Was 'ye' pronounced like 'the'? Did 'thou' and 'you' ever rhyme?

[@calvinlafave3665]

wake up babe simon's talking about early modern english

[@DarthCalculus]

What's wrong babe, you've barely touched your PIE

[@NessieAndrew]

[@radiorossofm]

[@syntakzzz]

[@neilwilson5785]

I woke up babe, I really did.

[@MrEnaric]

In Frisian we still use 'jo' (pronunciation 'yo') for 'you' (polite form) and 'do' or 'dû' as a casual form. In towns like Harlingen, 'dou' still is in use. Best wishes from your linguistic cousins on the continent. ;-)

[@pattheplanter]

@@Me-yq1fl Scots would be a conjoined twin in that metaphor, surely?

[@ikbintom]

Also in Low Saxon! In Gronings it's du/di for informal, and (j)i/ju for plural and formal second person (read as German spelling)

[@Yashael341]

I'd like to bring back a formal/familiar distinction into English, but only if we can add a foul as well.

[@davidkasquare]

In Swedish, “du” means “you”, but we used to have the pronoun “I” (pronounced “ee”) as well, which would be the polite form. It’s however not in use any longer.

[@ikbintom]

@@davidkasquare cool that's exactly the same as in Gronings Low Saxon!

[@mwflanagan1]

I once read a biography of Sir Isaac Newton, in which the pronunciation of “ye” for “the” was explained. In addition, the author showed examples of several words that were abbreviated using the “y” as an abbreviation of “th”, such as for the words “this, then, there”, etc. Thanks for bringing this up. Americans typically get it wrong (American speaking here). (Or should I say “Yanks for bringing this up”?

[@gary_rumain_you_peons]

So yis, yen, yere and you were all pronounced with a th-?

[@187Rajah]

in russian thou = ty (you )

[@iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiivy]

@@gary_rumain_you_peons Y never represented "th". There was just an older character for "th" that looked a little like a y. When printing came along, many printing presses didn't have the special character, but sometimes they used y in its place due to the similarities.

[@dutchdykefinger]

Which pronounciation of "the" are talking about though? Regular one, or the other pronunciation that already sounds almost identicaal to "thee"?

[@georgielancaster1356]

I thought y - on it's own, was used as shorthand for the.

[@sststr]

A year ago I worked my way through all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets. While I knew full well that the pronunciations were not all the same as modern English, I was still surprised at some of the words that were expected to rhyme. It sounds almost comical to the modern ear to rhyme 'love' with 'prove', for example. Sometimes I felt like the Swedish Chef muppet trying to make some of those rhymes :-D

[@nickpatella1525]

Some dialects may pronounce “proof” with a similar vowel to “love”, I wonder if that’s related

[@LuluDumpling]

Are you familiar with this kzbin.info/www/bejne/nYHPoaOeiZyhb9U Original Pronunciation uncovered rhymes & puns!

[@afischer8327]

There is a KZbin video that I know of, about the original pronunciation in Shakespeare's plays, but it does not go into much detail. Do you know of any website, paper, or video that goes into detail about these rhymes, in the sonnets? Or else, can you provide some detail, having studied the sonnets?

[@sststr]

Unfortunately no. I have seen a couple of videos about Shakespearean pronunciation, but mostly I just guessed based on words expected to rhyme.

[@weirdlanguageguy]

@@afischer8327 I would recommend looking up a.z. foreman's blog and youtube channel about reconstructed pronunciation, he deals heavily with Shakespeare

[@jnielson1121]

I love it. The random countryside imagery. The obsessive attention to detail coupled with nonchalant but wholehearted histo-linguistic cosplay. Convinced you're a Time Lord. Carry on.

[@TheOakleysworld]

Native West-Midlander here. 'You' is often pronounced YOW. It rhymes with Thou.

[@reuben8140]

I’m Roo-bun everywhere else, Row-bin in the Mids haha

[@Escapee5931]

Yowm roite thee-er.

[@trevorenever265]

I've been living near the Black Country for over 30 years. "Yow" is a very common pronunciation.

[@natejack2292]

Super excited to see Baldric back at it again. Hope he gets his house back

[@Nilguiri]

And he's had a haircut!

[@neilwilson5785]

I was listening to a group of Liverpudlian people talking on the train recently. I am Southern English. For a time I thought that they were from the Netherlands. Eventually, I got that they were speaking English. There were a lot of sounds like gh and ughhh that sounded Dutch. As soon as i knew that it was English, then the Dutch inflection melted away and I understood perfectly.

[@claymor8241]

It’s not surprising that you don’t know this, but a lot of this is still in common everyday use In the eastern part of County Durham where I grew up as kids we almost always used ‘thou’ for you, in the accusative case (generally speaking) and always rhyming it with ‘you’ (I.e. ‘thoo’). However, the nominative case it would be ‘the’ and in the genitive ‘thy’ with the possessive pronoun ‘thine’. So it might be ‘He’s nee better than thou’. Whee’s the talking’ tee?’ (‘Who are you talking to?’). ‘Is that thy dog?’. ‘My dog’s bigger than thine’ etc. Although the east Durham accent is often lumped in with the accent known as Geordie, these very common features of everyday speech are unheard of in the Newcastle/Tyneside area. It is still quite common to hear them in the firmer mining area of east Durham though.

[@Hey.Joe_Ridley]

You beat me to it! I went straight to Co Durham dialect as soon as I read the question. I was delivering to pubs throughout Durham in the seventies and heard the stuff you are writing about quite a bit. Maybe another one as well, “Does thee want a cigarette?” In Brandon. Thee and thou had completely gone from Geordie (Newcastle and Gateshead) by the time I arrived in 1970 but still exist in traditional songs from the area eg ‘When the Boat Comes In’ and ‘Here’s the Tender Coming’,

[@FrozenMermaid666]

The special pronouns Thou / Thee / Thy / Thine etc can only be used when referring to me The Goddess or to my protectors - and the name Ley / Leya only reflects me, so it cannot be in someone’s name, and mor also cannot be in names because it is too similar to moors (The Moors) which is a nature related term! The words kin and Son (meaning Sun in Afrikaans) also cannot be in someone’s name! And in English, you should only be for singular, and yous or something like that should be used instead for plural, because it makes no sense for a pronoun for singular and a pronoun for plural to be the same - and in Dutch also, sij / har should be used for she / her and zij / zem should be used for plural, because a singular form cannot be the same as a plural form because logically it makes no sense!

[@FrozenMermaid666]

I’m also having a huge difficulty accepting the same form for verbs for more than one pronoun (even when it doesn’t sound wrong, depending on the language, it still does not make sense logically) so there should definitely be other forms for verbs available, where each verb has a different ending for each pronoun, at least as an option for using it in poetry etc - even though most would probably still use the version with one or less endings because it’s easier for them in everyday speech... So I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and verbs like to have and werken (Dutch) and vara (Swedish) and spise (Norwegian) etc, and trying so hard to understand why the verb only has one or 3 or 2 forms, to the point that it’s affecting me emotionally that verbs in Germanic languages don’t have a different form for each pronoun as verbs do in certain Latin languages (Spanish and Italian, for example) so, yeah... I am trying so hard to understand why...

[@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038]

Anyways, the letter combinations Ley / Leya or Leia etc (also Lee / Li and Lea / Leah / Lynn / Leen / Len etc) cannot be in any names - technically, all pretty / special / big names only reflect me, and Leya / Leia is a special name that was selected for me by Chip, as he named me Leia / Leya in one of the poems he wrote for me...

[@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038]

Freyja Leia Lenore - the shadow cast o'er fjörds' shores. Look up to yon mountains of yore, Whence the flight of Huginn once bore, The sight of you and dear Thor. For the mountains of the Norse, Don't look back with remorse. They follow Muninn's course - from Yggdrasil's roots, To Marduk's voice. Flying beyond Utu's forts, And Ea's temple courts, Your time in place within, began Before the space of source. Yours is not to tell, To break the silent spell. His flapping eyes do see, As clear as glass in Mimir's well. For if you do avow, Her word forever shall, Be lifted out - high above, But you'll return to bow. To bow - but not to break; To drink - yea not to slake. And in so doing, You will learn, To nevermore forsake. Doth quoth the agent of the lake. (Chip wrote this new poem for me, where he used Norse code)

[@Allen1029]

We’re all being lit by a dim light, and it’s the only light we all have access to at the moment.

[@henrygaida7048]

The ye/the, ye/you confusion is one of my pet peeves; thank you for addressing it so clearly.

[@misterjib]

01:49 That's the merch sorted then.

[@darrengreen6341]

I love your lessons. Xx I am not a old English speaker but you make me aware of how it's similar new words for me to learn. I do speak intermediate German and sweedish. Yes I get a lot of what you say :)and I think you are very handsome and you have a voice I could listen to all day. Xxx :)

[@kori228]

I'm terrible at exact time periods of sound changes, so it's fascinating to see it out

[@kavikv.d.hexenholtz3474]

Y as used for older 'thorn' often had a dot over it.

[@riley02192012]

I couldn't wait to get home from work, so I could watch your video. 🥰❤️

[@PureZOOKS]

These "nitpicky" videos are very helpful, simply because they have such a clear focus. This also helped clear some things up for me. No you say "ye" was the nominative form of "you", but when would that come up in normal language?

[@thunder_birdfps8294]

So the distinction between "you" and "thou" is a distinction we no longer have, unless in dialects with "y'all" or something equivalent to "multiple of you." The distinction is between second person singular and second person plural. Basically, if I'm talking to "you" (1 person) or "you" (more than one person). Except in Early Modern English (what Shakespeare wrote and spoke) "thou" was for talking to 1 person and "you" was for talking to more than one person. "ye" and "you" is another distinction we don't have any more in Modern English which is between "you" as the subject of a sentence and "you" as the object of a sentence. For example in the sentence "you like dogs" the "you" is the subject/nominative. In the sentence "I like you" "you" is the object. In Early Modern English, "ye" would be used if the multiple people were the subject of the sentence and "you" was only if the multiple people were the object of the sentence. So in the same examples it would be "ye like dogs" and "I like you." It's the same distinction between "I" and "me" but over time, speakers found the distinction unnecessary or for some other reason stopped using it. Hope this helps!

[@longuevalnz]

Nominative = subject. Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free

[@666dianimal]

Oh ye of little faith.

[@weirdlanguageguy]

@@thunder_birdfps8294 a slight critique: while originally ye/thou was a distinction of number, it subsequently evolved into a formality distinction. Specifically, ye and you were used formally and thou and thee were formally (a similar change occurred in several romance languages, with tu (singular/informal) and vos (plural/formal).

[@ikbintom]

'ye' was to 'he' and 'I' as you was to 'him' and 'me'. Nowadays you can use 'you' as its own nominative (=subject) form (it replaced 'ye'), but not back then.

[@catloverkitten10]

Fascinating. Thank you Simon,

[@taha_bin_mehdi]

I'm really looking forward to what's coming next :) Gotta say, old versions of languages always just sound like some thick farmer's accent that you're just not supposed to understand

[@LordJazzly]

They do! Though _why_ that is, is a complex thing; it's been years, but there's like three things at work there IIRC. One is that 'rural' tends to mean 'distant from centres of linguistic innovation', because language features that are adopted in prestigious and/or populated areas are more likely to survive and spread. Another is that a rural setting will, by the nature of its lifestyle and economy, contain fewer speakers (or at least, have less density of speakers) whose speech cohorts are spread across more generations, which also has a dampening effect on linguistic innovation (and/or a reinforcing effect on linguistic conservatism, which can lead to instances of what's called 'hypercorrection', adding features to speech because they 'should' be there, even if they never actually existed before, or at least weren't as prevalent). Thirdly - language is a pattern-finding activity, and I do not remember the specifics, but I do remember that experimentally you have to take into account people's tendency to find patterns in it, even if they are - not what you're looking for; in non-experimental contexts, this means that if you hear _some_ conservative or archaic features in speech, that speech can be perceived as 'archaic', even if the rest of it is as innovative (or moreso) than the variety you're comparing it to.

[@taha_bin_mehdi]

@@LordJazzly That's so so interesting, especially the third point. I have to read some papers on this, this is so cool

[@LordJazzly]

@@taha_bin_mehdi Papers are a very good idea; unlike me, they will actually have relevant and accurate information. As opposed to summarising half-remembered things from over a decade ago, lol.

[@georgielancaster1356]

@@LordJazzly That last sentence is the summation of my life... Kills me. Constantly saying, don't take my word for it - my old brain is scrambled. A stranger can tell you anything. Take the interesting titbit and look for primary source.

[@bakarderansonumuhlnaz2693]

A lot of the time I ain't overly surprised by a lot of misconceptions. Here in the US, a lot of people often don't know that Shakespeare's English wasn't Old English.

[@christopherellis2663]

Yes, not just the US.... clever guess, totally uninformed. Old, Middle, Early Modern..

[@Great_Olaf5]

I mean, what's the joke? To Brits a hundred miles is a long way and to Americans a hundred years is a long time? Early Modern English might be the technical name, but it is old English, even if it isn't Old English. Old is a relative term in common use, not an absolute, if your personal frame of reference is your English, then even the English spoken during the World Wars might count as old to you. Old English as a formal term is old in the context of a longer span of time than most people use as their frame of reference.

[@idot3331]

@@Great_Olaf5 I'm pretty sure if you asked most people what they thought "Old English" sounded like, specifying that you meant the actual linguistic definition of the term, they'd still say something like Shakespearean English. I don't think there are two distinct phrases with two distinct meanings, it's just a very common and understandable misconception. Unless you're a linguist or watch videos on KZbin about linguistics, there's no reason you need to know what "Old English" actually is.

[@idot3331]

@Black Lesbian Poet What the fuck does this comment even mean? I think it's been made clear in the past that this bullshit isn't welcome on this channel, please go do something remotely meaningful with your life.

[@ogloc6308]

@Black Lesbian Poet we wuz poets

[@beepboop204]

i love your stuff man, cheers

[@ak5659]

In my Old English class I got a different explanation. The letter thorn when written quickly (and/or early simple cursive) looked much more like the letter 'y' than an actual thorn. But at that time thorn was still in use so there was no confusion ... as you stated. Fast forward a few hundred years (longer?) and 'old' styles were in fashion for signage and other such things. Put the people doing this for the most part wouldn't've known older forms of Endlish so. they just blindly copied 'y', not really realizing it was actually a different letter --> 'ye old shoppe' was born. IIRC, my professor did not claim it was the only reason for this confusion; he simply stated that it was a phenomenon that was observed and remarked on at the time.

[@hjwiser]

I really enjoy your channel. Thank you for doing this!!

[@MartinAhlman]

Listening to you on a Sunday is just what I needed. Thank you

[@humanebeing6230]

I enjoy your programs so much. I’m in love with language, and you have a remarkable ability to communicate about it. This stuff is jut rad, and I’m glad-glad whenever you pop up. I hope you’re having fun - take it easy.✌🏼

[@dotdashdotdash]

I watched a video on another channel that explained why English lost its gendered articles, the theory is that it was because Danish settlers in the north & east of England were not sure what gender to use so they just used “they” for everything

[@gary_rumain_you_peons]

And Vikings. You're talking about Langfocus's video?

[@MrTrilbe]

@@gary_rumain_you_peons the Danish were vikings too, maybe the Geats and Eowans too, you might be mistaking Jake Curtis' mention of Danish for the later Dutch settlers who came over to do a lot of the land drainage at least in North Lincolnshire or thinking that it was only the Scandinavians who were vikings?. On a side note it's really funny how many times those damn Dutch have invaded Lincolnshire, first as the Angles then as the Danish Vikings/Norsemen (I wonder how different the language used in Angle ruled areas was to Saxon or Jute ruled areas?), Danes you're awesome, but you didn't need to invade twice, you could have just asked nicely!

[@gary_rumain_you_peons]

@@MrTrilbe The Danes, Vikings and Normen all had distinct names. And all the rest that that entails.

[@MrTrilbe]

@@gary_rumain_you_peons for a start Viking wasnt a name of an ethnicity so to say, it was an occupation, there were Danish Vikings, Swedish Vikings, Norwegian Vikings, Gotlandish Vikings, Eowan Vikings, Angle Vikings, British Vikings, Frankish Vikings, wouldn't surprise me if there was Picard Vikings too, there was also Scots Vikings, Irish Vikings, Finnish Vikings all because it was a what would now be called a JOB!

[@wetkiss]

non-binary vikings

[@liquidcancer4573]

This video, Simon, was indeed quite interesting

[@duncanparsons]

You never disappoint :-)

[@seyeruoynepotsuj]

I'm more excited for another Baldrick video than I was for Avengers Endgame.

[@sasukesarutobi3862]

As soon as I saw it was about "you" and "thou", my first thought went to the Brummie/West Midlands "yow", which I feel is actually closer to "ēow" than you pronounced it (though I don't know how much of that is stereotype - my Brummie family members tend to exaggerate it for comedic effect). Anyway, great video! Really looking forward to the clarification appearing on QI season "Y"!

[@muppeteer]

Yam yams and yow yow's

[@gillianlethuillier5212]

Thank you very much. I love watching your videos, they are so interesting. You are also really great at explaining. Can't wait for the next one.

[@beastbum]

My grandad's from Lancashire and his dad said some kind of 'thou' that rhymes with 'you'. They also had more variations, something about different mood or cases or something. Thou, thoo, thine.

[@thunder_birdfps8294]

was it thou, thee, and thine? In which case "thou" is used as the subject of a sentence, "thee" is used as the object of a sentence, and "thine" is possessive form if the thing being possessed begins with a vowel. They likely also have "thy" which is if the thing being possessed begins with a consonant. This is just guess and is more in line with the grammar of Early Modern English so it may vary from you're dad's Lancashire dialect.

[@richardsleep2045]

Good stuff, thanks Simon.

[@colinp2238]

In the Midlands around Birmingham and parts of the Black Country, you is pronounced as yow (to rhyme with cow) and can't comes out as cor, like "yow cor do that!"

[@wayne00k]

That was SI. Super interesting. Just found your channel - cheers

[@curtiswfranks]

I was wondering about each point raised in this video on just Sunday morning (four days ago), so thanks!

[@bethyngalw]

in Black Country English, "you" and "thou" both rhyme today. They would both sound like the exclamation of pain: "Ow!" It seems reasonable to suppose that they did rhyme for some time in the Midlands, at least back far enough for both versions of "you" to be in use. Even after "thou" had fallen out of use in common parlance, it was still used in a religious environment, as people were still using "thou" for God as recently as the mid-20th Century. I literally grew up around people who still used "thou" in religious contexts, and I'm about the same age as you are.

[@soniajosephineserna4183]

Your brilliant Simon, l have no university education, just an interest in history, came across your videos by accident, completely fascinated, and amazed at your insight and knowledge

[@kojinaoftheinvertedeye810]

Omfg thank you! I was wondering the same thing for years!

[@Cailean_MacCoinnich]

This was really interesting. Thanks.

[@LordJazzly]

Thank you for the you/thou rhyme analysis! I had wondered about that; native speaker, but I grew up with a wide range of dialects being spoken around me, and none of them used 'thou' natively - only when reading historic and religious stuff. Contemporary English is fine, but when I try to intuit historic pronunciations, some of the vowels I've inherited have come down via different dialects, and so they get muddled up as I try to trace them back. I was taught 'thou' is part of the 'now/plough' group, but knowing that it did _sound_ similar to the 'owe/bow/go' group at one point makes it easier to differentiate it from 'true/new/shoe', when reading older writing where the rhymes are different.

[@nyckolaus]

excellent

[@AbdulHannanAbdulMatheen]

👏🙂 Very interesting

[@sonjamoore9808]

As a Cumbrian, Simon, you will be aware of the usage of the word thon, meaning "that, over there". Does that have the same root as yonder?

[@g.willikers465]

This video was truly quite interesting 😊

[@AnnaAnna-uc2ff]

Thank you.

[@simongreaves9465]

I think the picture described here for thou and you is even more complicated. I have read that in Suffolk in the early 20th century you was often pronounced as yow (rhyming with how). I grew up there in the 70s and this seemed believable as I thought I had heard that pronunciation once or twice from old people. In Suffolk today you is still often pronounced as yiw or yew ending with a rounded vowel.

[@eronpowell6008]

I had that misconception but then realized it might not be right so this video was really helpful!!

[@MutantApe]

Perhaps of interest, perhaps not... Here in Yorkshire, above the Lune line at least and certainly in parts of the dales, "thoo" is still used in traditional speech where as in the more southern areas of the county "tha" and "thou" are more common place. Further up in Durham and Northumberland, "ye" seemingly is used in place of all of these; not being from there, I don't know how far back that goes. Interesting to note perhaps. Great video as always! Cheers

[@MutantApe]

Should also mention the "dee-dar" speech of certain area's of Sheffield, replacing "th" with "d". I think this also happens on Orkney and Shetland if I remember correctly... Would be interested to know how this came about!

[@iVenge]

Thanks for this clarification. I knew this already, but I do *not* have a world-famous KZbin channel about language. 😊

[@abigailfoster2467]

The e on the end of olde and shoppe is to accentuate the consonants at the end. Shop was not pronounced with a closed mouth at the end, as we do now. It was pronounced like shoppah, or if you know German, you would be aware of the way they pronounce the e on the end of words.

[@lahsilaz6880]

i literally think about this all the time!

[@yourmum69_420]

literally?

[@EdwardAveyard]

In traditional dialect of north and east Yorkshire, "thou" is said to rhyme with "you". In dialect poetry, it's often spelled as "thoo".

[@chemicalcowpoke307]

Ah ye olde thorn, a letter I miss well.

[@frederickwoof5785]

I think thee is still used in modern English as an alternative for 'the' . Why do people in the South of England put R's in words when the North doesn't? I.e Barth (bath) etc etc.

[@cheyennepetersen3417]

this is incredibly helpful and interesting

[@verabeara2106]

It's the way the letter compound "th" was written in one trait with nice long lowercase h tails in the Karolingian script that would make it look like the old Fraktur y just by omitting the upper bar on the Karolingian t. Take a pen and try it out for yourselves. For this you'd have to consider the letter y as it was written in Old High and Middle High German manuscripts (look up images of Albrecht Dürer's Handschrift, you will find a lot of y's there which were used instead of i's in today's spelling) Also look up Fraktur y's in early book printing. The y or Y back then looked nothing like today's angular two-lined y and that's why we can no longer make the visual connection. Penmanship and study thereof really should make it's way back into education. It's a shame how printed work turns us into blind readers at some point.

[@argonwheatbelly637]

Look to 'ƿ' as well.

[@joecia8]

Ok puberty has made a Zaddy out of Simon!

[@dandaniels3955]

Yo Simon, I just moved to Ireland from another Anglo country for the long term. If you want to track accent changes over time hit me up.

[@wearloga]

It keeps amazing me how similar the English pronouns used to be compared to the Dutch pronouns of today. Given how closely linked Scots and Frisian are, I keep assuming that the older English dialect would be more similar to that than to Dutch, but apparently that doesn't hold true as often as I think.

[@jackhannold8247]

I always thought “thou” and “you” must have rhymed at some time in the past because “thou” is obviously a cognate of the German “du” - just as the objective case “thee” resembles both the dative “dir” and the accusative “dich” in German. And the possessive adjectives “thy” (attributive) and “thine” (predicative) resemble the German “dein”.

[@1258-Eckhart]

I think that engl. you is cognate with germ. "ihr".

[@JoshuaNichollsMusic]

@@1258-Eckhart yep, and jus to clarify that “thee” is cognate with the dative “dir” in German specifically. The accusative in English (dich in German) may have turned out something like “thetch” if sound changes are taken to their logical conclusion

[@jackhannold8247]

@@1258-Eckhart “You” and ihr” are related. But in their modern forms, the connection is not so obvious. It’s not just the vowel sound, but also the consonant that makes the connection between “thou” and “du" so clear. Several English words that begin with “th” have German cognates beginning with “d”: thick: dick thin: dünn think/thought/thought: denken/dachte/gedacht this/these: dieser/diese/dieses the: der/die/das

[@jackhannold8247]

@@JoshuaNichollsMusic The distinction between dative and accusative completely disappeared during the Middle English period.

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

@@1258-Eckhart and an even closer cognate is 'ye' as 'you' weirdly originates from the object form (I think dative but I'm unsure) and 'ye' was the original nominative form

[@Wrath_Of_Wotan]

Enough about 'you' and 'thou'. How come no one has acknowledged the fact that this man is impersonating Shaggy from Scooby Doo?

[@jt7216]

Middle English is the time of Chauncer. 1600 is early Modern English. Eth and thorn are the two th phoenemes, one voiced and the other unvoiced. Many printing presses came from France, which lacked thorn and eth symbols, so a y-looking type was used. Go back to the 18th century, and few traveled more than some 20 miles from their birthplace. In those days, regional pronunciations might vary every few miles. Aargh for yes is a typical Midlands regionalism. Therefore, while there may have been some who spoke thow, but they were not the majority. Old English: Germanic/Frisian/Saxon until 1066 and the French invasion. Chaucer = the "corruption" of English with French, making Londoners ask for egges, while the rural types asked for eier/eyer. And with the influx of so much French, by Shakespeare's time, in England, people now eat bœuf/beef and not flesh/fleisch. I enjoy your videos! You take on very difficult subjects brilliantly. Eagerly awaitin' your videos on the standardisation of spellin' in the 17th & 18th centuries, with America's Daniel Webster doing so much to swing American English from British English in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I will buy coffee should you cover IPA.

[@argonwheatbelly637]

It's not the presses. It was the type. Eth and thorn are not sounds in French, so if you needed them for English, you'd be out of sorts. Since variations on 'y' - a minimally used letter in Latin, as opposed to the local vernacular - were already in use, a quick substitution was deemed fine.

[@BBeowulf]

Thou and you (yow) still rhyme if you’re a brummy and the and you (y’) if you’re from Yorkshire maybe the midlands too.

[@frosty_brandon]

Interesting. In my intro to middle english course we learned that the spelling “ou” used to represent /u:/, and in other linguistics courses we had learned about how sound changes sometimes affect words based on their frequency, so I had just assumed that in Middle English, < thou > and < you > both rhymed as /u:/ and < you > remained as such while < thou > diphthongized due to it not being said aloud very often. Thanks for explaining the sound changes in more detail

[@tideghost]

Also, the GVS affected vowels differently depending on consonant at the beginning of it i.e. w r l y. “Room”, interestingly, was never changed by GVS, except r is no longer trilled.

[@bhami]

Sometime I'd like to hear you speculate re: what vowel has the widest variation among English-language regional dialects. Off the top of my head, I'd vote for long "O". I think it's at least a diphthong everywhere, and at the extreme (Australian?) I think it goes all the way to triphthong or quadrathong (is that a word?), incorporating nearly every major vowel sound.

[@risvegliato]

In West Midlands (Black Country) dialect 'you' is indeed pronounced with exactly the same sound as 'thou', ie yow. 'You are' is 'Yow am' in Black Country dialect.

[@NicholasShanks]

It was quite interesting.

[@kelseywoodie3012]

I love QI so much. I have to look hard to find it in the U.S.

[@georgielancaster1356]

You would probably love WORDAHOLICS, SOMETHING RHYMES WITH PURPLE, NO SUCH THING AS A FISH and THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH. Should keep you happy for months or years. Some are on yt

[@brianedwards7142]

Yis was very interesting. 😉

[@crusiethmaximuss]

YES!!! A new reference of "YE". I remember an older video on KZbin of a historian of Viking culture showed how YE was actually pronouced as a TH sound. The video is gone now... This even more interesting!!!

[@jaojao1768]

Indeed it was Quite Interesting

[@dp0004]

Wy ey hinni. I go for accent and rhythm. Having been dragged around England while young several accents were changed. As I learned how to write I would find an extra e in my spelling.

[@stevenmontoya9950]

That chat show Simon describes sounds like of those early Goodson-Todman panel shows in the US from the 50s, before they went on to produce the iconic game shows known today. I wonder if there ever was a similar production in the US or if they might pitch it for a new series, given To Tell The Truth went well into the 21st century.

[@Z00706]

Perhaps I heard the printing press story early but I never thought of þe and ye as the same word until you pointed out they are both printed as ye

[@ChristopherBonis]

RIP Queen.

[@ellie698]

In some West Midlands dialects you definitely sounds more like "yow"

[@FreeManFreeThought]

One of my wife's friend's is from rural yorkshire, and she says it closer to a 'you' as well (in certain circumstances, like near the end of a sentence/phrase ie "what'ave yow")

[@BuickDoc]

I just noticed the similarity between '¥ou' and 'You'. '¥' is the archaic letter 'thorn' or at least the closest character on my keyboard. The first would be pronounced 'thou' and the second, 'you'.

[@gjfkhvjzjsxbq]

I was thinking about this exact thing like 2 days ago, how weird...

[@adjusttherainmusic1197]

Where can we find good resources to learn old english?

[@me73941]

I've been following your channel for well over a year now, but don't think I've ever commented. Could you please consider doing a comprehensive video on the English of the original 1611 King James Bible?

[@Allan_son]

Do you want the 10hr comprehensive video or the 100 hr version. 🙂

[@argonwheatbelly637]

We didn't have 'þ' in the case as much, so we used 'y' so as not to be completely out of sorts. Type-setting facility, innit?

[@rogerkearns8094]

I'm sometimes led to wonder whether _eye,_ as in _hand or eye,_ might once have rhymed with _symmetry._

[@mavisemberson8737]

Lighting is fine

[@KevTheImpaler]

Glad I did not tell the vicar he was mispronouncing 'Ye' when he was reading out the Book of Common Prayer.

[@localgrassfieldboneshandler]

Kan ye

[@d-resmin]

I'm curious about how my last name used to be pronounced, especially with the spelling changes. In 1185 it was Totehylle. In the 1500s it went from Totehyll to Toothill to Tuttle. One Tuttle did spell it as Tootell.

[@s1lkyxo]

I would guess that the 1185 is probably phonetically spelled, so would probably be “Tote Hill” Like my last name was originally Leofric in Old English, and evolved into several spellings like Leveritch, Leveridge, Loveritch, Loveridge etc, while originally it was similar to “Lay off rich”

[@sugarfree1894]

"Considerably richer than yow."

[@coloratura1623]

Alright, is there another common words that used the abbreviations in Old English and Latin? By the way, I can't wait for the coming film.

[@jackwardrop4994]

We got to get Fry on this channel.

[@sazji]

Yeah It’s nitpicky but it’s interesting nitpicking, thanks for clarifying this stuff!

[@s1lkyxo]

This has bugged me for years. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve been telling people that it was “the” and not “ye”. I’m glad more people are addressing it. Though because “Eo” was a cognate to “Jo” in Scandinavian (like Eoten vs Jotun) I always assumed that eow was pronounced like “yow” like where I’m from in the West Midlands (which *supposedly* is the closest accent to some Old English dialects [Mercian I would assume]) and not “ayoh”

[@helenamcginty4920]

Just a silly story. Years ago (I worked for an accountant) a young typist told me that she had corrected my spelling of 'ewe' in a letter to a farmer to ' yew' as she had heard of the tree. I also was present when a local East Lancashire farmer lapsed into dialect pronunciation(with a wink to me) to bamboozle my boss with e.g. yow and tup for ewe and ram knowing that he was not lowly enough to understand. He also speeded up how he spoke.

[@MrNicopa]

I heard an old Dorset countryman say ´nu barn yow in a pigs tra ´ and realised it meant new born ewe in a pig’s trough.

[@georgielancaster1356]

Did either of you hear the farmers use chilver, for a ewe lamb? It seems to be completely forgotten in Oz, even in generational sheep farming family. In Yorkshire, I believe another archaic word that held out in isolated farming areas is 'heaffed' which means sheep that can be turned out on the moors for grazing, each morning, but come home themselves, to be close to the house, for safety, before dusk. That is an old ewe job. Rams hang about - always looking for sex, but guarding the slow ewes from wandering off - or from other rams getting HIS sex - not always to chase off foxes - rams can be sleazy old cowards - and the old ewes make the decisions about best grazing at what times, regular eating stops, best places for finding 'weeds' that naturally worm, best places to drink and best places to have a snooze and chew cud, etc. I believe the word is pronounced he- affd. But can't guarantee it. Heaffed is, I believe, a term for animals that return each late afternoon to home farm, for security, by themselves - but I have only heard it used for sheep. I THINK cattle might be able to be heaffed. Or pigs?

[@paulsimpson3698]

In Lindsey (North Lincolnshire), there is a story of a farmer telling off one of his labourers for referring to him (the farmer) using the word 'thoo', not a term used when addressing a social superior. " Doan't thoo thoo me. It's thee te thoo"

[@yourmum69_420]

really thee and not you?

[@leod-sigefast]

I've heard a similar anacdote from probably the 1600 when you was becoming the norm. Quakers still used the full thou, thee, ye, you set and would tend to upset more haughty, shall we say, members of society by addressing them thou/thee. I am you to thee! An aristocratic snob would generally chide back.

[@yourmum69_420]

@@leod-sigefast yeah that makes sense at least, but Paul was saying they want to be called thee instead of thoo (presumably meaning thou), which is strange because thee is just thou in a different case. The formal form is you

[@paulsimpson3698]

Your mum - l think you are probably correct but this is from the rural backwaters of Lincolnshire and we do things different here. Perhaps a farmer not understanding what is the correct term for his status and anyway you don't get the sing-song effect with 'you' as you do with 'thee' which makes it a pleasant sounding anecdote.

[@cjwill9920]

East midlands oldies say yo also

[@josephturner4047]

I used to drink in the Ye Lion. I wish I'd known this as it closed long ago.

[@Eugensson]

A bit of a strange question, was the word "yes" just an informal (plural?) variant of the formal "yay" or smth like that (cf germanic JA)?

[@Uthwita]

Which of these pronunciations of "you" and "thou" would be reflective of the pronunciation during the time of Shakespeare?

[@HunterShows]

5:30

[@Uthwita]

@@HunterShows thank you

[@AdrianBoyko]

QI. Thanks

[@rs0wner301]

bra frilla bre bra jobbat