Fascinating Facts about English Pronouns

They is a good example of how language shifts over time. It's now acceptable to use they as singular. 

...and that we don't still use "thee" and "thou".

I actually made a point of using ‘they’ as an inclusive singular pronoun in my own RPG. Much easier than alternating he/she or the like.

Weirdly, some places still do. My dad grew up in a Derbyshire mining village and the dialect there uses "thee" and "tha" (thou) in a way that has its own consistent grammar. It's common in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, with pronunciation differences.

"What's tha doin'?" - what are you doing?

"Ah tha goin' t' see thee mother? - are you going to see your mother?

"'Tha's got no meat on thee!" - you're quite thin.

It's like a different language, especially since there are a lot of words that aren't used in generic British English. "Mardy" and "nesh" are adjectives that I particularly like to confuse outsiders with.

I don't mind it used like this since the player can easily be one person or a group. I'm just not a big fan of using they if you're only talking about one person and there's no possibility of there being more than one person. Just seems weird to me. Oh, well.

Urgh, now it looks like I made up a grammatically incorrect title. :/

Thanks! That's better.

This bit of the old thread got off topic like woah, and onto a topic that I think is super interesting :)

One of the fascinating and powerful things about English is that, unlike French, or German, or many other languages, there is no governing body that decides what is and is not correct English; rather, the language evolves naturally through usage. It lets the language grow, and has helped it become the most spoken language on the planet, but it can also be disconcerting for people who preferred grammar the old way. Thus, while I vastly prefer traditional, "proper" usage of things like fewer/less and the subjunctive, I fully understand that the current colloquial usage has become just as "correct" as the traditional usage.

The pronoun shifts of English are a topic of particular fascination. I definitely understand someone in 2014 saying that "They is plural and unnatural to use when talking about one singular entity", but by 2114 I suspect that few will think that usage unreasonable. A quite similar shift has happened in the past with the second person pronoun, as Greywind alluded; in 1514, it would have been quite understandable* for someone to say "You is plural and unnatural to use when talking about one singular entity", but by now, most English speakers will think you are weird if you use "thee" and "thou" (except for Silverleaf's relatives :) ), and in any case won't realize that those words are the "correct" singlular second person pronouns.

*Actually, it wouldn't have been understandable in the sense of "modernly intelligible when heard spoken" due to the incomplete state of the Great Vowel Shift in 1514.

How words change and evolve is a fascinating topic.  I do a lot of "find-all-the-things" style research (Librarian), and a big part of that is figuring out if (and how) the language has changed over the years so that I can find everything on a given topic.  Even over five or ten years, you can see multiple iterations of a word to describe a specific concept ("reassess" becomes "reassign" becomes "exit"), or you can see times where there was a massive shift away from a word ("Mental retardation" is replaced with "disability" when talking about education, and is further broken up into types of disability) as the understanding eveolves about what that concept actually IS.

EDIT: admittedly, this is not about pronouns.  But it is still fascinating, and I hope the diversion will be forgiven.

Paul, you have given me a lot to wiki over the next few days.

Only if you're fluent in the dialect, with the right accent. Otherwise you sound like you're taking the mickey or too pretentious to exist.

I'm slightly ashamed of this, but I trained myself out of my natural North Derbyshire accent, use of regional slang, etc and cultivated a generic hard-to-place somewhere-in-the-north-Midlands-probably accent instead. I hate the way people judge you based on your accent - people immediately assumed I was rough, common and unintelligent before they'd even got to know me a little bit. I hate that. 

Show them your intelligence by pronouncing Z correctly! That'd shut 'em up.

"You talk kinda funny, Nash. Where you from?"
"Lots of different places."

Zed?

ha. That's not just an English phenomenon. Growing up I moved around a lot through Latin America because of my dad's job. Every time we moved to a new country I had to adjust to new slang and a new accent and I got made fun of a lot because I spoke "weird Spanish" wherever I went. So I got very good at paying attention to the way people spoke to me and then suppressing my own speech pattern and mimicking theirs whenever I met new peiple. It got to the point where I would do it subconsciously even while not trying to. I still do it to this day whenever I meet Spanish speaking people. And now I get made fun of for that, hahaha. 

I have enough relatives in Tennessee & North Carolina that y'all is a natural part of my vocabulary. I will still occasionally have students razz me about it. (Note, incidentally, that my spelling above is the proper one. It is most definitively NOT ya'll.)

I'm from Texas, and I grew up in east texas, so I can speak with a pretty significant drawl if I want to; it also tends to come out as I drink.  Like some others have said, I've mostly worked it out of my normal speech pattern to avoid the judgements mentioned, but I steadfastly hold on to "y'all".  It's just a piece of my heritage that I refuse to let go of.

Thee thy and thou are still in common usage in the US, but only for New England Quakers.  They don't use them as fancy terms, but as familiar terms used mostly for children, and mostly when misbehaving.  It's closer to the original informal/familiar meanings of the words, but it can be jarring for modern folk who've only ever heard them in a formal religious context.

Also, y'all is perfectly legitimate.  It gets the job done with fewer syllables than any alternative, and it only sounds silly if you overload the drawl for it.

Just one point about singular "they": It has actually been in use for a very long time (back to the King James Bible):

Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.

The older usage is a little restricted: If I understand correctly, it can only refer to an indefinite person, and couldn't have a specific referent (especially not a named one). That restriction is the one that is relaxing. It's fun to browse old Language Log posts on this subject:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=27

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.

• Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

My spouse did this as well. She is from Appalachian Tennessee and noticed at a young age that people who sounded like her on TV were portrayed as dumb. 

This is why Michio Kaku refers to English (which, for those who don't know, he speaks perfectly - without the name and maybe the face, you'd never guess he was Japanese) as a "type 1 language", and an instrument of modern Earth's potential transformation into a "type 1 civilization" - globally united, rather than fractious and tribalized, with the further ability to eventually become a "type 2" interplanetary empire, and thus "indestructible".  Something to think about…

in 1514, it would have been quite understandable* for someone to say "You is plural and unnatural to use when talking about one singular entity", but by now, most English speakers will think you are weird if you use "thee" and "thou" (except for Silverleaf's relatives )

I would go so far as to say that by now, it's almost becoming standard for "you" to be singular, and for the plural to be something like "y'all".  (Of course, according to I-think-it-was Jeff Foxworthy, "y'all" is singular, with the plural being "all y'all".)

Not in British English. We never say y'all, and most definitely use the hell out of the plural you. 

"y'all" is sterotypically portrayed as bumpkinish over here, it's only really said by Americans who 'live in the sticks', never other countries.

Philadelphian here. Pittsburg PA is notorious for Y'all. But then again, wetern PA is fondly refered to here as "Pensyltuckey"

Well, they are both in Appalachia after all…

Yous guys are all wrong. 

Am I entirely imagining this, or do they use "yourn" in some places?

I love this thread!

In fact, for one of my grad seminars this semester I am probably going to being doing my research paper on this. I am particularly interested in "they" as a nongendered singular, but I am also really interested in other nongender pronouns that people have experimented with, like xe and xis, ne/nis. I think it has some really interesting implications in terms of genderqueer and transgender people, where traditional he/she doesn't always fit. I read an article about a support group where when the person introduced themself they also had to say which pronoun they prefered. (Of course, that also puts a strong emphasis on gender and labels, which is another dicussion in and of itself.)

Also, I thought it would be a fun excesize for my creative writing students to have them reverse all the pronouns in a story and see how that effects what we think of the characters and their behaviors, looking at how language builds gender/sexual stereotypes.

/language nerding

I'm told Kansas typically provides a "default" American English dialect.  I often "try out" accents when I get the chance.  My coworkers were quite surprised to hear that I've lived in Kansas my entire life.  I pronounce tomorrow like my Canadian assistant manager at my first job, for instance.  It's just something I picked up from working with him five days a week for a couple of years!

It’s not so much that it’s a default as American media forces people to adopt it because our twang (the name for our accent) is really easy to edit and as a result the verbiage that gets used is changed accordingly. We chose to have a heavily media dominated culture. The result being that it causes other very normal or some cases factually more prevalent accents to be viewed as intellectually inferior. An example of this would be when I saw the horrible movie “Gamer.” The bloke I saw it with on the ride home argued to me that the main villian couldn’t be taken seriously as genius because he had a Texas accent and that that was a waste of an actor. The only reason for that perception and arguement is that our media has unwittly trained us to believe it to be so. It’s a dumb arguement but among Americans not an uncommon one.

Wrong.  Wrong.  Wrong.

I grew up in Pittsburgh.  It's "Yinz".  As in, Yinz guys better go dahntahn and pick me up a chipp-chopped ham sammich.

Definitely not "y'all.".  

I really try and forget that Yinz is a thing. It should never be thing. You guys and your ski shots and your primanti brothers and your stainless steels. Ugh.

I've heard 'yous' used a bit here, but it's definitely a country thing, and is generally associated with laziness or a lack of education.

(Yes guys, there are certain word combinations that even Australians consider to be lazy!)

Kentuckian here--we do use "y'all" around here, but no one I know has a southern accent. We all just have east coast accents.

Or not.

It's Y'inz.  That's why people that still speak the old Pittsburgh accent are called Yinzers.

Here is a good example of a Pittsburgh accent (it's a comedy sketch from a local station, they nail the accent though)

But that's alraight, we don't 'spect much from yinz Jag-offs in Filthadelphia.

Also "Yez", but that can be singular or plural I think.  (I have no idea where it's from, I'm not part of this seething inter-Pennsylanite rivalry.  Dear me, what would the Quakers have thought?)

I'm actually Quaker by heritage, my ancestors came over in 1640, we even have a black sheep who fought in the civil war.

The Quakers of old wouldn't even recognize the Philly Quakers of today (probably call them heretics and kick them out of the church), and Pittsburgh was never a Quaker town.

The Quakers who settled central PA and west of there tended to move on when other people moved into town.  I have relatives on founding charters of towns all over Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and out to Oregon and Washington.

On my Mother's side my grandparents were both Quaker ministers, while running a farm and my Grandfather was also a Tin Smith.  On my Dad's side we are related to some of the most prominent names in US Quaker history, both my Grandparents on that side were missionaries in India.  My Grandmother worked with Mother Theresa and knew Princess Diana, My Grandfather worked in translation and creating written versions of tribal languages.

Not that this has relevance outside of my Grandparents were awesome people and I know a lot about U.S. Quaker History.

Phantaskippy, have you encountered anyone actually using "thou"? I was raised Quaker in New Jersey, and the "plain speech" pronouns were thought of as rather silly. But New Jersey is not New England. (Neither is Pennsylvania, of course.) My family didn't have the long history of Quakerism that yours seems to have had.

Some of the Wilburites in Ohio still use it, but mostly just the older people, and that's just a connection with the past.

What is funny is a lot of protestant churches (Quakers aren't protestant) will use Thee and Thou (mostly in songs) referring to God, which I find hilarious since You was the formal, but now they have swapped roles in common thought.

Do you know the branch of your Quaker Background?

For certain Christian groups, I believe this is deliberate, and indicates a close, personal connection to God.

Do you know the branch of your Quaker Background?
I remember a really complicated wall chart listing all the branches. Our meeting was unprogrammed and affiliated with Friends General Conference, which according to Wikipedia means Hicksite.

I was raised Guerneyite.

When I got old enough, and became very interested in learning more about my Grandparents I got more into the original writings of George Fox, and Robert Barclay's apology.

Round about the same time I studied Hermaneutics and got my first real looks into the history of the church beyond Sunday School and Bible Study.

It was incredibly eye opening, and my mother got quite upset when I read Elias Hicks writings and couldn't fully disagree with them.

There were three parts to the faith of the Society of Friends, the Bible, the Inner Light, and the Traditions.

Guerneyits chose the Bible, Hicksites the Inner Light and Wilburtes the Traditions.  The writings of the early Quakers are full of wisdom and inspiring stories on how to be a good person, not the cookiecutter devotional stuff you read now, but people really struggling to try and do the right thing in a really messed up world.

I'm not going to let myself go on a two-hour binge of reading about historical Quakers, but just from a quick glance at some of the names you mentioned on Wikipedia, all I can say is "cool".  And I agree that your GPs were awesome.

On topic - three centuries from now, though all the cell phones will long since have disintegrated to scrap metal, linguists will still be talking about the Great Txt-Spk Shift in 20th and 21st century English, when "Yuo" became the accepted spelling through common use.

That really means a lot, thank you.