y/th

[magicdice]

when printed writing first started out, they didn't have a way of expressing the "th" sound in "the", so they chose the letter Y (right??). and so "ye olde worlde" and all that jazz. so... does something similar apply with the loss of "thou"? since this looks lots like "you", was it that both were written the same and so people stopped using thou in favour of you?

feel free to tell me i'm completely wrong here, since it's just something that occurred to me the other day & has been bugging me since.

[jno]

It technically wasn't a y they used but a very similar-looking letter called 'thorn' with a soft th sound (the one in 'the'; the voiceless th in 'thick' had another character).

As I remember, though, you and thou were different words from different parts of the country, and you simply became the more common one. Thou was used in the Bible but it was already going out of fashion by then.

All this is subject to correction by Quizmonster and other more erudite contributors if they see the question.

[kempie]

Ye is the Early Modern English nominative of you.

Ye (with Y replacing 'thorn') was often used in early typescript in place of the.

Ye Olde... is pronounced The Olde...

God rest ye merry gentlemen is pronounced as spelled.

[maxi29]

Thou is the second person singular (informal) nominative pronoun, you is the second person plural. Thee is the accusative version of thou. Use of these forms gradually died out - but I have no idea why (that's a question that ABers might like to answer).

English is one of the few European languages (it might well be the only one) that has only one fom of 'you' (Welsh has 'ti' and 'chi', French as 'tu' and 'vous', German has 'du' and 'Sie' for example). English also used to have a second-person verb that ended in -st, ('thou hast' for example) which clearly shows the Germanic roots of English as it's the same ending that modern German has.

This wasn't something that would be found in different parts of the country, this was a universal form of English. However, it is true to say that while the practice of using 'thou' and 'thee' died out in standard forms of speech, it didn't die out in some northern dialects and can still be heard in Yorkshire today. The form is also used by Quakers.
See here for further details http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou

[jno]

Done a bit more research - sorry, didn't have my books with me last night.

Ye and you were originally plurals; thou and thee singular. (Ye and thou were nominative - subjects of sentences; you and thee accusative or objects.) Ye and you came to be used as singular forms too, as more polite forms of thou/thee, probably under the influence of the French tu/vous split. Gradually ye and you took over altogether, but ye faded away alongside thou and thee, leaving you as both singular and plural, formal and intimate, subject and object.

Some would say the lack of a formal/intimate distinction reflects the more democratic British way of doing things. Whatever. But I think the answer to magicdice's question is: No, you and thou were separate words.

[magicdice]

ahh, see i thought that was probably the case (i study french & used to do german so i do understand the 2nd person plural thing) but i was still wondering if the two might by any chance have been connected - if the usage of "thou" dying out is related to the 'y' to represent 'th'

thank you all for your answers