literature

Why I use 'thou'

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As many who have spoken to me over the internet or through texting know, I prefer to use second person, singular, informal (thou, thee, thy, thine) in the stead of second person plural/singular formal (you, your, yours). This is a choice that I made when I learned that "you" is the formal way to address people, and is less personal. Not only is it amusing to speak in this manner, it forces me to pause before I say anything to anyone and consider my words carefully; something that many people would benefit from doing. Obviously I was not raised saying "thou" (really, it's pretty much dead outside of old, esoteric literature or isolated dialects) so I am perfectly capable of using "you".

If thou canst not understand what I am saying either learn the tense or speak up and ask for a translation. Thou needst not respond in the second person singular informal, thou canst just reply with "you". But I will continue to speak [write] the way that I do unless thou takest the time to ask me to repeat in a way that thou canst understand.

For those who have no idea what I just said above, I'm sorry that you can't understand me. If you speak another language and can't understand it when I say "thou", just explain that it's incomprehensible, and ask me to change the way I write when I converse with you. I write and speak this way because I find it fun, and it's a good conversation starter. I have no problem modifying my speech for you if it's too difficult for you, but I won't unless you ask.

After all of this, thou mayst be surprised to see me saying "you" in seemingly random situations. When I use the second person plural or singular formal tense it is either as a sign of respect to an individual, or when I'm referring/speaking to more than one person directly. For instance, since this entire explanation could be addressing many people I could have written it using "you", but I felt that that would just further confuse those who are having enough trouble trying to fathom why in the world I would want to write in this manner.

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Some simple guidelines that should make talking with me easier go as follows:

Concerning conjugation, I shall defer to wikipedias greater knowledge base. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou)

"Verb forms used after thou generally end in -st or -est 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 [knowst], thou knewest [knewst]
• to drive: thou drivest, thou drovest
• to make: thou makest, thou madest
• to love: thou lovest, thou lovedest

A few verbs have irregular thou forms:
• to be: thou art (or thou beest), thou wast (or thou wert; originally thou were)
• to have: thou hast, thou hadst
• to do: thou dost (or thou doest in non-auxiliary use) and thou didst
• shall: thou shalt
• will: thou wilt"

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I also use contractions often, so thou mayst see me say, for example, "Thou'rt welcome". "thou'rt" is a contraction of "thou" and "art", and means the same thing as "you're".

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Since I can't figure out how exactly to show the declension in quite such a nice way as wikipedia.com, I have made a key using 1,2,3, and 4 to indicate which conjugation of the word it is. As should be easily deduced from the declension, all ones correspond, twos correspond to twos, threes correspond to threes, and fours to fours.

1) Nominative
2) Objective
3) Genitive
4) Possessive

1st Person:
singular: 1) I | 2) me | 3) my / mine | 4) mine
plural: 1) we | 2) us | 3) our | 4) ours

2nd Person:
singular informal: 1) thou | 2) thee | 3) thy / thine | 4) thine
plural or formal singular: 1) ye | 2) you | 3) your | 4) yours

3rd Person:
singular: 1) he / she / it | 2) him / her / it | 3) his / her / his (its) | 4) his / hers / his (its)
plural: 1) they | 2) them | 3) their | 4) theirs

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If there are any further questions, please feel free to ask, I would be delighted to answer. Another good source for further study of the second person singular informal tense is wikipedia. I encourage anyone with a healthy curiosity to go check out the page on "thou": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
This is more of a journal to explain the way I speak, since so many people ask me why I use "thou" instead of "you". Questions and comments are very welcome!
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namemissing's avatar
it does seem a bit weird to have such archaic fragments dispersed amongst regular, modern English. The tones are a bit at odds with each other; the causal, lazy, butchered modern English alongside the thees and thous.

Having said that i do myself enjoy finding places to use such words as "insomuch", "methinks" and the like. There are others that don't stand out so much in regular speech, but i can't remember many off the top of my head.