily tend to use thou when addressing another who is a social subordinate, a close friend or family member, or a hated wrongdoer.