8:22 þ and ð were interchangeable actually. All the voiced and unvoiced fricatives were allophones in Old English, so they had no reason to distinguish the two
@@WGGplant Doesn't make them allophones, just means people don't recognize them because of how we spell them. Same thing happens with vowels if you don't explicitly learn about them, and also for the past tense ending -ed.
0:58 another reason why english translations of the bible use 'thou' instead is to cement monotheism, mostly because christians wanted to subdue polytheistic pagans, so they tried to make it super obvious they were referring to specifically *one* god by using the informal singular pronoun 'thou' instead of the more applicable formal plural pronoun 'you'.
@@daisybrain9423 I agree. Before the 14th century there was no translation of the whole Bible into English whereas England was being Christianised from the end of the 6th century onwards. Until that point any copy of the whole Bible would have been in Latin.
Didn't know how the "-est" and "-eth" verb endings were used before. It's like lost conjugations that were still used along with the ones we know today not too long ago. Very cool! Also, I notice that the non-subject endings of the forms of thou actually match those of I. (And you have a very cute otter avatar.)
"Thou hast" and other conjugations of thou feel so weird as a German speaker because du and thou sound pretty different(altough one can see how they are related) but the conjugations sound basically the same often "Thou hast vs Du hast", "Thou drinkest vs Du trinkst" etc. For a Dutch speaker that probably sounds even more uncannily close because of German T staying D in Dutch, just like in English
They come from the same source. Some fifteen to twenty centuries ago, there was no sharp distinction between what would become German and what would be English, just a single language continuum. Over time, the Anglo-Saxon version pidginised, experienced the Black Death and its own version of the Great Vowel Shift, but the Old Country German retained many of the old features. You can find even more of the early Germanic things retained if you study Yiddish or Icelandic, or get a glimpse by reading Beowulf in its _original_ English, what with all the hwæts and everything.
Ou was a spelling for the ooh sound introduced by the Normans, thus meaning that thou was originally pronounced like thoo, which is quite similar to the German du
I’m not even really into linguistics at all, but the way you describe and explain it with such enthusiasm and passion is always so nice to watch, and plus your Otter is really adorable, so glad I discovered you recently
9:45 Ye and you were not (originally) interchangeable: "ye" was nominative, "you" was accusative. Eventually "you" did come to be used for the nominative, though.
The ‘from whence’ thing is much like ATM machine and end result. They're ways of tacking on extra words to ensure that the meaning comes across. The redundancies serve a good purpose even if it's a bit silly when you think too hard about it.
Funny, cause most of these things are still often used in Dutch. We have inf. ''jij'' and formal ''u''. Here's the corresponding pronouns in Dutch: Subject - jij/u, Object- jou/u, Poss. adj- jouw/uw, Poss. pronoun- de jouwe/de uwe ''de jouwe'' is considered a little archaic, so it's not as weird as thou, but it's not commonly used. Linking verbs aren't really a thing as far as i'm aware, but we do have conjugations for the singular 1st, 2nd/3rd (although there are irregular verbs who have a separate 3rd person, like ''hebben'' or to have is ''hebt'' in the 2nd person and ''heeft'' in the 3rd) and plural. 1st person is the stem, like in English, drink is ''drink'' in the 1st person. 2nd/3rd person gets a -t after, so ''drinkt'', and the plural gets -en, so ''drinken''. Wherefore in Dutch is ''Waarvoor'', which means exactly the same! Sorry if it's too long 😅 i like ranting about languages! Btw i love your vids!
That's funny. To me it looks like it should be the other way around as a Swedish speaker. The corresponding words would be "du" (singular/informal) and "I" (plural/formal) or the modern variant "Ni" because the 'n' from the verb ending -en got inserted. It went from: I dricken -> Dricken I? -> Dricker ni?
Hmmm! I figured that "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" used "thou" not because of a grammatical exception, but because it's the subject of the sentence: "Thou art Romeo," "Why art thou Romeo?" Just like Juliet could ask, "Wherefore am I Juliet?"
The other reason for God being thou might also be, the fact that you wasn't only formal, but could also be plural ( similar concept is in many Slavic languages) so telling thou, to God, was to strictly show, that this is singular God, not many
Isn't Vos used way more in only like 3 out of however many spanish speaking countries, and kinda falling out of favor everywhere else? Its case is more of a really big exception to the current Usted-Tú rule imo
0:36 fun fact, these are (more or less) cognate via PIE, thou with tu and you with part of the contraction that created usted; compare Latin vōs (wōs) and tuus to Old English git ("yit," Proto Germanic *jūz) and þū/ðū.
Gonna write a story in "Mauxlde English," (portmanteau of modern, faux, and old and is pronounced like mold bc that's perfect) English but with thou and its conjugations, eth, and thorn. It would probably look someθing like ðis. (My keyboard doesn't have a θorn character and I'm lazy so I'm just using θeta from the IPA keyboard I have)
9:36 This usage of ye and thou was a copy paste of the usage of modern French tu and vous Thou = Tu (singular informal) Ye = Vous (singular formal and plural) Ye was used in the same cases as you'd use I, he, she, we, they in modern English. Aka the subject of the sentence You was (and it's still) used in the same cases as you'd use me, him, her, them in modern English. Aka the object of the sentence
It's fun how "thou" and "you" in English are cognates with "tú" and "vos" in Spanish respectively. In countries that use "vos", "tú" is uncommon and formal mirroring its cognate "thou" in English.
How to use thou, thee, thy and thine grammatically correct. Compare them to I, me, my and mine I = thou Me = thee My = Thy Mine = Thine I hope thou seest the similarities between my, thy and mine, thine I love *thee* *Thou* lovest me This is *thy* book This book is *thine*
I feel like a good Shakespearean term to revive is “Ye.” This is “you” but in the plural context. It is a good way in one word to address people instead of saying “you all” or “yall.”
About the "-eth" vs "-s" endings for third person singular verb conjugations: in Shakespeare writings, both forms appear, but there seems to be no consistency in what situations one would be used over the other. Does your research reveal any tendencies about that usage?
4:48 how is this confusing? The sentence is a question. You would say "wherefore am I?" (subject) so thou (also subject) is not an exception. It's not in the object position. Unless "wherefore" is interpreted as the subject or something?
Erm akchually 🤓, “thou” started off as the *singular* 2nd person pronoun, and “you” was the plural. At least in Late Middle English. Iirc, it didn’t gain an informal-formal distinction until a little later.
@@JoelGimenez-tl5dg It is the only pronoun now. “Thou” is pretty much only used in movies, TV shows, and books (often inaccurately) to sound “fancy” or “old”. It was used by Quakers as recently as the 20th century, but I don’t know if they still do.
I also dislike how people misuse the "est" and "eth" endings when the verb is being acted upon by an auxiliary verb. For instance, incorrectly saying "canst thou eatest that food" instead of the correct "canst thou eat that food". The form of the verb modified by the auxiliary verb "can" should be the same as the infinitive!
Cool video. I am confused about one thing though. Why did you say "thou" appears to be in the object position in "wherefore art thou, Romeo"? English is my second language but isn't that obviously the subject of the sentence? Where is the confusion? Is it because the verb comes before there fore some people think it is the object? Isn't that just a normal property of English question, to move verbs around?
I'm not entirely familiar with the details, but there's two broad ways to analyse copula phrases, and some languages go one way (by default), and some go the other way. And when a language radically changes over time, traces of doing it in an old way may appear in a newer version of a language.
You are correct. It is the subject. The confusion lies in the fact that English lost its true pronominal object case in favor of the oblique case which is used in copula phrases. That is why we say "I am me" and not "I am I"
@@loxi9 That's not true! While that format would maintain the pattern, 'ye' was the nominative, and 'you' was the accusative. I've often complained about this to my friends.
8:22 þ and ð were interchangeable actually. All the voiced and unvoiced fricatives were allophones in Old English, so they had no reason to distinguish the two
Oh thank you! I didn't know this
They're basically allophones in modern English too. Most people dont realize they're different until it's pointed out to em.
@@WGGplant Not really there just aren't that many minimal pairs (The only one I know is "Ether" vs "Either").
@@WGGplant Doesn't make them allophones, just means people don't recognize them because of how we spell them. Same thing happens with vowels if you don't explicitly learn about them, and also for the past tense ending -ed.
@@kakahass8845 There's also thigh/thy and thistle/this'll.
SIMPLE:
I me my mine
Thou thee thy thine
0:58 another reason why english translations of the bible use 'thou' instead is to cement monotheism, mostly because christians wanted to subdue polytheistic pagans, so they tried to make it super obvious they were referring to specifically *one* god by using the informal singular pronoun 'thou' instead of the more applicable formal plural pronoun 'you'.
Which is also one of the reasons why the Quakers use thou/thee. They refused to refer to anyone more respectfully than God was referred to.
Where did you hear that? These translations came centuries after the decline of paganism in Britain.
@@daisybrain9423 I agree. Before the 14th century there was no translation of the whole Bible into English whereas England was being Christianised from the end of the 6th century onwards. Until that point any copy of the whole Bible would have been in Latin.
Didn't know how the "-est" and "-eth" verb endings were used before. It's like lost conjugations that were still used along with the ones we know today not too long ago. Very cool! Also, I notice that the non-subject endings of the forms of thou actually match those of I. (And you have a very cute otter avatar.)
"Thou hast" and other conjugations of thou feel so weird as a German speaker because du and thou sound pretty different(altough one can see how they are related) but the conjugations sound basically the same often "Thou hast vs Du hast", "Thou drinkest vs Du trinkst" etc. For a Dutch speaker that probably sounds even more uncannily close because of German T staying D in Dutch, just like in English
They come from the same source. Some fifteen to twenty centuries ago, there was no sharp distinction between what would become German and what would be English, just a single language continuum. Over time, the Anglo-Saxon version pidginised, experienced the Black Death and its own version of the Great Vowel Shift, but the Old Country German retained many of the old features. You can find even more of the early Germanic things retained if you study Yiddish or Icelandic, or get a glimpse by reading Beowulf in its _original_ English, what with all the hwæts and everything.
Ou was a spelling for the ooh sound introduced by the Normans, thus meaning that thou was originally pronounced like thoo, which is quite similar to the German du
@@Babelball makes sense, since you also is pronounced yoo
@@Babelball Wait so me saying thoo instead of thou when I learned about mthou actually wasn't that wrong?
@ no
My biggest grudge with modern uses of Shakespearean English is when people use use „Thy“ to mean „The“.
no WAY people do that. WHAT
@@catmacopter8545 Yes, people do that.
that's also not how you do quotes in English
@@Gab8riel The Normans destroyed the English language. We need to speak Dutch or German instead.
I'm not a native speaker, but I thought it meant something like your?
I’m not even really into linguistics at all, but the way you describe and explain it with such enthusiasm and passion is always so nice to watch, and plus your Otter is really adorable, so glad I discovered you recently
9:45 Ye and you were not (originally) interchangeable: "ye" was nominative, "you" was accusative. Eventually "you" did come to be used for the nominative, though.
So does that mean that 'ye' is used like 'thou' and 'you' is used like 'thee' or does nominative and accusative mean something else?
@rainbowfaces5462 : I, thou, he/she/it, we, ye, they
me, thee, him/her/it, us, you, them
you missed the opportunity to name the video something like "thou art misusing these words"
Now put it into a proper iambic pentameter.
@@rileyfaelan I can barely speak my native language, poetry in English is far above my league
@@rileyfaelan "The words thou shalt refrain from due misuse"
The ‘from whence’ thing is much like ATM machine and end result. They're ways of tacking on extra words to ensure that the meaning comes across. The redundancies serve a good purpose even if it's a bit silly when you think too hard about it.
Funny, cause most of these things are still often used in Dutch. We have inf. ''jij'' and formal ''u''. Here's the corresponding pronouns in Dutch:
Subject - jij/u, Object- jou/u, Poss. adj- jouw/uw, Poss. pronoun- de jouwe/de uwe
''de jouwe'' is considered a little archaic, so it's not as weird as thou, but it's not commonly used.
Linking verbs aren't really a thing as far as i'm aware, but we do have conjugations for the singular 1st, 2nd/3rd (although there are irregular verbs who have a separate 3rd person, like ''hebben'' or to have is ''hebt'' in the 2nd person and ''heeft'' in the 3rd) and plural. 1st person is the stem, like in English, drink is ''drink'' in the 1st person. 2nd/3rd person gets a -t after, so ''drinkt'', and the plural gets -en, so ''drinken''. Wherefore in Dutch is ''Waarvoor'', which means exactly the same!
Sorry if it's too long 😅 i like ranting about languages!
Btw i love your vids!
That's funny. To me it looks like it should be the other way around as a Swedish speaker. The corresponding words would be "du" (singular/informal) and "I" (plural/formal) or the modern variant "Ni" because the 'n' from the verb ending -en got inserted.
It went from: I dricken -> Dricken I? -> Dricker ni?
Just like vous being formal you in French and tu being the informal you in French
Hmmm! I figured that "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" used "thou" not because of a grammatical exception, but because it's the subject of the sentence: "Thou art Romeo," "Why art thou Romeo?"
Just like Juliet could ask, "Wherefore am I Juliet?"
I came here to say the exact same thing
The other reason for God being thou might also be, the fact that you wasn't only formal, but could also be plural ( similar concept is in many Slavic languages) so telling thou, to God, was to strictly show, that this is singular God, not many
Fun fact: otter
Thank you
Correct.
Exactly
Perhapþ
i cantest belivest ieth haveth beeneth useingeth thou wrongeth
You’ve hurt me in multiple ways
Thou-eth
Ik kan nikt belyeive wast ðou hast sayt!
@@Thefrogbread How to highlight English’s German-ness
@@Thestuffdoer yeah I was trying to make my English sound old, can you tell I’m in German class 🤣
"It's me"sounds ergative
Or mario (I don’t know what ðat word means)
I'm reading Hamlet for class right now. This is the perfect video for me :)
In Spanish we have usted, vos y tu.
And the formality depends of the region and age of the speakers
Isn't Vos used way more in only like 3 out of however many spanish speaking countries, and kinda falling out of favor everywhere else? Its case is more of a really big exception to the current Usted-Tú rule imo
0:36 fun fact, these are (more or less) cognate via PIE, thou with tu and you with part of the contraction that created usted; compare Latin vōs (wōs) and tuus to Old English git ("yit," Proto Germanic *jūz) and þū/ðū.
Bring these back
Gonna write a story in "Mauxlde English," (portmanteau of modern, faux, and old and is pronounced like mold bc that's perfect) English but with thou and its conjugations, eth, and thorn. It would probably look someθing like ðis. (My keyboard doesn't have a θorn character and I'm lazy so I'm just using θeta from the IPA keyboard I have)
You need a swedish or icelandic keyboard layout. That should get you þ with AltGr+t and ð with AltGr+d
I am watching this in English class because I'm reading Julius Ceasars lol 😅😅😅😅😅
I love you channel BTW ❤❤❤❤❤
Also note that "dost" is pronounced like "dust," same as "does."
dhe thing is dhat cool people use dhe digraph dh for dhe voiced version of dhe dental fricative.
9:36 This usage of ye and thou was a copy paste of the usage of modern French tu and vous
Thou = Tu (singular informal)
Ye = Vous (singular formal and plural)
Ye was used in the same cases as you'd use I, he, she, we, they in modern English. Aka the subject of the sentence
You was (and it's still) used in the same cases as you'd use me, him, her, them in modern English. Aka the object of the sentence
It's fun how "thou" and "you" in English are cognates with "tú" and "vos" in Spanish respectively. In countries that use "vos", "tú" is uncommon and formal mirroring its cognate "thou" in English.
0:28 In Lithuanian "Tu" is impolite(singular), and "Jūs" is polite(singular) OR any plural
And these are 2nd person pronouns ofc, meaning "you"
Sooo "Whenceforth arth yee, Romea?"
(Nailed it.)
Awesome content!
it is really simple, "Thy end is now" is a subtle nod to the fact that Minos Prime's gonna jump your face
thou hast a winsome river-dweller character
0:37, exept in Colombia and Costa Rica
How to use thou, thee, thy and thine grammatically correct. Compare them to I, me, my and mine
I = thou
Me = thee
My = Thy
Mine = Thine
I hope thou seest the similarities between my, thy and mine, thine
I love *thee*
*Thou* lovest me
This is *thy* book
This book is *thine*
I feel like a good Shakespearean term to revive is “Ye.” This is “you” but in the plural context. It is a good way in one word to address people instead of saying “you all” or “yall.”
About the "-eth" vs "-s" endings for third person singular verb conjugations: in Shakespeare writings, both forms appear, but there seems to be no consistency in what situations one would be used over the other. Does your research reveal any tendencies about that usage?
They were interchangeable. If I recall correctly it was a regional difference whether the preferred form ended in -s or -eth.
Are preterite tense verbs conjugated differently?
4:48 how is this confusing? The sentence is a question. You would say "wherefore am I?" (subject) so thou (also subject) is not an exception. It's not in the object position. Unless "wherefore" is interpreted as the subject or something?
Erm akchually 🤓, “thou” started off as the *singular* 2nd person pronoun, and “you” was the plural. At least in Late Middle English. Iirc, it didn’t gain an informal-formal distinction until a little later.
Holy shit it’s the Tally Hall guy
Do native English speakers still use this pronoun? I always thought that the only pronoun in English was YOU (I am a native Spanish speaker)
@@JoelGimenez-tl5dg It is the only pronoun now. “Thou” is pretty much only used in movies, TV shows, and books (often inaccurately) to sound “fancy” or “old”. It was used by Quakers as recently as the 20th century, but I don’t know if they still do.
@@JimsJunkSale ohhh we have something very similar in Spanish, in medieval movies vos is usually used as old and elegant Spanish
@@JimsJunkSale In fact, it is very curious, Spanish stopped using vos (you) to use only Tú (thou), exactly the opposite of English.
I also dislike how people misuse the "est" and "eth" endings when the verb is being acted upon by an auxiliary verb. For instance, incorrectly saying "canst thou eatest that food" instead of the correct "canst thou eat that food". The form of the verb modified by the auxiliary verb "can" should be the same as the infinitive!
Cool video. I am confused about one thing though. Why did you say "thou" appears to be in the object position in "wherefore art thou, Romeo"? English is my second language but isn't that obviously the subject of the sentence? Where is the confusion? Is it because the verb comes before there fore some people think it is the object? Isn't that just a normal property of English question, to move verbs around?
I'm not entirely familiar with the details, but there's two broad ways to analyse copula phrases, and some languages go one way (by default), and some go the other way. And when a language radically changes over time, traces of doing it in an old way may appear in a newer version of a language.
You are correct. It is the subject. The confusion lies in the fact that English lost its true pronominal object case in favor of the oblique case which is used in copula phrases. That is why we say "I am me" and not "I am I"
I prefer "Thou[þu]" 😝
good evening
Shakespeare might’ve used “from whence” to fill in meter
Thankest thee
Where art thou? Why not uponeth me?
I think it would be interesting to survey how people use thou when they do it in a way that it would not have historically been used
Will the thou word be revived??? In my case i use them with my professor.
THY END IS NOW
was the subject form of , right?
I believe so
You is the subejct, ye is the object. It preserves the pattern with thou and thee.
@@loxi9 Ah right, thanks
@@loxi9 That's not true! While that format would maintain the pattern, 'ye' was the nominative, and 'you' was the accusative. I've often complained about this to my friends.
And don't forget to follow shakespears tradition of playing with language just as he did ^^
thou🇬🇧 du🇩🇪 tú🏛
Tirritate prescriptive linguists by mangling *Oyez! Oyez!* into *Hear ye y'all!* 😸
I wonder if "you" used to be pronounced so it rhymed with "Thou"?
no i wasnt im rly smart actually. hope this helps
Englishmen didn’t know this?
lmao git gud
First
art thou a top or a bottom, sire?
She toppeth
Finally a comprehensive summary instead of a cringy shitfest