Grammar

Fine. I'll start a new thread.

In re: ``Thou'' versus ``You''

``Thou'' and ``You'' are the same word. Back in the days before English settled on the Roman alphabet, the two sounds we now consider ``th'' sounds were written using thorns and eths, the former being the non-voiced interdental central oral fricative, the latter being the voiced. When the Roman alphabet started to be in common use, typesetters had no letter to represent either of these sounds. For whatever reason, they were often replaced with the Roman letter ``Y'', but were still pronounced as originally. I've heard reports that this was due to their similar shapes, but I've not seen that in evidence. Over time, those sounds became represented by the diphthong ``th''. Over more time, the clear distinction between words with a ``Y'' and words with a thorn or eth were often lost. Some of the words reverted to using ``th'' (e.g. ``Ye'' vs. ``The''). Others retained the ``Y'' and changed their pronunciation (e.g. ``Thou'' vs. ``You'').

Holy cow. Non-voiced interdental central oral fricative? You're just showing off now, Bitt.

It's just kinda funny that it evolved that way, and nobody thought to get a 3rd person version into common use. Not like you can just make everyone start using a new word, but over time, it seems like it should have evolved at some point... hmm.

I heard from one source that there is also an implied formality or informality in the use of th* (thou, thee, etc) words that is now lost. Is that true?

Calvin

Well the romance languages use the singular version as informal, the plural version as formal. In French, for instance you say "vous" to someone to show respect, and "tu" to someone younger, or a stranger, or, I guess, someone you just don't respect.

Not sure how that ties into the convolluted family tree of the English language, but our resident expert will explain I'm sure.

You're right. I suppose I could have said the ``this'' sound versus the ``thin'' sound. ``This'' vibrates your vocal cords, which means voiced, and ``thin'' doesn't, which means non-voiced (or voiceless). It's the same difference as between English ``V'' and English ``F''.

I'm sure you meant ``plural'' and not ``3rd person'', by the way. German, from which English directly evolved, actually has only one word to mean both singlular and plural second person, as well, ``Sie''. On the other hand, informal German has two separate words, ``du'' and ``ihr''. Then again, I know little about historical German.

While doing a little bit of research about German pronouns just now (my German is very rusty), I came across a paper about the Development of the Second-Person Pronoun, and it claims that ``thou'' and ``ye'' (not the same as the mispronounced article ``ye/the'') were singular and plural during Middle English. It's an interesting read, if you care at all about this stuff. Contradicts some of what I said earlier; they're probably right, as I'm not a professional scholar.

I don't know. I know less about historical usage as I do about more esoteric things like typesetting. Sorry. The article I referenced above has a little information about this. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the influx of French words as marks of nobility (beef/boeuf vs. cow).

"th" isn't a diphthong is it? I thought a diphthong was a combination of two vowels, like in the word "I" (two different vowel sounds when you pronounce it).

Is this wrong?

Richard.

There's a number of different definitions for diphthong. One is multiple letters that make one sound, which is how I used it. These are also called digraphs. One is as you state, when two vowel sounds are combined to make one. I don't think that that has another word. Another is the character ``æ'' (``ae'' if that didn't make it -- I wish we could use HTML character entity references here) or ``œ'' (``oe''). Occasionally, you'll see someone refer to a ligature, a physical combination of two characters (like the combinations of ``fi'', ``fl'', and ``ffl'' you sometimes see in typesetting), as a diphthong, but that is incorrect.

To speak more about Richard's diphthongs, those of you who don't know what we mean, say ``ah'', as if you were opening your mouth for the doctor. Now say ``ee'' as in the vowel sound in the middle of ``squeal''. Now say the first quickly followed by the second. Then press them closer and closer together. You'll see that you eventually make the sound ``eye''. That's a diphtong, by Richard's, more correct, definition. Several English vowels are actually diphthongs, like the vowels in ``out'' and ``boy''

Right, diphtong is (roughly) combination of two wovels, not graphemes.

German formal 2nd person singular 'Sie' is indeed identical to 'ordinary' 3rd person (plural?).

Usage nuances of 2nd person singular vs. plural differ quite a lot among languages (not only Romance - Croatian has similar pattern). For example, in Croatian formal plural 'vi' (as opposed to singular 'ti') will be simply used as a sign of respect (so, two stangers arguing - e.g. drivers - will often not use it). In some other languages it will be used also to denote distance (and singular will be used only when addressing a small child, lover or closest of friends). Fascinating.

Concerning 'thou' and 'you', I should check my sources (and memory) better.

Dipthong is a very cool word.

Hey Eternalsun..

Seems like we share a common interest...Check this out: http://www.machv.com/johcam90las.html:

Since we're in the Grammar thread, that's diphthong. Otherwise, you're right. Work it into your everyday conversation!

Is that yours?

Calvin

Why yes it is....It's been mine for almost 12 years now

Very nice. Post up some interior shots. :-)

Calvin

the combinations of ``fi'', ``fl'', and ``ffl'' you sometimes see in typesetting

As we're on a pedatry thread, I'll just say that I hate it when stupid publishers of technical books auto-replace "fi" with the fi-ligature etc. even in monospaced fonts, ones in which the fi-ligature takes up only one character space. That really sucks. And don't get me started on Kernighan and Richie and grave accent vs apostrophe vs sexed quotes.

Peter

I'll just say that I hate it when stupid publishers of technical books auto-replace "fi" with the fi-ligature etc. even in monospaced fonts, ones in which the fi-ligature takes up only one character space. That really sucks.

Oh my goodness, I've never seen one like that. What a riot.

You more often see that sort of junk on non technical books.

Calvin

In the local community where I was born - Orkney (small group of islands off the north coast of Scotland for those who don't know) - there is current usage of thee, thou and thoo. There doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule, but generally thoo is the plural form.
I'm not sure of the historical root, but Orkney was a Danish Viking colony, only sold to Scotland recently (a few hundred years ago) as dowry so it may be a merging of Old Norse and Old English.