More info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
This should be common knowledge for native English speakers. It's hard to read Shakespeare without knowing this. But for non-native speaker, this would be mysterious.
This should be common knowledge for native English speakers. It's hard to read Shakespeare without knowing this. But for non-native speaker, this would be mysterious.
single plural used in contexts of
thou ye nominative (subject), vocative (preceded by the word "O"). For the singular, this implies that the relevant verb takes the "-[e]st" suffix.
thee you all object forms (direct object, indirect object, object of preposition)
thy your possessive determiner, before consonant sounds - thy will, thy God
thine your possessive determiner, before vowel sounds (including 'h') - thine enemy, thine head
thine yours possessive pronoun - not my will but thine, all that I have is thine
Why would that need to be common knowledge 3-400 years later then?
It just seemed so silly to think that God only understands archaic English.
Now it turns out these people I despised were only being respectful, and trying to use the formal forms?
However, since it seems that "thee" and "thou" were actually the informal forms of "you" in 17th century English, now I'm really confused why they suddenly started talking this way the moment they crossed the threshold of the church.
As noted in Wikipedia:
> As William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in the early 16th century, he preserved the singular and plural distinctions that he found in his Hebrew and Greek originals. He used thou for the singular and ye for the plural regardless of the relative status of the speaker and the addressee. Tyndale's usage was standard for the period and mirrored that found in the earlier Wycliffe's Bible and the later King James Bible.
Later, presumably due to French influence, "thou" became informal and "you" formal.
Finally "thou" was dropped from everyday speech, though it still shows up in various old phrases.
Another pattern is that religious language tends to be archaic. For example, Jews pray in ancient Hebrew, Muslims in classical Arabic, some Catholics in classical Latin, and so on. I don't know whether this is done to create a sense of awe and mystery, or because religions try to appear unchanging.
Unnecessary reverence of the King James Bible translation, probably.
As non-native speaker I had learned early that 'you' so I thought that there was probably some other form no longer used.