I use the word (or contraction, depending on how you look at it) ‘y’all.’ ‘Y’all’ is most commonly used in the American South, and more broadly in dialects of African American English, but I am white and I’ve lived in California for my whole life, besides attending college in New York. It wasn’t something I picked up naturally - instead, it’s a word I consciously began incorporating into my speech, to replace the phrase ‘you guys.’ It’s a weird linguistic situation I find myself in, because English has a weird history with second-person pronouns.
We as English-speakers ask ‘you’ to do a lot. Let’s compare it to the first-person pronouns.
(*The words ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ here do not refer to the presence or absence of personal bias - instead, we’re using these definitions to indicate whether the pronouns are used as the subject or object of a sentence. These categories are also called ‘nominative case’ and ‘oblique case.’)
Look at the glorious diversity of that first table - each cell has its own unique-yet-related word! Without the context of other words in a sentence, you immediately know whether the pronoun is referring to one person or multiple people, and whether it is the subject or object of the sentence.
Our second-person table, though, supplies the same word for numerous meanings. We require information about where the 'you' shows up in a sentence and who the interlocutor is to know exactly what this pronoun is referring to.
It was not always this way, though! English once had additional second-person pronouns that added clarity where now we have only confusion. Well, sort of.
The Rise of ‘You’
In earlier forms of English, ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ were singular second-person pronouns, while ‘ye’ and ‘you’ were plural. So, if I was making plans with a whole group of friends, I could say, “when are ye free? Would Tuesday work for you?” But if I wanted to meet up with a single friend, I could ask them, “when dost thou want to hang out? I’d prefer Tuesday, if that works for thee.”
Our second-person table, though, supplies the same word for numerous meanings. We require information about where the 'you' shows up in a sentence and who the interlocutor is to know exactly what this pronoun is referring to.
It was not always this way, though! English once had additional second-person pronouns that added clarity where now we have only confusion. Well, sort of.
The Rise of ‘You’
In earlier forms of English, ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ were singular second-person pronouns, while ‘ye’ and ‘you’ were plural. So, if I was making plans with a whole group of friends, I could say, “when are ye free? Would Tuesday work for you?” But if I wanted to meet up with a single friend, I could ask them, “when dost thou want to hang out? I’d prefer Tuesday, if that works for thee.”
Middle English was influenced largely by the Norman conquest, which introduced French as the prestige language of English society. French had two second-personal pronouns - ‘tu’ was singular and ‘vous’ was plural. However, a phenomenon called the T-V distinction began happening in French (as well as several other languages), in which the plural second-person pronoun began being used to address a singular person of high status - such as a monarch or aristocrat. This practice of using the plural pronoun as a form of respect transferred into English over the 13th and 14th century - so ‘you’ (or ‘ye’) took on a connotation of formality, while ‘thou’ was used to refer to a singular person in more informal or familiar contexts.
Numerous languages have a formal and informal second-person pronoun to this day, but us English-speakers didn’t hold on to it for very long. The respect indicated by ‘ye’ and ‘you,’ once reserved only for royalty, became more commonly used, and referring to someone as ‘thou’ increasingly seemed like an insult. So ‘thou’ was used less and less, because it seemed impolite, until eventually (around the 17th century) we dropped it from common parlance altogether. In the 16th century, the use of ‘you’ also overtook ‘ye,’ so that we were left with just one second-person pronoun. Whether the second-person addressee was familiar or respected, singular or plural, the subject or the object of the sentence, we had only one word to refer to them: ‘you.’
The tremendous weight that English-speakers put on the pronoun ‘you’ leads to semantic ambiguity - when you say ‘you,’ do you mean all of us, or just one of us? And when there’s a necessary concept for which a language has no word, often we will find new ways to express it - coming up with new words or phrases to fill in the gap. And in the plural-second-person-pronoun-shaped gap in English, people came up with alternatives such as ‘y’all,’ or ‘youse,’ or ‘yinz,’ or ‘you guys.’ ‘You guys’ is the most commonly-used variant where I’m from, in the American West, but the phrase has fallen under criticism for its gendered nature. So many people, including myself, have begun reaching for ‘y’all’ instead, even if it isn’t a typical feature of our dialect.
The Redemption of ‘Thou’
What inspired me to write this whole mess, though, was the fact that modern English-speakers have continued to be vaguely aware of ‘thou.’ We don’t use it in our regular speech, but we recognize it when we see it. However, the meaning and context we associate it with is a fascinating inversion of any previous definition.
The most common places for modern English-speakers to encounter ‘thou’ are probably the Bible or Shakespeare's plays. The King James Version of the Bible was published in 1611, and became the standard English translation for several centuries. Like a few previous English translations, it maintained the use of singular ‘thou/thee’ alongside plural ‘ye/you,’ even though ‘thou’ was falling out of common use at the time. Shakespeare’s work also frequently included ‘thou/thee,’ although their usage as a sign of informality is frequently inconsistent. Regardless, the result is that when modern English-speakers think of ‘thou,’ they probably think of it in the context of “Thou shalt not kill” or “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”
Because both the Bible and Shakespeare’s works are important cultural objects, it means that modern English-speakers likely associate ‘thou’ with things that are formal and worthy of respect. Despite the fact that ‘thou’ was once used as the familiar or even insulting pronoun, we now think of it as the opposite.
In Conclusion: Language is Weird
‘Pejoration’ is a term for when a word’s meaning becomes more negative, and ‘amelioration’ is the opposite - the process of a word’s meaning becoming more positive. In Middle English ‘thou’ experienced pejoration, before dropping out of nearly all dialects of the language. Now, over the course of Modern English, it may be going through amelioration, gaining more favorable connotations through its association with certain archaic texts. The journey of ‘thou’ and ‘you’ throughout the history of English encapsulates the bizarre malleability of language - how politics, societal norms, art, religion, and time can all impact the way we speak and understand our own language. People stopped using ‘thou’ when it became unnecessary, but now we have to come up with new terms to fill the spaces it used to occupy. For now, I’ll use ‘y’all,’ until language shifts present a better option.
Numerous languages have a formal and informal second-person pronoun to this day, but us English-speakers didn’t hold on to it for very long. The respect indicated by ‘ye’ and ‘you,’ once reserved only for royalty, became more commonly used, and referring to someone as ‘thou’ increasingly seemed like an insult. So ‘thou’ was used less and less, because it seemed impolite, until eventually (around the 17th century) we dropped it from common parlance altogether. In the 16th century, the use of ‘you’ also overtook ‘ye,’ so that we were left with just one second-person pronoun. Whether the second-person addressee was familiar or respected, singular or plural, the subject or the object of the sentence, we had only one word to refer to them: ‘you.’
The tremendous weight that English-speakers put on the pronoun ‘you’ leads to semantic ambiguity - when you say ‘you,’ do you mean all of us, or just one of us? And when there’s a necessary concept for which a language has no word, often we will find new ways to express it - coming up with new words or phrases to fill in the gap. And in the plural-second-person-pronoun-shaped gap in English, people came up with alternatives such as ‘y’all,’ or ‘youse,’ or ‘yinz,’ or ‘you guys.’ ‘You guys’ is the most commonly-used variant where I’m from, in the American West, but the phrase has fallen under criticism for its gendered nature. So many people, including myself, have begun reaching for ‘y’all’ instead, even if it isn’t a typical feature of our dialect.
The Redemption of ‘Thou’
What inspired me to write this whole mess, though, was the fact that modern English-speakers have continued to be vaguely aware of ‘thou.’ We don’t use it in our regular speech, but we recognize it when we see it. However, the meaning and context we associate it with is a fascinating inversion of any previous definition.
The most common places for modern English-speakers to encounter ‘thou’ are probably the Bible or Shakespeare's plays. The King James Version of the Bible was published in 1611, and became the standard English translation for several centuries. Like a few previous English translations, it maintained the use of singular ‘thou/thee’ alongside plural ‘ye/you,’ even though ‘thou’ was falling out of common use at the time. Shakespeare’s work also frequently included ‘thou/thee,’ although their usage as a sign of informality is frequently inconsistent. Regardless, the result is that when modern English-speakers think of ‘thou,’ they probably think of it in the context of “Thou shalt not kill” or “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”
Because both the Bible and Shakespeare’s works are important cultural objects, it means that modern English-speakers likely associate ‘thou’ with things that are formal and worthy of respect. Despite the fact that ‘thou’ was once used as the familiar or even insulting pronoun, we now think of it as the opposite.
In Conclusion: Language is Weird
‘Pejoration’ is a term for when a word’s meaning becomes more negative, and ‘amelioration’ is the opposite - the process of a word’s meaning becoming more positive. In Middle English ‘thou’ experienced pejoration, before dropping out of nearly all dialects of the language. Now, over the course of Modern English, it may be going through amelioration, gaining more favorable connotations through its association with certain archaic texts. The journey of ‘thou’ and ‘you’ throughout the history of English encapsulates the bizarre malleability of language - how politics, societal norms, art, religion, and time can all impact the way we speak and understand our own language. People stopped using ‘thou’ when it became unnecessary, but now we have to come up with new terms to fill the spaces it used to occupy. For now, I’ll use ‘y’all,’ until language shifts present a better option.
Author’s Note: Sorry if I tricked you into reading more about grammar than you wanted to - believe me, I got in way over my head when writing this (what the hell is a disjunctive pronoun?). The information in this essay was gathered from a plethora of Wikipedia articles, Merriam-Webster definitions, and Etymonline pages.
0 Comments