Thou#Christianity

Because thou has passed out of common use, its traditional forms are often confused by those imitating archaic speech.{{Cite web|title=Archaic English Grammar -- dan.tobias.name|url=https://dan.tobias.name/frivolity/archaic-grammar.html|access-date=2020-11-02|website=dan.tobias.name}}{{Citation needed|date=November 2018}}

The English personal pronouns have standardized declension according to the following table:{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}}

{{Early Modern English personal pronouns (table)}}

Verb forms used after thou generally end in -est (pronounced {{IPA|/ᵻst/}}) 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

Modal verbs also have -(e)st added to their forms:

• can: thou canst
• could: thou couldst
• may: thou mayest
• might: thou mightst
• should: thou shouldst
• would: thou wouldst
• ought to: thou oughtest to

A few verbs have irregular thou forms:

• to be: thou art (or thou beest), thou wast {{IPAc-en|w|ɒ|s|t}} (or subjunctive thou wert; originally thou were)
• to have: thou hast, thou hadst
• to do: thou dost {{IPAc-en|d|ʌ|s|t}} (or thou doest in non-auxiliary use) and thou didst
• shall: thou shalt
• will: thou wilt

A few others are not inflected:

• must: thou must

In Proto-English, the second-person singular verb inflection was -es. This came down unchanged{{citation needed|reason= this is a pretty strong claim, please provide support|date= February 2020}} from Indo-European and can be seen in quite distantly related Indo-European languages: Russian знаешь, znayesh, thou knowest; Latin amas, thou lovest. (This is parallel to the history of the third-person form, in Old English -eþ, Russian, знает, znayet, he knoweth, Latin amat he loveth.) The {{according to whom|anomalous development|date= February 2020}} from -es to modern English -est, which took place separately at around the same time in the closely related German and West Frisian languages, is understood to be caused by an assimilation of the consonant of the pronoun, which often followed the verb. This is most readily observed in German: liebes du → liebstu → liebst du (lovest thou).{{cite book |last=Fennell |first=Barbara A.|title=A history of English: a sociolinguistic approach. |publisher=Blackwell Publishing |year=2001 |page=22}}

There are some speakers of modern English{{who|date=July 2024}} 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.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}{{clarification needed|reason=What standard?|date=July 2024}}

| {{lang|de|Du hast}}
{{IPA|de|duː ˈhast|}}

| {{lang|nl|Jij hebt}}
{{IPA|nl|jɛi ˈɦɛpt|}}

| You have

|-

| She hath

| {{lang|fy|Sy hat}}
{{IPA|fy|sɛi ˈhat|}}

| {{lang|de|Sie hat}}
{{IPA|de|ziː ˈhat|}}

| {{lang|nl|Zij heeft}}
{{IPA|nl|zɛi ˈɦeːft|}}

| She has

|-

| What hast thou?

| {{lang|fy|Wat hasto?}}
{{IPA|fy|vat ˈhasto|}}

| {{lang|de|Was hast du?}}
{{IPA|de|vas ˈhast duː|}}

| {{lang|nl|Wat heb je?}}
{{IPA|nl|ʋɑt ˈɦɛp jə|}}

| What do you have? (What have you?)

|-

| What hath she?

| {{lang|fy|Wat hat sy?}}
{{IPA|fy|vat ˈhat sɛi|}}

| {{lang|de|Was hat sie?}}
{{IPA|de|vas ˈhat ziː|}}

| {{lang|nl|Wat heeft zij?}}
{{IPA|nl|ʋɑt ˈɦeːft sɛi|}}

| What does she have? (What has she?)

|-

| Thou goest

| {{lang|fy|Do giest}}
{{IPA|fy|doː ˈɡiəst|}}

| {{lang|de|Du gehst}}
{{IPA|de|duː ˈɡeːst|}}

| {{lang|nl|Jij gaat}}
{{IPA|nl|jɛi ˈɣaːt|}}

| You go

|-

| Thou doest

| {{lang|fy|Do dochst}}
{{IPA|fy|doː ˈdoχst|}}

| {{lang|de|Du tust}}
{{IPA|de|duː ˈtuːst|}}

| {{lang|nl|Jij doet}}
{{IPA|nl|jɛi ˈdut|}}

| You do

|-

| Thou art
(variant thou beest)

| {{lang|fy|Do bist}}
{{IPA|fy|doː ˈbɪst|}}

| {{lang|de|Du bist}}
{{IPA|de|duː ˈbɪst|}}

| {{lang|nl|Jij bent}}
{{IPA|nl|jɛi ˈbɛnt|}}

| You are

|}

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 (later jij or u), just as it has in English, with the place of the informal plural taken by jullie (compare English y’all).

In the subjunctive and imperative moods, the ending in -(e)st is dropped (although it is generally retained in thou wert, the second-person singular past subjunctive of the verb to be). 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.

:If thou be Johan, I tell it thee, right with a good advice ...;Middle English carol:

If thou be Johan, I tell it the
Ryght with a good aduyce
Thou may be glad Johan to be
It is a name of pryce.

:Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart ...Eleanor Hull, Be Thou My Vision, 1912 translation of traditional Irish hymn, Rob tu mo bhoile, a Comdi cride.

:I do wish thou wert a dog, that I might love thee something ...Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, act IV, scene 3.

:And thou bring Alexander and his paramour before the Emperor, I'll be Actaeon ...Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus, act IV, scene 2.

:O WERT thou in the cauld blast, ... I'd shelter thee ...Robert Burns, O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast(song), lines 1–4.

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 latter a northern variation of -þ (-th)).

The present indicative form art ("þu eart") goes back to West Saxon Old English (see OED s.v. be IV.18) and eventually became standard, even in the south (e.g. in Shakespeare and the Bible). For its influence also from the North, cf. Icelandic þú ert. The preterite indicative of be is generally thou wast.{{citation needed|date=February 2020}}

Thou originates from Old English {{lang|ang|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 {{lang|non|þú}}, German and Continental Scandinavian {{lang|da|du}}, Latin and all major Romance languages, Irish, Kurdish, Lithuanian and Latvian {{lang|ro|tu}} or {{lang|es|tú}}, Greek {{lang|el|σύ}} ({{transliteration|el|sy}}), Slavic ты / ty or ти / ti, Armenian {{lang|hy|դու}} ({{transliteration|hy|dow}}/{{transliteration|hy|du}}), Hindi तू ({{transliteration|hi|tū}}), Bengali: তুই (tui), Persian {{lang|fa|تُو}} ({{transliteration|fa|to}}) and Sanskrit त्वम् ({{lang|sa-Latn|tvam}}). A cognate form of this pronoun exists in almost every other Indo-European language.Entries for thou and *tu, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

File:Adam and Eve, thou abbrev.jpg

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 (and to a stranger, potentially insulting), while the plural form vous was reserved and formal.{{citation needed|date=May 2018}}

Fairly suddenly in the 17th century, thou began to decline in the standard language (that is, particularly in and around London), 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 (with you being the safer default) amidst the rise of a new middle class.Nordquist, Richard (2016). "[https://www.thoughtco.com/notes-on-second-person-pronouns-1692677 Notes on Second-Person Pronouns: Whatever Happened to 'Thou' and 'Thee'?]" ThoughtCo. About, Inc.

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 (specifically, Lichfield, Staffordshire), where the usage of thou persists until the present day (see below), 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.Entry for thou in Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. 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 (rather than you) when addressing another who is a social subordinate, a close friend or family member, or a hated wrongdoer.Atkins, Carl D. (ed.) (2007). [https://books.google.com/books?id=a8buSTBjFyUC&q=%22thou...was...the+pronoun%22 Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary]. Associated University Presses. p. 55.

{{wiktionary pipe|thou#Verb|thou (verb)}}

Many European languages contain verbs meaning "to address with the informal pronoun", such as German {{lang|de|duzen}}, French {{lang|fr|tutoyer}}, Spanish {{lang|es|tutear}} and {{lang|es|vosear}}, Swedish {{lang|sv|dua}}, Dutch {{lang|nl|jijen en jouen}}, Ukrainian {{lang|uk|тикати}} ({{translit|uk|tykaty}}), Russian {{lang|ru|тыкать}} ({{translit|ru|tykat'}}), Polish {{lang|pl|tykać}}, Romanian {{lang|ro|tutui}}, Hungarian {{lang|hu|tegezni}}, Finnish {{lang|fi|sinutella}}, etc. Additionally, the Norwegian noun {{lang|no|dus}} refers to the practice of using this familiar form of address instead of the {{lang|no|De}}/{{lang|no|Dem}}/{{lang|no|Deres}} formal forms in common use. Although uncommon in English, the usage did appear, such as at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603, when Sir Edward Coke, prosecuting for the Crown, reportedly sought to insult Raleigh by saying,

:I thou thee, thou traitor!Reported, among many other places, in H. L. Mencken, The American Language (1921), ch. 9, ss. 4., [http://www.bartleby.com/185/41.html "The pronoun"].

::In modern English: I "thou" you, you traitor!

here using thou as a verb meaning to call (someone) "thou" or "thee". Although the practice never took root in Standard English, it occurs in dialectal speech in the north of England. A formerly common refrain in Yorkshire dialect for admonishing children who misused the familiar form was:

:Don't thee tha them as thas thee!

::In modern English: Don't you "tha" those who "tha" you!

::In other words: Don't use the familiar form "tha" towards those who refer to you as "tha". ("tha" being the local dialectal variant of "thou")

And similar in Lancashire dialect:

:Don't thee me, thee; I's you to thee!

::In standard English: Don't "thee" me, you! I'm "you" to you!

Many conservative Christians use "Thee, Thou, Thy and Thine when addressing God" in prayer; in the Plymouth Brethren catechism Gathering Unto His Name, Norman Crawford explains the practice:

{{blockquote|The English language does contain reverential and respectful forms of the second person pronoun which allow us to show reverence in speaking to God. It has been a very long tradition that these reverential forms are used in prayer. In a day of irreverence, how good to display in every way that we can that "He (God) is not a man as I am" (Job 9:32).{{cite book |last1=Crawford |first1=Norman |title=Gathering Unto His Name |date=1997 |publisher=GTP |pages=178–179 |language=English}}}}

When referring to God, "thou" (as with other pronouns) is often capitalized, e.g. "For Thou hast delivered my soul from death" ({{Bibleverse|Psalm|56:12-13|KJ21}}).{{cite book|last=Shewan|first=Ed|title=Applications of Grammar: Principles of Effective Communication|year=2003|publisher=Liberty Press|isbn=1930367287|pages=112}}{{cite book|last=Elwell|first=Celia|title=Practical Legal Writing for Legal Assistants|year=1996|publisher=Cengage Learning|isbn=0314061150|pages=71}}{{cite book|title=The Teaching of Christ: A Catholic Catechism for Adults|year=2004|publisher=Our Sunday Visitor Publishing|isbn=1592760945|pages=8}}

As William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in the early 16th century, he preserved the singular and plural distinctions that he found in his Hebrew and Greek originals. He used thou for the singular and ye for the plural regardless of the relative status of the speaker and the addressee. Tyndale's usage was standard for the period and mirrored that found in the earlier Wycliffe's Bible and the later King James Bible. But as the use of thou in non-dialect English began to decline in the 18th century,{{cite book|last1=Jespersen|first1=Otto|author-link1=Otto Jespersen|title=Progress in Language|url=https://archive.org/stream/cu31924026448203#page/n279/mode/2up|year=1894|location=New York|publisher=Macmillan|page=260}} its meaning nonetheless remained familiar from the widespread use of the latter translation.David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography. (Yale, 1995) {{ISBN|0-300-06880-8}}. See also David Daniell, The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. (Yale, 2003) {{ISBN|0-300-09930-4}}. The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which first appeared in 1946, retained the pronoun thou exclusively to address God, using you in other places. This was done to preserve the tone, at once intimate and reverent, that would be familiar to those who knew the King James Version and read the Psalms and similar text in devotional use.[http://www.ncccusa.org/newbtu/aboutrsv.html Preface to the Revised Standard Version] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160518063139/http://www.ncccusa.org/newbtu/aboutrsv.html |date=2016-05-18 }} 1971 The New American Standard Bible (1971) made the same decision, but the revision of 1995 (New American Standard Bible, Updated edition) reversed it. Similarly, the 1989 Revised English Bible dropped all forms of thou that had appeared in the earlier New English Bible (1970). The New Revised Standard Version (1989) omits thou entirely and claims that it is incongruous and contrary to the original intent of the use of thou in Bible translation to adopt a distinctive pronoun to address the Deity.{{cite web |url=http://www.ncccusa.org/newbtu/reader.html |title=NRSV: To the Reader |publisher=Ncccusa.org |date=2007-02-13 |access-date=2010-03-18 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100206062332/http://www.ncccusa.org/newbtu/reader.html |archive-date=2010-02-06 }}

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is still an authorized form of worship in the Church of England and much of the Anglican Communion, also uses the word thou to refer to the singular second person.[http://www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/bcp/ The Book of Common Prayer]. The Church of England. Retrieved on 12 September 2007.{{Synthesis inline|date=April 2022}}

Quakers traditionally used thee as an ordinary pronoun as part of their testimony of simplicity—a practice continued by certain Conservative Friends;{{cite web |title=Q: What about the funny Quaker talk? Do you still do that? |url=https://www.conservativefriend.org/faq.htm |publisher=Stillwater Monthly Meeting of Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends |access-date=10 April 2022 |language=English |archive-date=9 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210809211604/https://www.conservativefriend.org/faq.htm |url-status=dead }} the stereotype has them saying thee for both nominative and accusative cases.See, for example, [http://www.bartelby.net/248/456.html The Quaker Widow] by Bayard Taylor This was started at the beginning of the Quaker movement by George Fox, who called it "plain speaking", as an attempt to preserve the egalitarian familiarity associated with the pronoun. Most Quakers have abandoned this usage. At its beginning, the Quaker movement was particularly strong in the northwestern areas of England and particularly in the north Midlands area. The preservation of thee in Quaker speech may relate to this history.{{cite book|first=David Hackett |last=Fischer|author-link =David Hackett Fischer | title=Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America |publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1991|isbn=0-19-506905-6}} Modern Quakers who choose to use this manner of "plain speaking" often use the "thee" form without any corresponding change in verb form, for example, is thee or was thee.{{cite journal |first=Ezra Kempton |last=Maxfield |title=Quaker 'Thee' and Its History |journal=American Speech |volume=1 |issue=12 |year=1926 |pages=638–644 |doi=10.2307/452011 |jstor=452011 }}

In Latter-day Saint prayer tradition, the terms "thee" and "thou" are always and exclusively used to address God, as a mark of respect.{{Cite journal |last= Oaks |first= Dallin H. |author-link= Dallin H. Oaks |title= The Language of Prayer |url= https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1993/05/the-language-of-prayer?lang=eng |journal= Ensign |date=May 1983}}

In many of the Quranic translations, particularly those compiled by the Ahmadiyya, the terms thou and thee are used. One particular example is The Holy Quran - Arabic Text and English translation, translated by Maulvi Sher Ali.{{cite book |isbn=1-85372-314-2 |publisher=Islam International, Islamabad |location=Tilford, Surrey, UK |url=https://www.alislam.org/quran/Holy-Quran-English.pdf |title=The Holy Quran, English Translation |date=1989 |archive-date=2016-12-26 |access-date=2014-05-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161226091419/https://www.alislam.org/quran/Holy-Quran-English.pdf |url-status=dead }}

In the English translations of the scripture of the Baháʼí Faith, the terms thou and thee are also used. Shoghi Effendi, the head of the religion in the first half of the 20th century, adopted a style that was somewhat removed from everyday discourse when translating the texts from their original Arabic or Persian to capture some of the poetic and metaphorical nature of the text in the original languages and to convey the idea that the text was to be considered holy.{{Cite book | first = Diana | last = Malouf | chapter = The Vision of Shoghi Effendi | title = Proceedings of the Association for Baháʼí Studies, Ninth Annual Conference | date = November 1984 | location = Ottawa, Canada | pages = 129–139 }}

Like his contemporaries, William Shakespeare uses thou both in the intimate, French-style sense, and also to emphasize differences of rank, but he is by no means consistent in using the word, and friends and lovers sometimes call each other ye or you as often as they call each other thou,{{cite web

| url=http://www.shaksper.net/archives/1993/0938.html

| author=Cook, Hardy M.

| title=You/Thou in Shakespeare's Work

| publisher=SHAKSPER: The Global, Electronic Shakespeare Conference

| year=1993

| display-authors=etal

| access-date=2004-12-04

| archive-date=2007-02-25

| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070225013204/http://www.shaksper.net/archives/1993/0938.html

| url-status=dead

}}{{cite conference

| first = Clara

| last = Calvo

| title = 'Too wise to woo peaceably': The Meanings of Thou in Shakespeare's Wooing-Scenes

| book-title = Actas del III Congreso internacional de la Sociedad española de estudios renacentistas ingleses (SEDERI) / Proceedings of the III International Conference of the Spanish Society for English Renaissance studies

| pages = 49–59

| publisher = SEDERI

| year = 1992

| editor = Maria Luisa Danobeitia

| location = Granada

}}{{cite conference

| first=Mazzon

| last=Gabriella

| title=Shakespearean 'thou' and 'you' Revisited, or Socio-Affective Networks on Stage

| book-title = Early Modern English: Trends, Forms, and Texts

| editor = Carmela Nocera Avila| location = Fasano

| publisher = Schena

| year=1992

| pages = 121–36|display-editors=etal}} sometimes in ways that can be analysed for meaning, but often apparently at random.

For example, in the following passage from Henry IV, Shakespeare has Falstaff use both forms with Henry. Initially using "you" in confusion on waking he then switches to a comfortable and intimate "thou".

:Prince: Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldest truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? ...

:Falstaff: Indeed, you come near me now, Hal ... And, I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art a king, as God save thy Grace{{spaced ndash}}Majesty, I should say; for grace thou wilt have none –

While in Hamlet, Shakespeare uses discordant second person pronouns to express Hamlet's antagonism towards his mother.

:Queen Gertrude: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. [she means King Claudius, Hamlet's uncle and stepfather]

:Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended. [he means King Hamlet, his late father]

Except where everyday use survives in some regions of England,{{Cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/why-did-we-stop-using-thou|title=Why Did We Stop Using 'Thou'?}} the air of informal familiarity once suggested by the use of thou has disappeared; it is used often for the opposite effect with solemn ritual occasions, in readings from the King James Bible, in Shakespeare and in formal literary compositions that intentionally seek to echo these older styles. Since becoming obsolete in most dialects of spoken English, it has nevertheless been used by more recent writers to address exalted beings such as God,{{cite web |url=http://wyllie.lib.virginia.edu:8086/perl/toccer-new?id=RsvPsal.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=90&division=div1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040813193259/http://wyllie.lib.virginia.edu:8086/perl/toccer-new?id=RsvPsal.sgm&images=images%2Fmodeng&data=%2Ftexts%2Fenglish%2Fmodeng%2Fparsed&tag=public&part=90&division=div1 |url-status=dead |archive-date=August 13, 2004 |title=Psalm 90 |access-date=May 23, 2017 }} from the Revised Standard Version a skylark,[http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/webstuff/poetry/Shelley-OdetoaSkylar.html Ode to a Skylark] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090104055626/http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/webstuff/poetry/Shelley-OdetoaSkylar.html |date=2009-01-04 }} by Percy Bysshe Shelley Achilles,[http://www.bartleby.com/166/38.html The Iliad], translated by E. H. Blakeney, 1921 and even The Mighty Thor.{{cite web |url=http://paratime.ca/mv1/avengers/thor/thor528.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030917135334/http://www.paratime.ca/mv1/avengers/thor/thor528.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=September 17, 2003 |title=The Mighty Thor |access-date=May 23, 2017}} 528 In The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader addresses the Emperor with the words: "What is thy bidding, my master?" In Leonard Cohen's song "Bird on the Wire", he promises his beloved that he will reform, saying "I will make it all up to thee." In Diana Ross's song, "Upside Down", (written by Chic's Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards) there is the lyric "Respectfully I say to thee I'm aware that you're cheatin'." In "Will You Be There", Michael Jackson sings, "Hold me / Like the River Jordan / And I will then say to thee / You are my friend." Notably, both Ross's and Jackson's lyrics combine thee with the usual form you.

The converse—the use of the second person singular ending -est for the third person—also occurs ("So sayest Thor!"―spoken by Thor). This usage often shows up in modern parody and pasticheSee, for example, Rob Liefeld, "Awaken the Thunder" (Marvel Comics, Avengers, vol. 2, issue 1, cover date Nov. 1996, part of the Heroes Reborn storyline.) in an attempt to make speech appear either archaic or formal. The forms thou and thee are often transposed.

You is now the standard English second-person pronoun and encompasses both the singular and plural senses. In some dialects, however, thou has persisted,{{cite journal | title='You' and 'Thou' in Northern England | first=William | last=Evans | journal=South Atlantic Bulletin | volume=34 | issue=4 |date=November 1969 | pages=17–21 | doi=10.2307/3196963 | publisher=South Atlantic Modern Language Association | jstor=3196963}} and in others thou is retained for poetic and/or literary use. It also survives as a fossil word in the commonly-used phrase "holier-than-thou".{{Cite web|title=Definition of HOLIER-THAN-THOU|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/holier-than-thou|access-date=2020-08-06|website=www.merriam-webster.com|language=en}}

In traditional dialects, thou is used in the English counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, Durham, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, and some western parts of Nottinghamshire.{{cite book|first=Peter|last=Trudgill|title=The Dialects of England|date=21 January 2000|isbn=978-0631218159|page=93|publisher=Wiley }} The Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects, which began in 1968,{{cite book|page=Foreword|last=Parry|first=David|title=A Grammar and Glossary of the Conservative Anglo-Welsh Dialects of Rural Wales|year=1999|publisher=The National Centre for English Cultural Tradition|url=https://archive.org/details/start-of-survey-of-anglo-welsh-dialects/page/n7/mode/2up}} found that thou persisted in scattered sites across Clwyd, Dyfed, Powys, and West Glamorgan.{{cite book|page=108|last=Parry|first=David|title=A Grammar and Glossary of the Conservative Anglo-Welsh Dialects of Rural Wales|year=1999|publisher=The National Centre for English Cultural Tradition|url=https://archive.org/details/sawd-morphology-and-syntax/page/108/mode/2up}} Such dialects normally also preserve distinct verb forms for the singular second person: for example, thee coost (standard English: you could, archaic: thou couldst), in northern Staffordshire. Throughout rural Yorkshire, the old distinction between nominative and objective is preserved.{{Citation needed|date=September 2008}} The possessive is often written as thy in local dialect writings, but is pronounced as an unstressed tha, and the possessive pronoun has in modern usage almost exclusively followed other English dialects in becoming yours or the local{{Specify|date=September 2008}} word your'n (from your one):{{Citation needed|date=January 2018}}

The apparent incongruity between the archaic nominative, objective, and genitive forms of this pronoun on the one hand, and the modern possessive form on the other, may be a signal that the linguistic drift of Yorkshire dialect is causing tha to fall into disuse, although a measure of local pride in the dialect may be counteracting this.

Some other variants are specific to certain areas: In Sheffield, the initial consonant was pronounced as /d/, which led to the nickname of the "dee-dahs" for people from Sheffield.{{cite book|last1=Stoddart|first1=Jana|last2=Upton|first2=Clive|last3=Widdowson|first3=J. D. A.|year=1999|chapter=Sheffield dialect in the 1990s: revisiting the concept of NORMs|page=79|title=Urban Voices|location=London|publisher=Arnold}} In Lancashire and West Yorkshire, ta {{IPA|[tə]}} was used as an unstressed shortening of thou, which can be found in the song "On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at", although K.M. Petyt found this form to have been largely displaced from urban West Yorkshire in his 1970-1 fieldwork.{{cite book

|last=Petyt|first=Keith M.|author-link=K. M. Petyt|year=1985|title='Dialect' and 'Accent' in Industrial West Yorkshire|publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company|isbn=9027279497|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0skjSvKRQb4C|page=375}}

In rural North Lancashire between Lancaster and the North Yorkshire border tha is preserved in colloquial phrases such as "What would tha like for thi tea?" (What would you like for your dinner), and {{"'}}appen tha waint" ("perhaps you won't"{{spaced ndash}}happen being the dialect word for perhaps) and "tha knows" (you know). This usage in Lancashire is becoming rare, except for elderly and rural speakers.

A well-known routine by comedian Peter Kay, from Bolton, Greater Manchester (historically in Lancashire), features the phrase "Has tha nowt moist?”{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP-p6H0E0QU |title=Has tha nowt moist - Youtube|website=YouTube |date=20 March 2012 }}

(Have you got nothing moist?).

The use of the word "thee" in the song "I Predict a Riot" by Leeds band Kaiser Chiefs ("Watching the people get lairy / is not very pretty, I tell thee") caused some comment{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp/news/top5/2005/09/29/25044.shtml |title=BBC Top of the Pops web page |publisher=Bbc.co.uk |date=2005-09-29 |access-date=2010-03-18|archive-date=2010-06-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100618075108/http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp/news/top5/2005/09/29/25044.shtml}} by people who were unaware that the word is still in use in the Yorkshire dialect.

The word "thee" is also used in the song Upside Down "Respectfully, I say to thee / I'm aware that you're cheating".{{Cite web|url=http://www.nilerodgers.com/legacy/LyricLibrary/Lyrics/UpsideDown.aspx|title=Nile Rodgers Official Website|access-date=2020-10-22|archive-date=2024-12-01|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241201202857/http://www.nilerodgers.com/legacy/LyricLibrary/Lyrics/UpsideDown.aspx|url-status=dead}}

The use of the phrase "tha knows" has been widely used in various songs by Arctic Monkeys, a band from High Green, a suburb of Sheffield. Alex Turner, the band's lead singer, has also often replaced words with "tha knows" during live versions of the songs.{{citation needed|date=March 2025}}

The use persists somewhat in the West Country dialects, albeit somewhat affected. Some of the Wurzels' songs include "Drink Up Thy Zider" and "Sniff Up Thy Snuff".{{cite news |url=http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/homepage/Cider-drinkers-target-core-audience-Bristol/article-1966267-detail/article.html |title=Cider drinkers target core audience in Bristol |work=Bristol Evening Post |date=April 2, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100405190846/http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/homepage/Cider-drinkers-target-core-audience-Bristol/article-1966267-detail/article.html |archive-date=2010-04-05 |access-date=April 2, 2010 |postscript=,}} and [http://www.wurzelmania.co.uk/ Wurzelmania.] somersetmade ltd. Retrieved on 12 September 2007.

Thoo has also been used in the Orcadian Scots dialect in place of the singular informal thou. In Shetland dialect, the other form of Insular Scots, du and dee are used. The word "thou" has been reported in the North Northern Scots Cromarty dialect as being in common use in the first half of the 20th century and by the time of its extinction only in occasional use.[http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/download/files/The%20Cromarty%20Fisherfolk%20Dialect.pdf The Cromarty Fisherfolk Dialect] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151202061539/http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/download/files/The%20Cromarty%20Fisherfolk%20Dialect.pdf |date=2015-12-02 }}, Am Baile, page 5

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{{Cite book |title = A Handbook of Varieties of English: CD-ROM |last = Kortmann |first = Bernd |publisher = Mouton de Gruyter |year = 2004 |isbn = 978-3110175325 |page = 1117}} and y'all or the colloquial you guys ("you lot" in England). Ye remains common in some parts of Ireland, but the examples just given vary regionally and are usually restricted to colloquial speech.

Further, in other dialects the vacuum created by the loss of a distinction has led to the creation of new forms of the second-person plural, such as y'all in the Southern United States or yous by some Australians and heard in what are generally considered working class dialects in and near cities in the northeastern United States. The forms vary across the English-speaking world and between literature and the spoken language.{{cite book

| title=From Elfland to Poughkeepsie

| author=Le Guin, Ursula K.

| author-link = Ursula K. Le Guin

| publisher = Pendragon Press

|date=June 1973

| isbn=0-914010-00-X}}

• T–V distinction

{{reflist|30em}}

• Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language, 5th ed. {{ISBN|0-13-015166-1}}
• Burrow, J. A., Turville-Petre, Thorlac. A Book of Middle English. {{ISBN|0-631-19353-7}}
• Daniel, David. The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. {{ISBN|0-300-09930-4}}.
• {{cite journal|last=Shorrocks|first=Graham|title=Case Assignment in Simple and Coordinate Constructions in Present-Day English|journal=American Speech|volume=67|issue=4|year=1992|pages=432–444|doi=10.2307/455850|jstor=455850}}
• Smith, Jeremy. A Historical Study of English: Form, Function, and Change. {{ISBN|0-415-13272-X}}
• "Thou, pers. pron., 2nd sing." Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989). [http://dictionary.oed.com/ Oxford English Dictionary] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060625103623/http://dictionary.oed.com/ |date=2006-06-25 }}.
• Trudgill, Peter. (1999) Blackwell Publishing. Dialects of England. {{ISBN|0-631-21815-7}}

• Brown, Roger and Gilman, Albert. [https://books.google.com/books?id=bVG5XCa1DkkC&dq=Brown+Gilman++Thou+Shakespeare&pg=PA156 The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity], 1960, reprinted in: Sociolinguistics: the Essential Readings, Wiley-Blackwell, 2003, {{ISBN|0-631-22717-2|978-0-631-22717-5}}
• Byrne, St. Geraldine. Shakespeare's use of the pronoun of address: its significance in characterization and motivation, Catholic University of America, 1936 (reprinted Haskell House, 1970) {{OCLC|2560278}}.
• Quirk, Raymond. Shakespeare and the English Language, in Kenneth Muir and Sam Schoenbaum, eds, A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies*, 1971, Cambridge UP
• Wales, Katie. Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English. {{ISBN|0-521-47102-8}}
• Walker, Terry. Thou and you in early modern English dialogues: trials, depositions, and drama comedy, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007, {{ISBN|90-272-5401-X|9789027254016}}

{{Wiktionary|thou|thy|thine|thee|thyself|art}}

{{Spoken Wikipedia|En-thou-article.ogg|date=2007-09-11}}

• [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15097/15097-h/15097-h.htm A Grammar of the English Tongue] by Samuel Johnson – includes description of 18th century use
• [http://www.yorksj.ac.uk/dialect/ Contemporary use of thou in Yorkshire] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070716060325/http://www.yorksj.ac.uk/dialect/ |date=2007-07-16 }}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20050107082747/http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000208 Thou]: The Maven's Word of the Day
• [http://www.shaksper.net/archives/1993/0938.html You/Thou in Shakespeare's Work] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070225013204/http://www.shaksper.net/archives/1993/0938.html |date=2007-02-25 }} (archived forum discussion)
• [http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/tchg/lit/adv/shak.gram.html A Note on Shakespeare's Grammar] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070523184427/http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/tchg/lit/adv/shak.gram.html |date=2007-05-23 }} by Seamus Cooney
• [https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1976/01/the-language-of-formal-prayer?lang=eng The Language of Formal Prayer by Don E. Norton, Jr.] - LDS

{{History of English}}

{{Middle English personal pronouns}}

Category:Archaic English words and phrases

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Category:Middle English personal pronouns

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