
Did English ever have a formal version of “you”? - psawaya
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/9780/did-english-ever-have-a-formal-version-of-you
======
fsck--off
Second person used to be:

Singular----|----Plural

    
    
       Thou      Ye, You
    
       Thee      You
    
       Thine     Yours
    
       Thy       Your
    

Which correspond to the nominative, objective, and possessive cases
accordingly.

By the way, the "Ye" is not related to the "Ye" in store signs that say "Ye
Olde...". Y was sometimes used by typographers instead of the Old English
letter Þ(Thorn), which makes a "Th" sound, so those store signs should be
pronounced as " _The_ Old..."

The usage of "You" instead of "Thou" began in the 14th century. It was
originally used in token of respect when addressing a superior, and eventually
began to be used when addressing equals.

EDIT: Removed part about "you all", because some things I said were wrong and
others I will have to look up.

~~~
davedx
Interesting. So the way we learned the Lord's Prayer, it seems to use the
informal: "Thy will be done". But that doesn't correlate with addressing God
as "LORD", does it?

Edit: I looked this up and found this page:
[http://brandplucked.webs.com/theeandye.htm](http://brandplucked.webs.com/theeandye.htm)

It seems to infer that "thou, thee" etc. are only about distinguishing between
singular and plural. There's no mention of them being an informal form, at
least not in the King James Bible.

Even more:

"As William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in the early 16th
century, he sought to preserve the singular and plural distinctions that he
found in his Hebrew and Greek originals. Therefore, he consistently used thou
for the singular and ye for the plural regardless of the relative status of
the speaker and the addressee. By doing so, he probably saved thou from utter
obscurity and gave it an air of solemnity that sharply distinguished it from
its original meaning. Tyndale's usage was imitated in the King James Bible,
and remained familiar because of that translation."

Then more from Wikipedia - the plot thickens!

"Early English translations of the Bible used thou and never you as the
singular second-person pronoun, with the double effect of maintaining thou in
usage and also imbuing it with an air of religious solemnity that is
antithetical to its former sense of familiarity or disrespect."

Also, apparently French uses the informal (see "toi" in the Lord's Prayer),
whereas Dutch uses formal (U/uw).

~~~
davidw
In Italian, the informal 'tu' is used. No idea why, or what the history of
that is.

~~~
simias
Same in french, in this case I think it implies that God is "part of the
family" so to speak, someone very close, not a stranger.

"Vous" is formal but it doesn't necessarily mean that "tu" is informal, it
just implies a certain form of intimacy.

Also, I'd like to point out that using the plural "you" as polite/formal also
kind of works with plural "we" as in the "royal we":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we)

I'm not sure if both are directly related though.

------
merkitt
Greetings from a speaker of a linguistic oddity that _doesn 't_ have a
universal form of the word "you".

My native language -- Sinhalese -- has two forms: written and spoken. The
written form, which has a grammar very similar to Latin, does have a universal
"you", but the spoken form, which is largely grammer-less except for tense,
does not. You literally cannot address someone without knowing their
status/relationship to you. This leads to some difficult and sometimes
hilarious situations:

\- Children, family members and lovers are often addressed "oya". Using this
on your boss or teacher could lead to problems. More acceptable when used by
women and girls than by men.

\- There's no way to informally address a superior without a salutation or a
name. This leads to people repeatedly using a person's name or salutation in
the same sentence. E.g. "Sir, should I have that report sir asked for on sir's
desk before sir leaves for sir's doctor's appointment?"

\- Some old fashioned couples have entire conversations (and sometimes
marriages) without using second person pronouns because they don't have a
single version they feel comfortable with.

\- Male friends of roughly equal age tend to call each other "machang" \-- a
term that is well known to those who have known Sri Lankans, and roughly
translates to "dude".

\- There's no safe version of "you" that a young man can use on another that
he has just met. Most risk using "machang", but could result in offense if
addressing someone of higher social standing. This is solved by constructing
sentences that avoid the word entirely.

\- Most children, especially from my generation, do not feel comfortable using
second person pronouns on their parents. They just repeat "mother/father"
wherever the word "you" is supposed to appear.

\- Sometimes the sentences are spoken with the word entirely omitted (like in
Latin) -- "Can come over here?", "Did lock the door?"

~~~
eru
> [...] but the spoken form, which is largely grammer-less [...]

No need to deprecate your mother-tongue. I bet there's plenty of grammar, it's
just different from the written form.

(I see a similar inferiority complex with speakers of Singlish here in
Singapore. It's a great language, if you ask me.)

~~~
merkitt
It is in fact a great language. For one thing, our alphabet is fully phonetic.
And it's even arranged in a logical grid:
[http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sinhala.htm](http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sinhala.htm)

It's also a great language to tell jokes in. We have a lot of delivery-based
humor that gets completely lost if only the meaning is translated (which is
often the case when the destination language is English).

Some of our original deficiencies: we didn't have punctuation or even spaces
before they were introduced by European colonists (Portuguese, Dutch and
British, in that order). So our ancient writings
LOOKEDKINDOFLIKETHISANDWENTONFORPARAGRAPHS.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I think that's a "feature" of lots of writing systems, punctuation and spaces
and lower case and other formatting is one of those things that's obvious only
in retrospect.

------
moskie
This relates well to one of the fascinating things I realized while learning
German: the fact that so many English and German words and sounds have
phonetic connections, coming from their common Germanic ancestry.

For example, the letter "d" in German corresponding to "th" in English:

    
    
      die/der/das -> the
      drei -> three
      Donner -> thunder
      Ding -> thing
      daher -> therefore
    

and, most relevant to this discussion:

    
    
      du -> thou
    

I'm sure this connection can be better explained than I'm able to, but it was
a mini-epiphany for me while studying the language.

~~~
nicholas73
Any Danish speakers here? It should be even closer to English as that's where
the Angles and Saxons are from.

~~~
eitland
I'm pretty sure there are, at least I think I see Norwegians all the time : )

When you know Norwegian or Danish you can see a lot of similarities. The
explanation I got was that around year 1000 Norway/Denmark was pretty much a
naval superpower.

~~~
vidarh
It's actually more recent. From the mid 1300's the Norwegian and Danish
monarchy merged through marriage, and Denmark became by far the dominant party
in the union. (Schelswig-Holsten was also for some time part of

The union lasted until 1814, when Denmark (and by extension Norway) had
supported Napoleon, and Sweden had joined the other side. Sweden got Norway as
a "price". But during that period, a lot of people had started preparing for
an attempt at Norwegian independence. And while we entered into a looser union
with Sweden, there was a long ongoing debate about creating a new, formalised
Norwegian language.

We ended up with two, but one of them - bokmål - was basically Danish +
Norwegian pronunciation + various spelling reforms, as this was effectively
what was spoken amongst the upper classes in the cities, and this (with
further spelling reforms) is the dominant written language today (the other
was based on spoken dialects, and is further from Danish but not that much) .

So we've "only" had about 200 years for the languages to diverge again.

------
nisse72
Swedish has _du_ (singular) and _ni_ (plural). Prior to the "du-reform" in the
late 1960's however, _ni_ was also used as a formal singular form, but for the
last 40 or so years the formal form has been dropped, leaving _ni_ for plural
only. In fact many older people would find it mildly insulting to be addressed
singular _ni_ today.

Of course there are a few exceptions, most notably when addressing members of
the royal family. If you ever get to speak with one of them, the correct way
is to address them by title, in third person ("would her majesty like fries
with that?").

Around 8 or 10 years ago I started to notice a trend, particularly among
younger people (in their late teens maybe), typically working in shops and
cafes, who started once again to use singular _ni_ with customers, but I
haven't lived in Sweden for several years now and don't know if that's
continued. I hope not!

~~~
ptr
Could this be dialectal? Because I hear "ni" now and then, and I've also found
myself using it a couple of times -- not through intent, but rather
automatically. Maybe it's the "new trend" you're talking about.

~~~
nisse72
Maybe it's a central Stockholm thing, I don't really know. And I certainly
didn't mean to imply that it was common, I only noticed it now and then and
vaguely recall some mention of it on P1 Språket or in the newspaper, that it
seemed to be making a return.

I've only ever known _du_ , would never use _ni_ except for a group, and feel
odd being called _ni_ myself. Not insulted mind you, closest I can describe it
is like when a small child refers to you as "that man" but you're only 16 or
17. :)

Ok, did some googling...

This from P1 Språket says that it wasn't a trend in 2004 (but then why were
they asking?):
[http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=411&arti...](http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=411&artikel=390269)

And this blog from 2008, in response to a column in DN that I can't find in
their archive:
[http://lingvistbloggen.ling.su.se/?p=352](http://lingvistbloggen.ling.su.se/?p=352)

And finally this in DN from 2013: [http://www.dn.se/insidan/fjask-eller-
respekt-ar-du-pa-vag-at...](http://www.dn.se/insidan/fjask-eller-respekt-ar-
du-pa-vag-att-bli-ni-igen/)

So trend or not, it certainly seems to be a recurring topic of discussion in
Sweden!

------
gruseom
In Polish, you don't use the plural _vy_ as a formal singular. In Russian you
do. I took Polish lessons at one point and my teacher would wince every time I
accidentally called him _vy_. He told me the Russians used to force Poles to
address each other that way in their own parliament. So sensitive was he to
this long-past linguistic oppression that he couldn't help but be offended
when an English speaker who happened to have studied Russian did it by
mistake.

~~~
mjolk
I don't understand - why would it be offensive to have to use the formal case
with each other in a parliament? Is the idea that вы ('vih'/'vy') implies
formality/lack of familiarity and the Polish wanted a more conversational tone
in their governance?

~~~
pessimizer
I think the point was that it was Russian, not Polish.

~~~
mjolk
....ohhhh (I feel dumb now). Thanks!

------
jjoe
We're very happy with _y 'all_ here in Texas.

~~~
vacri
It confused me when I asked a native Texan something about what I should do
next and she responded with "y'all could [foo]". But there's only one of me? I
suppose that technically I am the 'all' of the 'you' that is being addressed?

~~~
bunderbunder
In some regional vernaculars, "y'all" is singular and "all y'all" is plural.

~~~
groovy2shoes
Interesting. Here in North Carolina, "y'all" is generally plural, whereas "all
y'all" is also plural but more emphatic, as in "I really do mean every last
one of you", or sometimes simply to indicate a stronger emotional content,
especially when angry.

~~~
chiph
South Carolinian here that spent a lot of time in Raleigh & Charlotte and is
now living in Austin. "y'all" can be both singular and plural, depending on
the context. "All y'all" applies to larger groups (sometimes including people
that aren't present), as well as with additional emphasis.

"All y'all come by for supper" meaning you and your close family. And maybe
even some other people as well, if there's room at the table for them.

------
Gigablah
Regarding the comment on the Chinese character 您 at the bottom of that page:
it's still very much in use (formal letters, ceremony speeches, etc).

I can't add a reply though, because apparently I need 50 reputation. I can't
upvote, because I need 10 reputation. You know what, StackExchange? I'll just
stay away from your site with all the barriers to participation that you throw
up.

~~~
eridius
You say barriers to participation, I say anti-spam measures.

Have you really never used any StackExchange site, though? Once you've used
one, you get 100 free rep when signing up on any other StackExchange site,
which is enough to perform all the basic actions (posting, commenting, voting,
etc).

~~~
Gigablah
I have an account on StackOverflow and I linked it to my new
english.stackexchange.com account, but I didn't get any free rep.

~~~
eridius
Do you have any StackOverflow rep? I would assume it only gives you MIN(100,
otherAccountRep), so if your SO rep is 0 I'm guessing your new account also
gets 0.

~~~
Gigablah
I do, 131 rep on my SO account.

------
_ZeD_
As an aside note, italian has "two" formal versions of "you".

The informal one, "tu", is common on all the peninsula.

The formal version "voi" (2nd person plural) is more common in the south of
the Italy (it's a reminiscent of the spanish invasions).

The formal version "lei" (3rd person singular) is more common in the north of
the Italy.

~~~
davidw
I live in the north, but when learning Italian, we were taught that 'lei' is
the correct one, while 'voi' is sort of archaic. You see/hear it in, say,
comic books like this one, set in the 1800's:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_Willer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_Willer)

------
samatman
I'm having trouble finding a reference, but it's my understanding that the
Dissenter (later Quaker) habit of referring to everyone as 'thou' regardless
of rank is precisely what lead to 'you' becoming universal. If one wasn't a
Dissenter, one surely didn't want to be mistaken for such.

~~~
lukeschlather
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction)
has some extensive discussion.

The version I heard is roughly that, though I recall a professor blaming it on
Cromwell's commonwealth rather than the Quakers (after the commonwealth fell
thee/thou went completely out of favor.)

------
nolanpro
I know a guy who got to meet Queen Elizabeth. He was required to go through a
royal customs seminar before meeting her. Apparently, you NEVER use "you" when
talking to the queen. You can't say "Would you like some tea?". You must say
"Would Your Majesty like some tea?". Hows that for formal.

~~~
RamiK
Older English man still use indirect speech when referring to themselves and
the person they're talking to if there's a significant class difference or
even gender. Sometimes they'll even avoid posing questions altogether: "One
would like to request your company for tea if it not too inconvenient...".

Makes everyone sound like a wedding invitation. :)

~~~
henderson101
I still use "One" quite a lot in writing (especially forums) when I need to
discuss your personal opinion without implying that I'm speaking for the other
parties in the conversation. i.e.

"You often see cars speeding along this road" <\- perfectly valid and the
context can be taken from the way it is delivered in speach, but could be
misread to imply that the writer thinks the person they are addressing sees
the cars.

"One often sees cars speeding along this road" <\- unambiguous.

------
lexcorvus
In case you're wondering, the "PIE" referred to in some of the answers is
"proto-Indo-European" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-
European_language](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-
European_language)).

------
bhickey
Hemingway's abuse of language in _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ always drove me. He
uses _you_ in place of _tu_ and _thou_ as _usted_.

~~~
gruseom
Do you have an example? That seems like a howler that surely his editor would
have caught if he didn't.

~~~
andyjohnson0
It was intentional. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls#Languag...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls#Language)

------
saltysugar
We Vietnamese don't even have anything equivalent to "you".

We use "friend/friends" (we don't distinguish between plural and singular) for
a generic "you". Otherwise, in social situation, we have to figure out the
relative social order to address the other person, i.e. calling them by
titles/roles such as aunt/uncle/mom/dad etc.

It's a big headache cause it can be very awkward to use one pronoun (for
example, calling a woman was "younger sis") and she turns out to be older - it
can be impolite, but then some women will be offended if you call them as
"older sister" right away, because, ugh, you consider them older. God, it's a
convoluted mess of pronouns :(

------
amw
I keep being surprised this isn't common knowledge, but then I remember I
married a Quaker

~~~
mnw21cam
I thought it was common knowledge. I mean, if it comes up at school at age 8,
it's not exactly high learning.

------
hangonhn
The original asker made a minor error. Chinese isn't in the Proto-Indo-
European language family. It is in the Sino-Tibetan family.

------
rootbear
As a former Southerner, who grew up with "y'all", and a fan of Shakespearean
English, I have to say that I've always been sorry that English lost its
distinct second person singular pronouns. We've had to come up with all sorts
of work-arounds as a result.

I always thought it odd that Esperanto adopted this "feature", presumably from
English:

    
    
                    Singular        Plural
     first person    mi (I)          ni (we)
     second person	        vi (you)
     third person
        masculine   li (he)         ili (they)
        feminine    ŝi (she)
        epicene     ĝi (it, s/he)
    

Not one of Zamenhof's better choices, in my opinion. There is an informal
second person singular pronoun, ci (thou), but as I recall it was only used in
certain circumstances. If any Esperantists reading this know why Zamenhof used
vi for both singular and plural, I'd love to know.

------
friendzis
In languages I know formal version of "you" (local version of singular second
person) is plural form of the same word. Historical explanation is rather
simple. Remember history lessons: kings used to say "we, the king, think..."
meaning that the king is a representative of some group. Due to this language
quirk when addressing such a person formally you actually address whole group
the person represents, hence the plural form of "you". In informal environment
one usually addresses the same person directly, hence the singular form being
not so much formal. Simple as that :)

~~~
kevinpet
This isn't universal. German is a counter example -- the formal Sie derives
from the third person plural, while it still preserves Du and Ihr for informal
second person with singular and plural.

I don't know Spanish well, but it probably contradicts this as well. Usted and
Ustedes are not related to vosotros (informal second person informal, not used
in the Americas) and take the verbs for third person like German.

It's not anything so specific as a group. It's about distancing or
impersonalizing the speech. It's too direct to say "Do _you_ want something to
drink?" and instead the phrasing could be "Does the gentleman want something
to drink?"

We do something similar with phrasing like "if you would like" or in German
using subjunctive forms of many verbs like "I would like" / "Ich möchte" /
"quisiera" instead of "I want" / "Ich mag" / "quiero".

~~~
jejones3141
I read long ago in a book by Mario Pei that "usted" was originally "vuestra
merced" (your grace).

~~~
gdwatson
I remember learning that in high school, and things made so much more sense;
it explains why _usted_ takes third-person verbs and possessive pronouns.

Wasn't _vosotros_ used as a formal _tu_ at one time, especially with regard to
royalty? I seem to recall reading that, but I can't say it with any degree of
confidence.

------
rcruzeiro
In Portuguese and German there are still the formal and informal cases: Formal
: Você, Informal: Tu

The same thing in German: Formal : Sie, Informal: Du

I am not a linguistics guy but I think that Thou, Du, Tu have all the same
origin as they sound so similar.

~~~
mixmastamyk
The Roman empire spread latin far and wide.

~~~
maaku
yes, that completely explains a phenomenon that arose in the early middle
ages.

~~~
digisign
More helpful, less of an ass, please.

------
nraynaud
Actually there is another form of formal addressing that is more like the
spanish and german: "her majesty", "his holiness" (with the equivalents in
French, "son altesse", "sa sainteté"). This closes some gap between those
languages, and show that there is also a remaining formal address in modern
English and there are 2 in modern french.

(next time, examples of present continuous in modern french)

------
kubiiii
I learned this while playing Ultima 7, serpent isle. I literally learned
english as a teenager while playing that game. Thanks Origin for that.

------
evincarofautumn
Nice to see English on here. I’m one of the more active users there (Jon
Purdy) and it’s a great resource. :)

~~~
sabbatic13
It's also the first time all the work that went into my doctoral exam in
Proto-Indo-European Verbal Morphology has been relevant to, well, anything on
HN. O.K., it's pronouns, but I had to study those too.

------
JoeAltmaier
I thought 'ye' was a corruption, a misinterpretation of the rune for 'th'
combined with 'e'; on a sign 'Ye olde boars head' was really 'The old boars
head'.

So there was really a 'ye'? Explains the confusion I guess.

------
Grue3
I'm not even a native English speaker and I knew that. Is this really news to
people here?

~~~
hvfl3
Take a random word. The proportion of people who know its etymology will be
low. Is that really news to _you_? This is Hacker News, not Linguist News.

I don't really understand this attitude. I once made a joke about the Swedish
word for sandwich - which is literally "butter goose" \- and a humorless
immigrant got all pissy about how Swedes are so ignorant, they don't even know
that "butter goose" doesn't refer to actual geese etc etc. (Coincidentally, I
did know the etymology but knowing it would not detract from the joke.)

------
astrobe_
About the top answer: Latin as no pronouns, but it has 2 distinct forms for
singular and plural second person in conjugation. I don't remember, though, if
the plural form was used as a polite form at least in the texts we have.

~~~
sabbatic13
What I think you meant to say is that Latin does not use pronouns in its
verbal conjugations. That's a feature of most ancient Indo-European languages.
It did, of course, have a full suite of pronouns used in other contexts.

~~~
sabbatic13
Oh, and no, the plural wasn't used as a formal singular. It was idiomatic to
occasionally use the first person plural to refer to oneself (you can see this
in Cicero's letters), but it had nothing to do with formality or some sort of
"royal we."

~~~
ghayes
Wait, I definitely learned of the royal "we" in Latin. Specifically, this came
up in Apollo and Daphne[1], with much of Apollo's first speech in the first-
person plural referring exclusively to himself. We were taught in class that
it was related to his arrogance to use a royal "we", which is a large theme of
the story.

[1]
[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Daphne_and_Apollo](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Daphne_and_Apollo)

------
random_number
You, sir, are expecting too much from your audience.

It's interesting in that the assumption of formality in 'you, sir,' suggests
the speaker is about to be rather discourteous in the following clause.

------
hugofirth
Trust the British to settle on the formal version.

------
VaedaStrike
This makes me want to see a poll HN to see how many have read any amount of
The KJV, and how much they've read.

~~~
gdwatson
Doesn't the KJV avoid the formal-plural convention entirely? Most of my
reading has been in newer versions, but I seem to recall that it used _thou_
for singular and _ye_ for plural very consistently; I sometimes wish for that
distinction in modern Bible translations.

------
dhoulb
I was happy to be surprised by the answer!

------
ohearb
I think that by now, you is pretty commonly accepted as both formal and
informal.

------
jwmoz
In the West Midlands we have 'ya'.

