![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2hp8t2D:
aimmyarrowshigh:
allthingslinguistic:
technotranceremex:
It kinda blew my mind to learn today that “thou” was actually an informal form, and “you/ye” was the fancy one
Now whenever I see “thou” I read it in a tone kinda like “y’all” in tumblr posts and like… 1600s bible verses were supposed to be perfectly frank, not stilted. this changes everything………..
“Thou” was also a verb, meaning to use the words “thou/thee” to address someone. As Sir Edward Coke reportedly said to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603:
I thou thee, thou traitor!
(The fanfic practically writes itself.)
“You” as the formal is why it’s “your Honor” and “your Highness/Grace/Majesty” in traditional address, too!
What confuses people, I think, is that we’ve really only preserved “thou” in use in some of the iconic Christian prayers. Hallowed be Thy name, it goes, even the Catholic version, which, we only switched to English at Vatican II (mid-1960s), so we generally use modern English. Except for that one.
And it fucks up modern people, I think, to imagine that it’s the informal. But that was how it worked– even though you capitalize the pronoun, when you’re speaking to a divinity, you use the intimate. It’s not like speaking to a king. Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee / blessed art thou / fruit of thy womb.
That’s the informal. But, to modern sensibilities, it doesn’t sound like it should be. It’s super-formal language overall, and we assume the pronoun must be super formal because of it.
But we don’t natively remember having informal and formal second person, so we don’t intuitively know it anymore; we don’t know that you pray to an intimate.
I didn’t understand it until I studied Spanish in junior high.
(IDK non-Christians might have had different experiences, but I can’t readily think of anywhere else you routinely encounter it. And honestly I don’t know if some denominations have totally modernized everything including the Lord’s prayer etcetera. Help me out, do Protestants give a shit about Mary? Or only the really incense-y ones? Nvm thanks Wikipedia says y’all only sort of do. Anyhoo.)
(Your picture was not posted)
aimmyarrowshigh:
allthingslinguistic:
technotranceremex:
It kinda blew my mind to learn today that “thou” was actually an informal form, and “you/ye” was the fancy one
Now whenever I see “thou” I read it in a tone kinda like “y’all” in tumblr posts and like… 1600s bible verses were supposed to be perfectly frank, not stilted. this changes everything………..
“Thou” was also a verb, meaning to use the words “thou/thee” to address someone. As Sir Edward Coke reportedly said to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603:
I thou thee, thou traitor!
(The fanfic practically writes itself.)
“You” as the formal is why it’s “your Honor” and “your Highness/Grace/Majesty” in traditional address, too!
What confuses people, I think, is that we’ve really only preserved “thou” in use in some of the iconic Christian prayers. Hallowed be Thy name, it goes, even the Catholic version, which, we only switched to English at Vatican II (mid-1960s), so we generally use modern English. Except for that one.
And it fucks up modern people, I think, to imagine that it’s the informal. But that was how it worked– even though you capitalize the pronoun, when you’re speaking to a divinity, you use the intimate. It’s not like speaking to a king. Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee / blessed art thou / fruit of thy womb.
That’s the informal. But, to modern sensibilities, it doesn’t sound like it should be. It’s super-formal language overall, and we assume the pronoun must be super formal because of it.
But we don’t natively remember having informal and formal second person, so we don’t intuitively know it anymore; we don’t know that you pray to an intimate.
I didn’t understand it until I studied Spanish in junior high.
(IDK non-Christians might have had different experiences, but I can’t readily think of anywhere else you routinely encounter it. And honestly I don’t know if some denominations have totally modernized everything including the Lord’s prayer etcetera. Help me out, do Protestants give a shit about Mary? Or only the really incense-y ones? Nvm thanks Wikipedia says y’all only sort of do. Anyhoo.)
(Your picture was not posted)
