Thou, thee, thy, thine, thyself.

*Shushes obeyingly*

Anyway, back to the point. Yes, the English language is so polite that it doesn't need a plural/polite form of 'you'.

EDIT: Unlike Hungarian. That is very impolite

 

French >>> English

Ha.

 

It sounds nicer. Dammit, I'm a French student and I can't even put that into French

 

Do you waaaaant...do you waaaaaant...to come back to my place, bouncy bouncy?

[/obligatory]

 

Drop your panties Sir William, I cannot wait 'till lunchtime.

 

My nipples explode with delight!




I think we should stop now....

 

Oh curses, the linguistics thread always pops up while I'm out!

Actually, "you" is the formal/polite pronoun, with "thou" and its derivatives being the informal. So really, English is ALWAYS polite. The plural issue, however, is an interesting one. Before the English language was Frenchified, "thou" and such were all singular, and "you" was the plural. Now the French decided that the plurals were far more appropriate for referring to strangers and persons of importance, so as "you" was used more and more, "thou" and its fellows fell out of use and English was left with just a plural. So, we made it a singular as well and have been happy ever since.

What we're really missing are some good ol' inclusive/exclusive "you" words.

EDIT: Edited for easier understanding.

 

So, as usual, blame the French. I keep finding more and more reasons to do so (esp. concerning English, of course)

 

oldschool

 

I only use the "thou's" when I'm reading or speaking in Old English.

You works just fine for me in normal conversation!

 

Latin > All

Warrior_of_Mandalore Strikes Again!

 

"Thou" used to be the singular form of "you": you can see that it looks similar to the "you" singular forms in other languages with some roots in Latin - tu in French and Italian, tui in Russian and so on. (But not in Finnish, because that derives from a different language family to other European languages.)

For some reason "thou" died out (_Vengeance_'s post made more sense on this point), and now we use "you" for both singular and plural, except:

1) in old texts that are kept in the language of the time rather than being 'updated' - Shakespeare's plays, the Bible.

2) in certain parts of England, Yorkshire especially, the "thou" form survives in the local speech. Yorkshire people will still say "tha'" for "you" if they mean one person.

It's no longer a part of common English speech, and excepting occasions when people are trying to sound 1) very official or 2) funny, it's not used.

Good question, though.

 

Wow, 36 replies with none of them made by me. Good job, thank you all. I got all the answers I was searching for.

Then some comments:

I know, I just forgot to add why is there no different singular "you" in English.

And I know that too.

Finnish personal pronouns:

Minä = I
Sinä = Thou / Singular you
Hän = He / She
Se = It
Me = We
Te = Plural you
He = They

We can also use "te" as a singular you, but that is rare.

That was nice.

If a person in so high position as you are says like you just did, does that mean that my thread is counted as a quality post?

Well, I am not amusing, so I would probably be that starred word...

With Hungarian and Estonian, Finnish is the only official finno-ugric language in Europe.





And now that I got the information, this thread can either "die", or continue to be a "thou" discussion, or simply a thread where you say do you use thou in your speaking.

 

haha, that's funny. I'm in no high position. I'm just an English student in my first(!) semester who happens to mod a quiet little movie forum. It was a good question from the point of view of a newbie-linguist who doesn't know the answer.

besides, it's not that hard to make better-than-average posts in JCC


by the way, I did rather well on my first test in English (language/ literature) history today (not that anyone cares, but it's close enough to the topic and I feel like telling )

 

Oh right then...