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Hungarian is not an indo-european language, it is a fenno-uralic language and relative to Finnish, Estonian and others. It may be that it has a "you" form similar to thou, I don't know but it is not a relative language to new or old english. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.170.82.20 (talk) 21:22, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
I seem to recall that in 'Kim (novel)' Kipling renders conversations in the indian vernacular(s) using the second-person singluar, and those in English using the plural. This creates an interesting effect and might be worth including in this article under 'More recent uses' (I haven't added it myself as I don't have a copy to hand to check). Maybe someone else could? 82.18.224.223 (talk) 02:53, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Contemporary poet Carol Ann Duffy makes effective use of "thou" in her love poem Rapture. Vernon White . . . Talk 20:34, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
It's a very well written article; and it's marked FA, but it achieved that in 2003, and it wasn't exactly difficult. It was reviewed in 2006, but standards weren't as high as they could have been.
One problem is that the article name is a pronoun, whereas WP:MOS says that it should be a noun or noun phrase. But that's fairly minor, it's just a guideline.
And most of the article consists of usage guide information for this word. That's worse, it's policy.
Which brings us to the central problem I see with it, WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary says that articles are supposed to be on a concept or thing, but this is single English word. Single words as the concept are disclaimed, because that's what dictionaries are about.
So it's a dictionary article. It's a long one, and most dictionaries would cut it for length considerably, but nevertheless that's what it is.
Just making a dictionary article longer gives you a long dictionary article, it doesn't make it encyclopedic. This is simply about four letters 't' 'h' 'o' 'u' and where you can, and where it has been, put in a sentence.
It just seems that this slipped through the cracks. There aren't exactly a lot of words (truthiness is one that basically everyone IARs on) that made FA, and I think we're just looking at one where nobody joined up the dots; I don't see anything about thou that makes me want to IAR anymore than I would with ye or something.
I checked, and this question had never come up before on the talk page or the reviews. It's seems to have been a lacuna; if it had been discussed before that would have been fair enough.
It also would be fine if it was merged with something. There's no article on Personal pronouns in Early Modern English for example, and I'm sure that could be a very fine article.
Anyway, that's what I think what does anyone else think?
As I say it's well written, a well written extended dictionary entry, and it would meet the policies easily if it was merged properly, but the fact that it's one of so very few word articles is probably telling us something, and I think this is what it is.
I'm not planning to FAR or AFD it, but I wanted to put this out there as a point of view; I think that improving the wikipedia sometimes involves looking at things in a different way. I'm sure that the wordinistas from linguistics section of the wikipedia will go ballistic at the mere idea that word articles like these are not Terribly, Terribly Important (tm), but I guess that goes with their territory.
(p.s. First person to say "I think it's done enough" can do something anatomically incorrect; it's not a criteria in any policy, how would we ever be able to prove it was enough or not enough, it's just words that mean nothing except 'I like it'!)- Wolfkeeper 15:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
"Most modern English speakers encounter "thou" only in the works of Shakespeare, in the works of other medieval and early modern writers, and in the King James Bible."
Ref 1 is dead, and ref 2 doesn't quite state this. But I'm surprised if this really the case. Are there any stats anywhere? My inkling is that hymns are a more common source of familiarity, as Christians in this day and age are more likely to read more modern Bible translations (which generally use "you" in its place). -- Smjg (talk) 00:08, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
The text says: "In addition, the translators of the King James Version of the Bible attempted to maintain the distinction found in Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek between singular and plural second-person pronouns and verb forms, so they used thou, thee, thy, and thine for singular, and ye, you, your, and yours for plural." This gives the impression that the writers used archaic forms of English as a way to translate the Bible more accurately, but this is nonsense, because those terms were in current use in English when the Bible was written, so it wasn't that they were copying forms of address used in ancient languages - they were simply applying the correct form in English to the translation. Ianbrettcooper (talk) 20:33, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
First, Falstaff addresses "Hal" as an intimate comrade, emphasizing "you"; then he switches to a facetiously contrasted "thou" for a future majestic but still graceless King.
No, no, was the other way 'round in Shakespear's day, as stated elsewhere several times in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.202.72 (talk) 17:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Author hardik (talk) 12:54, 3 September 2011 (UTC) thee: a word meaning 'you', used when talking to only one person who is the OBJECT of the verb.(we beseech thee,o lord.)
thy: a word meaning 'your', used when talking to only one person. (honour thy father and thy mother)
thou: a word meaning 'you',used when talking to only one person who is the SUBJECT of the verb.(thou art indeed just,lord)
ye: a word meaning 'you' , used when talking to more than one person.(gather ye rosebuds while ye may)
and also ye means 'the', used in the names of pubs,shops,ect. to make them seem old.(ye olde starre inn) (See Thorn (letter) for the origin of this) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.185.141.220 (talk) 21:57, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
Earlier in the article, reference is made to the accusative and dative case. However, in this table of declension [or whatever such things are called for pronouns under specific cases], the accusative is not mentioned at all, the objective is substituted for the dative and the genitive case is mentioned in a separate column from the possessive case. For the sake of consistency, I would recommend: 1. either substituting the objective with the dative or including both as the heading; 2. deciding which column really describes the possessive. Is it the genitive, or is it the possessive? Consider adding both headings to the same column, as I suspect some readers understand one concept better than the other.
Please note that I am assuming that these four cases are similar to those in German: Nominative / Nominativ refers to the subject; Accusative / Akkusativ refers to the direct object; Dative / Dativ refers to the indirect object; and Genetive / Genetiv refers to the possessive case.
I have not made these changes because I am too busy.
Cheers, JSB — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.121.162.89 (talk) 19:50, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
The article currently says While the Hungarian and Finnish "te" may seem like cognates (their spellings are identical, but the Hungarian is singular and the Finnish is plural), they are in fact not, as these languages are Uralic in origin and not from Indo-European stock..
I wonder why the article makes such bold conclusion if modern linguistics places Uralic as the sister family to Indo-European under Eurasiatic (and/or Nostratic), being the closest family to it. The similarity is especially strong in pronouns, as they change at slowest rate. This is true not only for second person pronouns but also for the first person and interrogatives. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.32.211.131 (talk • contribs) 10:50, 10 February 2013
The first paragraph in the article says the both 'thy' and 'thine' are used for the possessive case, whereas in the declension table, it separates the genitive and possessive forms ('thy' is shown to be in the genitive case alone). I do realize that the possessive case can also be called the genitive but if this distinction is made in the table, I feel, for the sake of consistency, that it should be reflected throughout the article (i.e. in the first paragraph). SundaLives 13:51, 2 January 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SundaLives (talk • contribs)
I think that this article needs clarification. Actually "Thou" is not a familiar (vs. formal) singular second person pronoun in the KJV. Thou and thee are the onlyBold text 2nd person singular pronouns used in the nominative and objective cases respectively. There is no formal (as opposed to familiar) 2nd person singular pronoun in the KJV. "You" in the KJV is always plural and always objective case, never nominative case. You is not the formal equivalent of a familiar thou in the KJV. In discussing thou, thee, ye, you, case needs to be kept clear. And BTW, the KJV differs from Shakespeare with pronoun use. (EnochBethany (talk) 22:40, 6 October 2015 (UTC))
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Aside from the fact that I've lived in North Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire for most of my life and would strongly contest that the use of "thou" (or "tha") is now restricted to the odd baby boomers and older persons, and is barely heard in any of these counties (I have NEVER heard it used in Staffordshire or Derbyshire and I'm from a family of former Master Potters who've been in North Staffordshire since the 14th century, and the cited source which was first published in 1990 - so 25 years old - is not available electronically); there is a bigger glaring issue with this article. I came here to find out when 'thou' was replaced with 'you' for common dialect and instead there's just a huge gap. What is the point in this article being in an encyclopedia (an issue that was shot down last time it was brought up) if its content is just poorly-researched snapshots about second-person-whatevers with no linking information in an encyclopedic manner. There must be references to support when "thou" fell out of common speech in England and I'm going to go elsewhere to try and find them now, but it's particularly ridiculous that somehow, despite gaining first page ranking for "when did thou become you," this "featured article" totally fails to cover that 400 year period between Shakespeare/KJV (contemporaries) and today. If anyone has the information to add a section to the article discussing the use of "thou" in the 400 years since Shakespeare's plays and King James's mis-translation of the Bible, it would be very useful to future readers.
When did thee and thou fall out of use? Amongst common urban folk in West Yorkshire the words were certainly still in regular verbal use a hundred years ago. Phrases such as 'Eeh lass tha knows nowt dost tha' are well attested to, whilst the Yorkshire anthem Ilkley Moor Baht 'At was composed in Edwardian times with its well-known refrain 'where hast tha been since I saw thee'. Within today's urban population thee and thou all-but vanished fifty years ago, but their use still survives, just, with older hill farmers when talking amongst themselves. Universal education in Standard English by the late 19th century, and national radio in the 20th, probably led to their demise. Another unanswered question is 'When did you stop rhyming with thou?' Folk in the Midlands of course still pronounce you as yow. Cassandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cassandrathesceptic (talk • contribs) 09:26, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
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I assume there's a policy about this, but I don't know where to find it.
The audio version of this page is twelve years old, and I'd be surprised if any of the recorded content is still represented in the article. At what point is it justifiable to delete the icon? It seems misleading to leave it. anthologetes (talk • contribs) 14:53, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
In Sweden, it was the formal noun "Ni" that disappeared in favour of the 2nd person "du" in the so called "du-reformen". Might be mentioned in this article as comparison. BP OMowe (talk) 22:55, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
American English began to develop some 400 years ago, when thou was still ubiquitous in all of England, and it has formed mostly out of West Country and Northern English, which continued to use it much longer. So many colonists must have taken their thou to America. It would only be logical if it survived there to some extent. Have there been records of American English dialects where thou survived after 1800? Steinbach (talk) 12:09, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
One thing I noticed was several sections with "citation needed" markers. This was not only distracting but I feel limits the amount of authority the article has. BreaErwin (talk) 06:49, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
LOVEYOU 37.111.7.248 (talk) 06:24, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
"typically for addressing rulers, superiors, equals, inferiors, parents, younger persons, and significant others" ... what else is there? Just the superiors/equals/inferiors part seems to cover literally everyone that could conceivably be referred to by a second person pronoun. 104.14.65.239 (talk) 17:19, 23 October 2023 (UTC)