Revival of "Thou".

[Yeah Way]

Okay, I know how terribly random this is for this place; but I'd like to talk to  you guys about this. I won't bore you with details and such unless asked.

 

For a while now, I've been contributing to the very small, disorganised movement to bring back use of "Thou" and its other forms in English. To get straight to the point, would anyone here have the slightest interest in such, even just for fun?

 

I just think it'd be amusing if a bunch of us started using "Thou" on these forums, weirding out newcomers. xD 

 

Thanks.

[Kaguya]

Let's do eeeeet!!!!!

thou shan't break my determination to keep up with this~

However, I think weirding out the newcomers is a bad idea.

So my determination may be broken surprisingly easy. Take this as you will~

(I'll do it sometimes for fun)

[solidbatman]

I will never understand some of you guys.  But don't scare anyone away

[Yeah Way]

Let's do eeeeet!!!!!

thou shan't break my determination to keep up with this~

However, I think weirding out the newcomers is a bad idea.

So my determination may be broken surprisingly easy. Take this as you will~

(I'll do it sometimes for fun)

Yay! =D 

 

Also, the newcomers thing wasn't to be taken too seriously. xD

[Stanleys]

That's a very, umm... interesting idea there, but I think I will pass.

[garejei]

That's an interesting... uh, interest you have there, but I play porn games so who am I to judge.

 

I'm just curious as to why. Any particular reason other than "for the lulz"?

[Mephisto]

Dost thou enjoy being pretentious?

 

Because I do, and I'm not even sure I could stand being like that for an extended period of time.

[Zakamutt]

TvTropes once told me thou was actually the informal mode of address way back. I was mildly surprised.

[Yukiru]

thou shall become my pet~

 

EDIT: that might seem like spam, but those are my true feelings~

Edited September 26, 2013 by Yukiru

[Darklord Rooke]

TvTropes once told me thou was actually the informal mode of address way back. I was mildly surprised.

 

'Thou' has never been a formal mode of address. Although there was a period it was used as an expression of contempt, or if you were addressing inferior people.

[Yeah Way]

That's an interesting... uh, interest you have there, but I play porn games so who am I to judge.

 

I'm just curious as to why. Any particular reason other than "for the lulz"?

Because of the fact that English lacks distinction between "You" Singular and "You" Plural, whilst every other European  language doesn't. Some people want it back as an informal tool of address to be used to emphasise one's closeness with another, but I mainly just want to replace "You" Singular altogether.

[Yeah Way]

Dost thou enjoy being pretentious?

 

Because I do, and I'm not even sure I could stand being like that for an extended period of time.

Only ironically. I have a reason for doing this.

[Darklord Rooke]

Because of the fact that English lacks distinction between "You" Singular and "You" Plural, whilst every other European  language doesn't.

 

You = singular

youse = plural

 

[Yeah Way]

You = singular

youse = plural

 

Unfortunately, none of our colourful dialects' versions (The favourite around my area being "Yis") cut it for any sort of formal situation.

[Okami]

'Thou' has never been a formal mode of address. Although there was a period it was used as an expression of contempt, or if you were addressing inferior people.

 

Wikipedia says the same thing as zakamutt about it, it is an informal mode of address that isn't used any more as it is replaced with "You".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou

[Tay]

Interesting religious/social context of "thou/thee":

When I was in Russia, I was interested that Christian Russians use informal -- not formal -- language when they pray to God.  I wondered to myself, "Why do English speakers use formal, antiquated language like 'thou' and 'thee' when they pray?"  Is it a Western construction, based on redemption/justice theology?

 

Imagine my surprise when, in fact, I learned that "thou"and "thee" (and associated forms) are the lost English informal!  When people use those words in prayer, for example, it's meant to indicate closeness and familiarity.  (really surprised me)

 

A historical plugin -- when people (of any social class) met with royalty back in the day, they'd use the informal "thee", "thou" as well when speaking to the king/queen.  This was meant to demonstrate that the royalty "served" the people, and indicate familiarity between a ruler and his/her realm.  Using the formal "you" was either a slight, or a challenge (most often used by troublesome aristocracy).

 

[garejei]

Yeah, people thinking that thou is formal is just a common misconception due to it being used grandiose/religious context. I've known about this for a couple of years now but it's a pretty interesting piece of trivia nonetheless.

 

To give an example, in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, you see characters addressing Oberon and Titania, the king and queen, with the polite "you", while using the informal "thou" in less rigid situations.

[nohman]

This took an abrubt turn from silly to educational.

[Tay]

To give an example, in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, you see characters addressing Oberon and Titania, the king and queen, with the polite "you", while using the informal "thou" in less rigid situations.

Ooh! No kidding!  That's awesome!

 

It's fun reading some of the letters and documents from the time around John Donne -- the aristocracy often used "you" to distance themselves from the crown, and then hired peasants to address them (meaning the aristocrat) informally in the same sitting.  It led to several executions.

[Yeah Way]

This took an abrubt turn from silly to educational.

I was hoping to come across as at least somewhat serious. xD

[Darklord Rooke]

For those interested in the evolution of the terms 'you' and 'thou', the following will probably be a pretty entertaining read. For those not interested, the following will probably bring forth disembowel-inducing boredom, so best to just carry on

 

With the increasing influence of French, the use of ye/you was used to designate not merely the plural form, but also social difference. Indeed, the social resonance of the second-person pronoun eventually came to be more significant than the singular/plural distinction. As early as the thirteenth century, you was used as a singular pronoun of address denoting respect, one analogous to the French “vous.” Wales and Millward note the particular influence on this development of French courtly literature, which consistently employed “vous” as a pronoun of polite address. Mustanoja suggests that this deferential custom has its origins in the plural of majesty, although, according to Blake, this influence has yet to be firmly established. Nonetheless, in his survey of the use of you and thou in ME literature, Blake suggests that authors such as Chaucer and Malory became increasingly sensitive to pronoun usage, as changes in the system “opened up the possibility of nice discriminations in language use” (539).

 

Although many recent studies have complicated the issue, it has been widely viewed that the adoption of you as a polite form led to the pejoration of thou and thus occasioned a development of a “power semantic” (Brown 255) in which thou became “a mark of contempt or a social marker” (Blake 536), the term of address often given by a social superior to an inferior. Thee was also used among equals of the lower class; the nobility would typically use you among themselves (Brown 256-57; Leith 107; Barber 208-9). In this way, the use of pronouns came to serve as a means not only of distinguishing one social group from another, but also as a means of consolidating affiliation, even among family members. While thoroughly acknowledging the “solidarity dimension” of pronoun usage (110), Wales, like many, insists that the use of you and thou was hardly this straightforward, pointing out that “in English usage, right from the beginning, there was always considerable fluctuation between thou and you forms in the singular” (114). Both Hope and Wales show that thou could be used to mark a range of emotions other than contempt; it could also express familiarity and intimacy. Yet although, as Wales suggests, a “master’s thou need not only indicate “condescension,” but familiarity” (114), it is certainly important to consider who has the ability to exercise choice when it comes to pronoun usage.

 

Sceptical about the argument Brown and Gilman make for a close correspondence between the power semantic and hierarchical social structure, Wales is among many who argue strongly for “the possibility that there was some semantic overlap between [you and thou] even as their values changed from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century” (115). This overlap in meaning and usage may have led to the eventual dominance of you: since you and thou may have been used interchangeably in informal speech, one form may no doubt have become redundant.

 

Yet the eventual levelling of the singular and plural second-person pronoun can be attributed to a variety of factors. Increasing upward mobility may have also contributed to the eventual dominance of you, which, by the early eighteenth-century, generally took over all of the functions of thou/thee. In the Middle English and Early Modern periods, members of the expanding middle class sought to imitate polite forms of speech and to avoid those usages that would associate them with the lower classes. By the seventeenth century, polite society typically shunned thou, which had become the marked form. This was in large part the result of the use of thou and thee by religious groups such as the Quakers, who saw the older pronoun form as that which emphasized the equality of rather than the social distance between all individuals (Leith 108, Crystal 71). The continued use of thou and thee was, interestingly, the subject of much scrutiny and led to the development of a new verb, to thou, and a verbal noun, thou-ing. In a telling example from Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth (1853), the working-class heroine at one point “dropped the more formal ‘you,’ with which she had addressed Miss Benson [her new guardian], and thou’d her quietly and habitually” (137).

 

http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361Malton.htm

[Yeah Way]

For those interested in the evolution of the terms 'you' and 'thou', the following will probably be a pretty entertaining read. For those not interested, the following will probably bring forth disembowel-inducing boredom, so best to just carry on

 

With the increasing influence of French, the use of ye/you was used to designate not merely the plural form, but also social difference. Indeed, the social resonance of the second-person pronoun eventually came to be more significant than the singular/plural distinction. As early as the thirteenth century, you was used as a singular pronoun of address denoting respect, one analogous to the French “vous.” Wales and Millward note the particular influence on this development of French courtly literature, which consistently employed “vous” as a pronoun of polite address. Mustanoja suggests that this deferential custom has its origins in the plural of majesty, although, according to Blake, this influence has yet to be firmly established. Nonetheless, in his survey of the use of you and thou in ME literature, Blake suggests that authors such as Chaucer and Malory became increasingly sensitive to pronoun usage, as changes in the system “opened up the possibility of nice discriminations in language use” (539).

 

Although many recent studies have complicated the issue, it has been widely viewed that the adoption of you as a polite form led to the pejoration of thou and thus occasioned a development of a “power semantic” (Brown 255) in which thou became “a mark of contempt or a social marker” (Blake 536), the term of address often given by a social superior to an inferior. Thee was also used among equals of the lower class; the nobility would typically use you among themselves (Brown 256-57; Leith 107; Barber 208-9). In this way, the use of pronouns came to serve as a means not only of distinguishing one social group from another, but also as a means of consolidating affiliation, even among family members. While thoroughly acknowledging the “solidarity dimension” of pronoun usage (110), Wales, like many, insists that the use of you and thou was hardly this straightforward, pointing out that “in English usage, right from the beginning, there was always considerable fluctuation between thou and you forms in the singular” (114). Both Hope and Wales show that thou could be used to mark a range of emotions other than contempt; it could also express familiarity and intimacy. Yet although, as Wales suggests, a “master’s thou need not only indicate “condescension,” but familiarity” (114), it is certainly important to consider who has the ability to exercise choice when it comes to pronoun usage.

 

Sceptical about the argument Brown and Gilman make for a close correspondence between the power semantic and hierarchical social structure, Wales is among many who argue strongly for “the possibility that there was some semantic overlap between [you and thou] even as their values changed from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century” (115). This overlap in meaning and usage may have led to the eventual dominance of you: since you and thou may have been used interchangeably in informal speech, one form may no doubt have become redundant.

 

Yet the eventual levelling of the singular and plural second-person pronoun can be attributed to a variety of factors. Increasing upward mobility may have also contributed to the eventual dominance of you, which, by the early eighteenth-century, generally took over all of the functions of thou/thee. In the Middle English and Early Modern periods, members of the expanding middle class sought to imitate polite forms of speech and to avoid those usages that would associate them with the lower classes. By the seventeenth century, polite society typically shunned thou, which had become the marked form. This was in large part the result of the use of thou and thee by religious groups such as the Quakers, who saw the older pronoun form as that which emphasized the equality of rather than the social distance between all individuals (Leith 108, Crystal 71). The continued use of thou and thee was, interestingly, the subject of much scrutiny and led to the development of a new verb, to thou, and a verbal noun, thou-ing. In a telling example from Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth (1853), the working-class heroine at one point “dropped the more formal ‘you,’ with which she had addressed Miss Benson [her new guardian], and thou’d her quietly and habitually” (137).

 

http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361Malton.htm

Thanks for saving me the trouble! 

[Sioxz]

"Thou" are in full work now in the introduce yourself topic

[Sparkker]

So? Reviving "Thou" by teaching people it's history.. What an abrupt and unexpected twist...

[Stanleys]

So? Reviving "Thou" by teaching people it's history.. What an abrupt and unexpected twist...

The people of Fuwanovel work in mysterious ways