Very interesting, just wanted to point out that in NYorkshire & Teesside the following joke is still a thing: "Where's the bin?" "Oh, nowhere really, just the pub. Where's thou been?"

As a Canadian taught French from a young age, it blew my mind when I realized that "thou" was the English analogue to "tu", because the "thou became too informal or rude to ever use" theory also occurred to me then, and it struck me as a hilarious reversal that, in modern times, thee and thou are considered extremely formal or reverent entirely because the only places a modern English speaker is exposed to them are Shakespeare and the King James Bible.

I'm a Ph.D in English Medieval History...and I deeply appreciate your videos. You delve into subjects I wish I had the time to do so. Thank you for your scolarship.

I’m a roofer in the West Country and some of the old lads still say thou and thine. “ ‘aand me thine ‘ammer” is a something I hear every day. They also say “hark” for listen, call birds of prey raptors, say “where be to?” (Where are you) every time I call them on my phone. They say “cassent” instead of can’t sometimes which is a really odd one.

My Mum was working a nurse in East Devon in the 1980s and she nursed patients - often farming folk - who still used thee, thy and thou. There’s also the Devon dialect word ‘thikky’ which means ‘that’ and is still used by a handful the older generation.

Funny enough, many of my older relatives think of (and use) Thee and Thou as the more formal version, because they belong an orthodox Protestant church that still uses the King James Bible. They equate the words to be more "holy" or solemn I guess, kind of the exact opposite of the Quaker approach. I once tried to explain the irony of it to them, but they weren't having any of that, especially from a kid :)

I made it one of my life goals to bring back thou. I've made zero progress whatsoever, but the hope is still alive.

My great-great grandmother was born in the 1860s in rural Newfoundland, she lived into the 1950s and I was told that she used "thee" and "thou" in everyday speech. She would have been descended from West Country English immigrants from the late1700s, I believe.

In my wife's Derbyshire dialect (sadly dying out) they still use a modified form of thou. Nom and Acc are both "thee" which is almost the same as modern RPA "they" - with a hint of the vowel sound in "eye". Unstressed Acc thee is "thi" which rhymes with "this" without the final s. If one enquires after someone's health, the phrase is "Aah dust thi seem in thi sen?" = How do you seem in yourself? (Seem is midway between "same" and the vowel sound in "chime".) One day my father-in-law watched me trying to clean out a sheep shed and remarked "If ah wuh thee ah wunna dow it." (If I were you I wouldn't do it.) "Dow" is midway between RPA "dough" and initial diphthong sound of RPA vowel in "cut".

I’m from Oldham and I grew up using “tha”/“thee” & which I guess is a variant of “thou”. I like it more than “you”, it sounds more natural and friendly. I like the way “me” and “thee” feel together, closer than “me “ and “you”, they feel like they jar together

My grandad, born 1906 and raised in Sheffield, said his parents (born in the 1880s) used 'thou' and 'thee'. My mother (born 1934) also remembered her grandparents arguing, using 'thee'. And prawn cocktail crisps are always disgusting. Get well soon.

There's a fun but in Moby Dick where our man Ishmael is talking to the Quaker owners of the whaling ship and he mimicks them saying thee/ thou. They stare at him not sure if he's mocking

Sorry to hear about the plague. Hope you mend quickly! Stay well, Simon!

Just discovered your channel Simon, wanted to comment on thee/thou. I'm a Black Country wench by upbringing and we still used thee and thou until the 70s: however that seemed to disappear with the advent of mass media, TV and radio. I moved to Barnsley in 1988 and lived there until 1999, and thee/thou was still in everyday usage then. Even now when I go back up there, my friends use them in my presence, things like "wass thaaaa wan?" (what do you want) and of course "Naaa den dee" (now then you).

i'm a Quaker in the US. i was excited to hear you mention plain speech, which is now far from plain with respect to its social context! i have never personally met any Friend who still practices it. several of my elder Friends who attended meetings during their upbringings have attested that they knew people who did. the practices of each individual meeting can vary widely, so i get the sense that it primarily persists in regions like Pennsylvania where Quaker roots run deeper into the past. i am also not well-traveled, so my sample size consists only of 3 different weekly meetings and 2 different yearly meetings. (most meetinghouses are associated with a yearly meeting that convenes several individual meetings together.) the practice of plain speech is very common in our historical literature, so it's great to hear such an informed explanation on the linguistics of thou and thee! i'm sorry to hear of your bout with COVID. i hope you recover quickly. to use a Friendly expression, i will hold you in the Light, Simon!

My husband got covid just before christmas 2020. It affected his sense of smell and taste and he only recently declared that everything seems to be back to normal again. My point is, don't be too alarmed if your changed sense of taste persists for a long while. It can still get back to normal even after longer than a year. Get well soon. Love the video, as usual!

You omit the usage of 'ee, as in "I'll give 'ee some advice". There are several expressions in the Birmingham and Black Country areas that still use "thee", as in "I'll see thee anon". Those areas also frequently use "her" instead of "she", as in "Her was goin' home", which I see as a throwback to "heo".

The most honest, no-bullshit channel on KZfaq. Can't get enough.

As others have commented, Shetland dialect still commonly uses du, dee, dy, dine. In Orkney when I was a child in the 1970s I remember my father (born 1925) and his relatives from one of the smaller islands all using thoo, thee, thine, but only when speaking among themselves. He never spoke to me or anyone else like that, nor did my mother (from a rural parish on the mainland (i.e. main island)) speak like that, and people in Kirkwall, the county town, did not speak like that either.

I am 62 now and my father was Quaker. In the late 70's I visited a friend's family in Indiana. They were all Quakers, indeed most of the town was. They still used the thee form within the family and the town. It was used in both nominative and accusative; "is thee going to the store?" was a question I heard. However they used the you form with people not part of the Society of Friends. I found it interesting that something that had been originally intended to make everyone equal had evolved away from that.

Hello from Texas. Thank You Simon. Speedy recovery to be able to enjoy your crisps.

In Thomas Hardy’s under the greenwood tree, a girl getting married admonishes her father not to use the word “thou” at her wedding because it is old fashioned. Maybe in some contexts, the language was actively changed by a younger generation.

In an early scene in “The Philadelphia Story,” James Stewart’s character finds himself being thee’d and thou’d by a suburban librarian. (Pennsylvania was famously settled by Quakers, among others.) To which he responded, “Dost thou have a washroom?”

Simon mentions Jacques Bellot's "Familiar dialogues" (1586). The book was written to teach Huguenot refugees from France everyday English. This book includes a dialogue between three schoolchildren and their nanny before they go to school. In this dialog, they constantly address each other with "you", and not a single time with "thou". This seems to give evidence that "thou" had completely fallen out of use at the end of the 16th century, even within the family and among children. The book was directed to adult refugees who didn't go to school any more. Those refugees were to be taught how to have conversation with native adults, for example when shopping at the market. In such situations, it was obligatory to use the polite you-form. When at home, the Huguenot refugees would have spoken among each other (and to their children) in French language. Maybe Bellot considered it abundant to teach the French refugees the thou-form which they wouldn't use at all anyway. This does not necessarily mean the fiorm didn't exist any more in spoken contemporary English. P.S.: By the way, it is very interesting to read Bellot's dialogues, since Bellot transcribes the written English into a pronounced form. So we get a picture of English pronunciation in London in 1586. For example, the pronunciation of the sentence "Peter, where layde you your nightcap?" is denounced: "Piter, houer led you yor neict kep". This shows that the "h" in "where" was still spoken at the beginning of the word, as was the case with the gh-sound in "night". The diphtong in "night" was pronounced else than it is today. To form questions with"to do" as auxiliary verb was not obligatory yet.

My dad is from West Yorkshire and only once in my life (when he was talking to his sister) did I hear him say "me and thee" instead of "we". It was in an affectionate context and I think he just slipped into a bit of dialect.

I'm from the West Riding. I'm only in my early twenties, but I still regularly use 'tha' and less often 'thee' in informal language. "How'st tha bin?" as opposed to "How have you been?" for instance. Or "Did I give it thee?" instead of "Did I give it to you?".

I hope your illness passes easily. And here in the US, Quakers still use Thou and occasionally Thee.

The loss of the thou/thee/ye/you distinction is one of English's greatest pities in my judgement. I vote we bring it back.

Fascinating. Can confirm that in the Dales an old boy, perhaps now only in drink, might say "if thou has any more pups out of that dog of thine, I want one". Or "hast tha' done it?"would still be commonly said

I’ve been living in Sheffield for 15 years. At some point since moving here I have heard that people from surrounding towns such as Rotherham and Barnsley, refer to people from Sheffield as Dee-Dars. This is because they think people in Sheffield pronounce thee and tha as dee and da. If correct this does suggest a form of thou does still persist in South Yorkshire.

Hi Simon, I can confirm that in Durham, "thou" is still used. Interestingly you will also hear it as "thous" meaning, "you have". Additionally, on Wearside "ye" is still used for "you". Something to look into?

My Grandmother was from Ashton under Lyne in what was then Lancashire, born in 1914. Thou evolved into tha and she used it and thee until the end of her life in 1991. Examples "tha'd better get going or tha'll be late" or "where's tha been". Thee tended to be used in words like "thee-sel" for yourself (thi-sen in Yorkshire). I still use both occasionally as do many here in Manchester. Certainly those in Lancashire towns

As always, a fascinating video. I’ve always thought of "thee" and "thou" as just being the English version of "du" from German, but you’ve brilliantly shown how the path to "thee," "thou," and "you" is far more complicated. Great work!

I got covid in July, after 2 years giving it the slip...during the bloody hottest temperatures I have ever known in the UK! I lost my sense of smell for 3 weeks and it was really disconcerting. It was like someone turned a dimmer switch right down in my nose/brain. Fortunately, no taste loss or change. The first 3-4 days were really horrible, feeling feverish. Get well soon Simon!

I am originally from Sheffield and my late mother (b. 1932) always used thee and tha in her daily speech. She was from a mining village just outside Sheffield. People still use thee and tha at football matches in their chants e.g "Tha's gonna get tha (expletive deleted) head kicked in!"

13:20: little note here Simon, the form [ðɐː] as you write it (though I personally would write it [ða]) is used only in the West Riding of Yorkshire since West Riding speech is essentially Midlands speech that moved north and so doesn't have the largely unshifted realisation of the House vowel kept from Middle English like truly Northern dialects such as Cumbrian or the North and East Riding Yorkshire dialects. To take the sentence at 13:13 to compare a "typical" version of North and West Yorkshire dialect it'd be written something like this in traditional orthography: In WR speech: naa, yor top-stooans is t'stooans at tha can't wall i t'wall when tha's/th'art wallin up. And in NR speech: noo, yor top-steeans is t'steeans at thoo can't wall when thoo's wallin up. Another note is that h-dropping is systematic in West Riding dialect so "haase" would be /a:s/.

What a lovely surprise to hear you mention Alex Turner in one of your videos! I've always felt that he was a great writer and noticed certain slang or jargon in his songs which always intrigue. Quite strange to have this small overlap in such strong interests of mine. Hope you're enjoying the new single if you're a fan, Simon.

Thanks for the video Simon: 2nd-person pronoun evolution (or more specifically T-V distinctions) is one of my pet topics and I'm always happy when someone can teach me something I didn't know about it. I'd say there's good reason to think that the singular form had come to be perceived as rude at least by some in 16th century London. In one of Erasmus' letters, he shares a story from a German doctor friend of his who'd lived and practiced in England. This doctor was confronting a prior patient who was refusing to pay him, clearly an educated patient since their conversation was in Latin. When the doctor got a bit worked up and addressed the patient as "tu" in Latin, the patient took offence and said, "Vah! Homo Germanus tuissas Anglum?" (Och! Thou, a German, thou Thou'st an Englishman?) Of course, that doesn't tell us anything about usage in English directly, but if this guy felt like the singular in Latin was some kind of grave insult, that might give us a hint as to how the difference between Thou and You was perceived at the time.

The 1980 song Upside Down by Diana Ross features her singing "I say to thee respectfully". 😊

After two years of evading the virus, I tested positive for it about a month and a half ago. I only had a fever and a nagging dry cough for a only few days, but I kept testing positive for two whole weeks afterwards. Quite stubborn that virus was for me, and I'm glad no senses were affected. Glad to hear you're on the mend!

Fascinating video. My dad (1922-2014) (and his family from E. Yorks) all used "thee" and "thou" and "ye". As a Brit currently in Argentina using "vos" for you singular in Spanish it is fascinating to know that "vos" may have once been used in this way in England too!!

As a native dutch speaker, I can‘t help but notice how similar the vowel qualities of the spoken voice recordings of the Orton survey seem to certain dutch dialects in the northeast of the netherlands. Really interesting!

The words of the song in Yorkshire dialect, "On Ilka moor baht 'at' - ' Where hast tha bin sin I saw thee?'

Much appreciated, great video! Feel better.

In Shetland we have _du_ /du/ and _dee_ /di/ which both hold strong today even for younger speakers in the country. We have the _I spaek/du spaeks/you spaek/(he/shø/it/hit) spaeks_ inflection as well.

Your videos are always so interesting. Keep up the good work!

West Riding, late 20's; I don't have much of a Yorkshire accent due to my dad's side of the family moving around a lot (grandfather was RAF), and my mum being from Bucks, but there are bits of dialect that I use frequently, notably "tha" and "thi". Basically nominative and accusative "you". And I'm not the only one around this neck of the woods to do so. Generally I only use them in informal speach, and not even all of the time, but they definately show up; off the top of my head, "tha's" in place of "you're" happens frequently in my informal speach, and "see you" become "si thi". Oh, and if someone says/does something dumb, my "you're having a laugh, aren't/ain't you" is frequently "tha's avin a laugh, in't thi". So "thee" and "thou" are stil alive, even with younger generations, in some parts of the world.

How great thou art.

My South-West County Durham dialect still sometimes uses thou as in both "thoo" (as in flew) and "thow" (as in plough), which is used by my mother and was used by my grandparents, it's pretty much dead now outside of my nerdy way of wanting to keep it alive.

Thank you Simon!

I always enjoy your take on the evolution of words and phrases. Thank you, well done!

Most informative as ever and at a difficult time, my best wishes for a speedy recovery

Nice camera work! Good choice on the zoomed-in view ☺️ Interesting and informative/intriguing as ever

Just wonderful! I so enjoy your videos. Thank you.

Your vids are always interesting, keep them coming.

I’ve really enjoyed your videos! I love hearing your thoughts on various topics as well. 🙌 I hope your feeling better! ❤

Thank you for providing such interesting content. I hope you'll get better soon!

Happy to hear from you again 😁

Thankyou for video, hope you feel better quickly

Recently come back to your channel. Really happy :)

I'm so glad I stumbled across your videos again! I'll be subscribing this time so I won't miss out any more.

Get well soon, glad to see another video!

I hope you recover soon Simon! Great video as always ❤

I've recently been learning more about my own legacy dialect, Wiltshire English, and from the literature I've read it seems like thou/thee survived until very recently even here, though mostly with thee having supplanted the nominative form. I so wish I could have been alive to hear that part of the dialect! I'm also aware that the traditional third person masculine pronoun was he/hin, not he/him. I think I might still occasionally hear that one, if only in reduced form (I saw them talkin' to 'n).

I'll never forget as a student teacher in 1980 I arrived at my first school placement in a village near Doncaster and a boy looking me up and down and asking 'Is tha a teacher?'

Love this video, thank you

Really interesting - thanks very much! And hope you are feeling fully recovered soon😊

You're an artist Simon. Really. You give me hope.

Thanks a lot for this wonderful video, I have been wondering about this for the longest time! I also have to say that your choice of the background colour is amazing - beautiful light cocoa shade, very soothing.

Could we have a video about when and how the 3rd-person conjugation of verbs changed from -eth to -s (e.g. "thinketh" to "thinks"), and why this happened?

Get well, sir, and thanks for the video!

Brilliant. Perfect summation.

Get well soon! I once ordered a pint of lager (!) in a pub on Flamborough Head in the early '80s. A local guy asked, "Tha's not gonna sup that, are tha?"

You have made a fantastic video regarding this. I am currently studying German (B2) and these topics make learning more fun, relatable and easier to remember. Thanks Simon!

I was always taught to use thou and thee when reciting the rosary, specifically the Hail Mary prayer. Hail Mary full of grace The Lord is with thee Blessed art thou amongst women And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus Holy Mary mother of God & etc. Having retired to the Philippines I discovered English speakers here use some of the forms of thee and thou, but not others, so I have had several informal classes teaching fellow devotees the proper use of the grammar. I find it interesting I am continuing the use of these archaic words.

Excellent, Mr Roper. Get well soon.

I remember a man from Delabole, North Cornwall in the early 90s who would use 'thy' in place of 'thou' as part of his regular speach. He was around 65, I'd say, so probably born around 1926.

Love all your yoitube teachings fella!. I lived in a place between sunderland and durham for a while. 'Thoo' and 'yay' ('a' like play in northern sound), were both the most common words for 'you'. 'Thine' means yours. Older people there say 'thou'. As well as many other older english/scottish pronunciations, or somewhere in between, still in use in informal conversation. Your lesson on ye and the recently, shed some light on the y and th sound interchanging. Hope you recover from covid quickly. I had the same taste issue with it at xmas, so stopped drinking pricy special beers until it started to fade away gradually around a month later. Looking forward to your next vid. Cheers!

I'm from rural Missouri, typically the only exposure we regularly have to Thou and Thee (other than Shakespeare) is the Bible. I'm frankly quite surprised to hear that they were still (and still may be) in use as recently as the 20th century. I often wonder how diverse the language will be a century from now. Always love your videos Simon, it's scholars such as yourself that really push forward the intrigue of science and history in our modern era

I know nothing about Old English, but your delivery is fascinating

I haven't gotten a single video notification from ur channel even though I've subscribed

I found this a very interesting post. In Afrikaans we have an interesting situation where both the Germanic/European forms (the equivalents of “thou” and “you” or the French “tu” and “vous”) co-exist with an influence from South-East Asian languages: that the designation can function as a pronoun. So, in highly formal/archaic language, one could say “Pa, weet u waar ma is?” (“Dad, do you know where mom is?”), in a more intermediate/contemporary Afrikaans “Pa, weet pa waar ma is?” (“Dad, does dad know where mom is?”), and in contemporary Afrikaans “Pa, weet jy waar ma is?” (“Dad, dost thou know where mom is?”). The first one is so dated no one would be likely to use it in an everyday situation, the last two are still very common. But the first two are falling away completely, because they have connotations of being used to show respect to an elder (and no-one wants to be marked as older anymore).

‘thi’ and ‘thi’ for ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ is the version that appears in broad Staffordshire dialect, as in the famous phrase:- “Thi cossn’t yed a bo agin a wo ‘n’ yed it wi’ yed till thi bosses it” which means “You can’t head a ball against a wall and head it with your head till you bust it”. See the following video for an example of such speech kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ht90oM-Z0benpWQ.html

I absolutely love this content

I have no idea why, but I like just listening to you talk about random stuff, not even about languages etc You have a fascination about you

Great use of the camera, both in the scenery as well as you speaking.

Bristolians kept 'thou' forms till relatively recently. An elderly neighbour in Bedminster, 1970s, emphatically: "Move thy car!" Very typically and commonly between mates or friends:"See dee Sat'd'y, den." "Dee" (there) widely replaced "thou": "Wa's dee do that for?" It could also be omitted with the second person singular verb: "Wha'st fink of 'e, den?" Two or three young men in a pub also in the 1970s in Willsbridge (just outside Bristol) we're the last of a younger generation I heard using 'thee".

Fascinated by the history of the English language! Wishing you a good recovery.....take good care of yourself!

Truly enjoy your really interesting and educational videos. Keep up the great work. I think it's really fun to notice connections between different languages throughout history. For example, a few years ago in Iceland, we were hiking and came across a trail map with a locator labeled "Pu ert her" ("You are here"....not sure how to do the accent marks on my keyboard), and it seems that it sounds a lot like the Middle (?) English "Thou art (here)". Makes sense since Icelandic and English are both Germanic.

Thanks for this video it was just what I wanted explaining , tha did well

wonderful - thank you!

This video was incredible

Thou (pronounced 'thoo') is still used in the north east around Chester-le-street and Durham by those (like my family) who were brought up hearing and speaking Pitmatic (the language of coal miners). "Thou'll get caad if thou diz'nt wear thee coat" ("you will catch cold if you don't wear your coat" - "thee" is a corruption of "thine", meaning "your") Love your work, here on ThouTube. I've been collecting Pitmatic words and phrases in spreadsheet for years (since moving south), I'll share it with you if you're interested.

Hello from something like 8000 km away Simon! KZfaq every now and then will recommend me gems, one of which has been your channel. Having subbed and watched a few of your videos now, I am hooked. I wish you continued health and well-being, if only so we can continue to get videos. I joke! Best

Wonderful, thanks

Considering what you do, I'm often confused when I get excited when you post. But I do.

I'm from Pudsey in Yorkshire and when my Dad was an apprentice in the early 1950s he was told off by his boss for being too familiar with his superior/elder.. "Don't thee thou me lad", he was told! Love the channel. Cheers

I hope thou shalt be fully recovered soon, Simon.

thank you!!! for brief and CLEAR explanations of these cases. I've been studying Russian and I am lost. Thanks!!!

That's very interesting. Could you also talk about words "frozen" in different cases (like who and whom) maybe even in other languages as well.