Which correspond to the nominative, objective, and possessive cases accordingly.
By the way, the "Ye" is not related to the "Ye" in store signs that say "Ye Olde...". Y was sometimes used by typographers instead of the Old English letter Þ(Thorn), which makes a "Th" sound, so those store signs should be pronounced as "The Old..."
The usage of "You" instead of "Thou" began in the 14th century. It was originally used in token of respect when addressing a superior, and eventually began to be used when addressing equals.
EDIT: Removed part about "you all", because some things I said were wrong and others I will have to look up.
Interesting. So the way we learned the Lord's Prayer, it seems to use the informal: "Thy will be done". But that doesn't correlate with addressing God as "LORD", does it?
It seems to infer that "thou, thee" etc. are only about distinguishing between singular and plural. There's no mention of them being an informal form, at least not in the King James Bible.
Even more:
"As William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in the early 16th century, he sought to preserve the singular and plural distinctions that he found in his Hebrew and Greek originals. Therefore, he consistently used thou for the singular and ye for the plural regardless of the relative status of the speaker and the addressee. By doing so, he probably saved thou from utter obscurity and gave it an air of solemnity that sharply distinguished it from its original meaning. Tyndale's usage was imitated in the King James Bible, and remained familiar because of that translation."
Then more from Wikipedia - the plot thickens!
"Early English translations of the Bible used thou and never you as the singular second-person pronoun, with the double effect of maintaining thou in usage and also imbuing it with an air of religious solemnity that is antithetical to its former sense of familiarity or disrespect."
Also, apparently French uses the informal (see "toi" in the Lord's Prayer), whereas Dutch uses formal (U/uw).
Korean has many grades of "you" that can manipulate politeness and formality somewhat independently. Most younger people in Seoul today would speak to a stranger using a grammatical register that is both informal and polite. It communicates the idea that we can be "at ease" instead of at attention with each other, but we're not going to be presumptuous about being old buddies. We'll be casual, yet polite.
But I was surprised to hear people addressing God in a Christian prayer using a form of you that is both more formal than the form I described above (no surprise so far), yet less polite (there's the surprise.) It's not an impolite form, just a form that makes it clear in a formal ("at attention") setting that you are speaking to a peer, not a superior.
Korean honorifics were puzzling enough to me without this mystery, and it was only later that I discovered that Western languages that still distinguish between a simple formal and informal you seem to always choose the latter.
I've always speculated that the Korean pronoun choice is a result of translating the Western practice to Korean. I've never been able to test that, though, because older Korean religions such as Buddhism don't talk directly to any deities (that I've ever witnesses, anyway), so there isn't any form of "you" used at all.
The "our Father" part (in English) is the problem. The consensus is that the Aramaic word used in the original (whether or not one believes that the original ever issued from the mouth of a particular person; this is linguistic rather than religious) would have been abba (transliterated, of course), which is more like "Papa" or "Dad" than "Father", at least in relatively modern usage. A familiar form of address, in other words. (Not so familiar that a little bit of flattery wouldn't be in order before asking for your allowance, etc.) How that relationship translates into pronouns varies by culture; some would maintain the more formal or respectful form even within the intimacy of the household.
You mean, it seems to imply. You're suffering from the common confusion between "infer" and "imply". Generally, a writer or speaker implies, while a reader or listener, or an observer of a situation, infers something about what was said or observed.
The confusion stems, I suspect, from the fact that there are contexts in which either word could make sense. Consider:
(1) Are you inferring that layoffs are coming?
(2) Are you implying that layoffs are coming?
It's easy to imagine a situation in which either of these questions could sensibly be asked. They are different questions, however. "Are you inferring" asks whether you have seen or heard clues that lead you to strongly suspect that layoffs are coming. "Are you implying", on the other hand, asks whether you have intentionally said something from which I might reasonably conclude that layoffs are coming.
Maybe addressing God informally is a sign of trust and spiritual intimacy.
By the way in the Hungarian language the informal 'te' is used to address not just friends, family and God, but also the king/queen. (Well, was used when there was a Hungarian monarch.)
Same in french, in this case I think it implies that God is "part of the family" so to speak, someone very close, not a stranger.
"Vous" is formal but it doesn't necessarily mean that "tu" is informal, it just implies a certain form of intimacy.
Also, I'd like to point out that using the plural "you" as polite/formal also kind of works with plural "we" as in the "royal we": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we
Biblical Greek has no formal, only singular/plural. Same with vulgar Latin. Latin and Greek are rude languages and the our father is a rude prayer, so tu/toi/thou are perfectly appropriate.
That seems fair, and actualy logical from the persective that `god` is above all and with that has his own introductionary terms of reference. That said the English language has many logical traps and pitfalls with its exceptions to rules. You can even say religion defies logic in many ways. So to have a logical reference to religion via `lord` not only makes logical sense, in a language with logical exceptions in reference to a subject with logical exceptions. Guess two negatives do make a positive. That all said "praise be" still seems odd as no reference towards what is praised is indicated.
But I do love the thy, thee,thine olde English, has period character and if you use those terms, or indeed any term that is out of fashion in todays evolving languages. Well you either seem educated or odd by others in general. Though word racisim comes in many forms.
- The third person plural set (they, their, them) was borrowed from Scandinavian (it's pretty uncommon for languages to borrow 'core' vocabulary such as pronouns).
- Old English (Anglo-Saxon) also had dual forms of the pronoun. Those were lost by Chaucer's time though. Not sure if they are reflexes of early PIE dual forms or a more recent development from Proto-Germanic.
[Sara Malton] [1] has some interesting ideas about how the you/thee distinction developed in the semantic dimensions of power as well as familiarity in Early Modern English.
There are many new 2p. plural forms developing in English that vary regionally and socially, e.g y'all, you guys, yous, you'uns (-> yinz), all y'all.
What value does abbreviation "PIE" add to a discussion for relative laymen?
I'm guessing it stands for "Proto-Indo-European", a phrase I'll bet nearly no one outside advanced degree word nerds (invoked lovingly) uses or has heard.
If you ever have studied comparative-historical linguistics, you know the abbreviation is frequent and necessary. So, the question is, what are the chances that someone familiar with it might use it and not even think about it? Your response assumed it was fully conscious.
In any event, we're in the land of acronym pandemonium here, between CS, Data Science, Web terms, etc. PIE is a drop in a big bucket.
Medical, wow. The same abbreviation is used within different sub specialities frequently. The fact that any patients leave any facility alive when their doctor sends them for a test, with a referral that spouts acronyms, abbreviations and generally aliterate scrawl is amazing. Eg. Phx COPD, Ca 10/12 Tx RT.
C+ CT ?PE. And assuming you can read it, this is a good one. Some specialists even invent their own abbreviations, diligently reusing existing ones. And then they are surprised when asking for an MRA gets an MR angiogram rather than an MR arthrogram. Medical abbreviations must die.
The point is that it's highly likely the subset of Hacker News that has studied comparitive-historical linguistics is small, and that the usage of field-specific jargon is exclusionary and obfuscatory.
I studied rhetoric and technical communication for some time, and know quite well the usefulness of field-specific terminology for initiated readers. This, however, is not a comparitive-historical linguistics symposium and, as a multidisciplinary forum, I find no reason we should not to expect commentators to write to their actual audience.
Down-vote all you like, it doesn't change the fact that jargonistic writing for general audiences is rarely necessary and most often laziness.
In this case acronym is not being used jargonistically, it's being used to avoid writing out "Proto-Indo-European language" and perhaps more importantly acts as a useful indicator that this is not a novel concept in the field. It is seen frequently and unambiguously in any discussion about linguistics.
I recommend you avoid throwing around accusations of laziness: if you're genuinely not aware that PIE stands for Proto-Indo-European language, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIE acts as a perfectly good source.
(I hadn't intended to make this such a conversation, apologies to tikwidd for building a mountain...)
I've assistant edited academic journals and spent years as a copywriter/editor at a consulting firm that worked in many specialized industries. That accusation was leveled with purpose and from experience.
This is not only about the acronym above, though PIE does have many meanings[1]. That an acronym has a specific meaning to a specific group is why it is jargon. That it is "not a novel concept in the field" further reinforces that and is justification for writing it out, given the audience. It's really that simple.
The primary effect of acronyms on a non-indoctrinated audience is to reduce the writing's accessibility.
Simply, this is not a linguistics conference nor journal forum, and it is inappropriate to assume the folks here will know field specific acronyms.
What should people do? Write it out in full once then use the initialism? Once per post or per thread?
Does it make any difference that it is spelt in full in the linked question?
> From the top of my head, Danish "de" (practically never used), German "Sie", Chinese "您", French "vous", Spanish "usted" are a formal way of addressing someone, especially if one isn't familiar with the addressee. Did English ever have this? It sounds as though Proto-Indo-European might have had this (based on my 4 examples), but perhaps someone can enlighten me?
You think the use of PIE is bad, just wait until they bust out the ASCII IPA.
(I am thick as 2 short planks but I've heard of PIE. HN should be a place where people like me need to work hard to keep up.)
I think recognition of "PIE" as "Proto Indo European" in this context is a reasonable thing to expect of moderately sharp people with a liberal education.
Even the ones studying linguistics on some language other than English may not necessarily be used to some random TLA, in the same way most of people in the world would have no idea which topic in schools is called PE in some north american dialect.
I knew what it meant and don't have any advanced degree. I suspect that's because the very first comment to the linked question is, literally, "PIE = Proto-Indo-European"
If you don't read the page people are talking about, don't be surprised if you can't follow the conversation.
I don't think its possible to discuss linguistics at any more than the most superficial level without encountering PIE. Or the history of Persian Empire-ish area where it developed. Or computer related linguistics. Or the history of linguistics or natural language processing, since this discovery was a "triumph" about a century or so ago. People living in indo-european geography with frankly weird languages not derived from PIE are usually inordinately proud of it and glad to tell you all about PIE and how their weird sounding language isn't related to PIE, even if simply don't care. Research results occasionally make it into popular journalism and invariably discuss PIE "This is what language sounded like 5000 years ago, it'll blow your mind" type stuff. There are also "easy read" popular science type books like the David Anthony Horse Wheel and Language. Those are all separate areas where I've independently run into it. It seems I'd have had to work hard to avoid it.
There are probably others. Archaeologists would probably run into it and people into old english lit are likely to roll the clock back, perhaps genetic analysis of migration would inadvertently discuss PIE.
Its like demanding we talk in detail about an obscure deep dark corner of the C programming language without confusing slang like "pointers" or "function". Well, good luck with that.
Even worse this isn't a discussion about lisp lambdas this is specifically a discussion about a weird corner of historical linguistics. Demanding that it be presented in "up goer 5" format isn't going to work.
In Ireland it's fairly common for people to use "you" as the singular and "ye" as the plural. It's less ambiguous but definitely not considered proper.
One addition: "thine" was used instead of "thy" before words that start with a vowel sound, and similarly "mine" instead of "my" before words that start with a vowel sound.
I'm posting this for posterity because this thread has long since fallen off the front page.
I was wrong about the pronunciation of "Ye Olde". When it is used as a spurious indication of antiquity, the Oxford English Dictionary says it should be pronounced (jiː əʊld) or (jiː ˈəʊldiː).
Since posterity is for a long time, you should know that you were correct in the first instance.
The OED merely reflects the fluidity of the English language, even when that language picks up idiocies such as 'Ye' being pronounced 'ji'.
Thorn is a fascinating letter, and I'm glad you drew attention to it in your original post. Sometimes I wish English would begin to re-incorporate some of those old words, or (as in this case) a letter.
Singular----|----Plural
Which correspond to the nominative, objective, and possessive cases accordingly.By the way, the "Ye" is not related to the "Ye" in store signs that say "Ye Olde...". Y was sometimes used by typographers instead of the Old English letter Þ(Thorn), which makes a "Th" sound, so those store signs should be pronounced as "The Old..."
The usage of "You" instead of "Thou" began in the 14th century. It was originally used in token of respect when addressing a superior, and eventually began to be used when addressing equals.
EDIT: Removed part about "you all", because some things I said were wrong and others I will have to look up.