What is the difference between thou and thee

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How 'literally' can mean "figuratively". Eventually you became used for subject and object, singular and plural. The singular subject form was thou and the singular object form was thee.

Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Originally the singular forms were intimate and the plural forms were formal. Only later did thee and thou take on an air of reverence or formality. The loss of distinct singular and plural 2nd person seems weird to me. How did that come about? This ye is not to be confused with ye as in ye olde. It seems implausible that Biblical and language scholars could have been ignorant of the meanings of these pronouns when this work was being done in the s, and as they were, after all, translating greek and hebrew words, not updating the King James Bible.

Most likely this was a business decision, that the raw pronouns would not sound appropriately reverent enough to sell. Fortunately, this was fixed with the update in Swedish still uses different forms for these. It also has separate forms for possessives when the possessor is singular or plural as well as when the possessed thing is.

My wife is studying Swedish and she sometimes looks ready to throw the grammar book at me. I try to stay away at those times. Maybe that will cheer thee up. What is mine is thine! The unfortunate fact is that in high school today, one is not likely to learn about nominative and objective cases and the pronouns that belong in those cases. Illiteracy reigns in modern America. In the Midlands, U. Personally, I would love to see the old forms Thou, thee, ye etc.

There are still a lot of dialect forms heard in different places. Perfectly good Scots - and perfectly good sense too. Great answer from keithjgrant. Put otherwise, thou is closely equivalent to the French tu or the German du , and ye is like the French vous or the German Sie. These answers are helpful. To succinctly clarify one aspect: Thou is a more familiar or informal way to say 'you.

I was 'brung-up reet proper' around Preston, Colne, Lytham and so on. This is now forty years ago and these forms existed then and were in common use. Thou didn't exist except in approbation. If thou don't come 'ere reet now I'll give 'ee heck. You could never tell which it was because it was always spoken as Th'art.