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[Paul Spring]

Originally Posted by Flocculencio

As for 'thou' in its various forms, they were falling out of use anyway and were generally only used in informal contexts between friends or by superiors to inferiors. If used in a formal context, calling someone who was not a friend and who was equal or superior in rank to you 'thou' would have been a horrible insult.

The reason we see it used in a religious context today is that by the 18th C, 'thou' had come to attain an air of archaic formality and so was used in prayerbooks without regard to it's actual earlier connotations.

I believe that "Thee" and "Thou" were also commonly used by Quakers at least into the 19th, possibly into the 20th century. They were originally adopted by the quakers precisely because "you" had connotations of rank and formality in the 17th century, and the Quakers were adamant about addressing everyone as complete equals and familiars to emphasize that all were equal in the sight of God. This was one of the things that could get them in trouble with the authorities, along with other things like refusing to remove hats in the presence of social superiors, etc.

[Thande]

There are, of course, those areas of the country *ahem* where thee and thou have never fallen out of use, although the pronunciation has changed over time. As they are used as familiar pronouns, they are hardly ever written down and thus no-one agrees on how they should be spelled: probably the most common is tha, thi, thi for thou, thee, thy - note that thee and thy are now represented by the same vowel sound as Yorksher typically shortens the long ee and y sounds to a short i.

[Paul Spring]

That's very interesting, Thande. I didn't realize that people today in some parts of Britain still use a version of thee and thou.

[Thande]

Originally Posted by Paul Spring

That's very interesting, Thande. I didn't realize that people today in some parts of Britain still use a version of thee and thou.

Well, it's primarily Yorkshire and Lancashire, particularly the more rural parts - something like this (see map below)

Another interesting linguistic titbit I've read about is that apparently "yeah" for yes is a dialect word originating from a tiny area of Norwich - but one from which a lot of the earliest American colonists happened to come from, and so it caught on in the USA and has subsequently been transferred back. Of course, around where I live we still say "aye" for yes quite a lot, even though it may sound archaic to you off-come'd-uns*.

*"Foreigners" - not just non-Englishmen or non-Yorkshiremen but people from outside one's own valley or town.

[Paul Spring]

Originally Posted by Thande

Well, it's primarily Yorkshire and Lancashire, particularly the more rural parts - something like this (see map below)

Another interesting linguistic titbit I've read about is that apparently "yeah" for yes is a dialect word originating from a tiny area of Norwich - but one from which a lot of the earliest American colonists happened to come from, and so it caught on in the USA and has subsequently been transferred back. Of course, around where I live we still say "aye" for yes quite a lot, even though it may sound archaic to you off-come'd-uns*.

*"Foreigners" - not just non-Englishmen or non-Yorkshiremen but people from outside one's own valley or town.

Interesting.

I read a couple of books years ago about settlement patterns in my own state of Massachusetts and trying to figure out what areas the settlers usually came from. Apparently Massachusetts was settled heavily by people from East Anglia in general, among other areas. Five of the earliest country names in Massachusetts were Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Bristol, and Hampshire, which gives some idea of what parts of England provided the largest number of settlers of this state. The Plymouth colony, which was absorbed into Massachusetts, had a quite different regional makeup - many people from the area of Plymouth and a couple of other centers in southwestern England. It also had a considerable number of people of Welsh background, unlike the rest of the state.

One interesting tidbit that I read was about the Salem witchcraft trials. Historians long considered them an anomaly because while witchcraft persecutions in the 17th century were common in parts of continental Europe and Scotland, they were pretty rare in England. However, there was one region of England - Essex - where there were quite a few people executed for witchcraft - it seems to have been more susceptible to that paranoia than other parts of the country. Guess what part of England the sent the largest number of settlers to Salem during the 17th century?

[Flocculencio]

Originally Posted by Thande

There are, of course, those areas of the country *ahem* where thee and thou have never fallen out of use, although the pronunciation has changed over time. As they are used as familiar pronouns, they are hardly ever written down and thus no-one agrees on how they should be spelled: probably the most common is tha, thi, thi for thou, thee, thy - note that thee and thy are now represented by the same vowel sound as Yorksher typically shortens the long ee and y sounds to a short i.

Well you Northerners have always had the greatest dialectal differences.

Originally Posted by Gawain and the Green Knight

SIÞEN þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye,
Þe bor3 brittened and brent to bronde3 and askez,
Þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wro3t
Watz tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erthe:
Hit watz Ennias þe athel, and his highe kynde,
Þat siþen depreced prouinces, and patrounes bicome
Welne3e of al þe wele in þe west iles.

Originally Posted by The Wife of Bath's Prologue

Experience, though noon auctoritee
Were in this world, is right ynogh for me
To speke of wo that is in mariage;
For, lordynges, sith I twelve yeer was of age,
Thonked be God that is eterne on lyve,
Housbondes at chirche dore I have had fyve

Both of the above were written during the same period. The first is written in a more northern dialect of Middle English and the second, by Chaucer, in the London dialect of Middle English. It was the London dialect that evolved into standard Modern English and it shows- most people find Chaucer much more understandable than the Gawain-author.

[cow defender]

Originally Posted by Mark

Back in the 1980s, there were proposals to make a phonetic English alphabet. You ended up with more letters, but once you learned the sound, you could read. Also, spelling tests would disappear.

hah! growin up in the early 90z they stopped givin us spellin tests but never gave us the new alphabet!! wth were they thinking

[Flocculencio]

Well back in the '80's it was unfashionable to teach grammar in schools.

Twenty years later that decision came back to bite me in the ass

[Wendell]

How mught it happen?

[Max Sinister]

Hmm, does said phonetic alphabet make a difference between long and short vowels (like the difference between the vowels in "meet" and "it", respectively)?