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But as the use of thou in non-dialect English began to decline in the 18th century, [22] its meaning nonetheless remained familiar from the widespread use of the latter translation. [23] The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which first appeared in 1946, retained the pronoun thou exclusively to address God, using you in other places.
The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and ...
Personal pronouns in Early Modern English; Nominative Oblique Genitive Possessive; 1st person singular I me my/mine [# 1] mine plural we us our ours 2nd person singular informal thou thee thy/thine [# 1] thine plural informal ye you your yours formal you 3rd person singular he/she/it him/her/it his/her/his (it) [# 2] his/hers/his [# 2] plural ...
Early Modern English had two second-person personal pronouns: thou, the informal singular pronoun, and ye, the plural (both formal and informal) pronoun and the formal singular pronoun. "Thou" and "ye" were both common in the early 16th century (they can be seen, for example, in the disputes over Tyndale's translation of the Bible in the 1520s ...
An archaic set of second-person pronouns used for singular reference is thou, thee, thyself, thy, thine, which are still used in religious services and can be seen in older works, such as Shakespeare's—in such texts, ye and the you set of pronouns are used for plural reference, or with singular reference as a formal V-form. [7]
The Old English and Early Middle English second person pronouns thou and ye (with variants) were used for singular and plural reference respectively with no T–V distinction. The earliest entry in the Oxford English Dictionary for ye as a V pronoun in place of the singular thou exists in a Middle English text of 1225 composed in 1200. [16]
All pronouns indicate identity and can be used to include or exclude people they describe — neopronouns included, said Dennis Baron, one of the foremost experts on neopronouns and their ...
Old English pronouns; Nominative IPA Accusative Dative Genitive 1st Singular iċ: mec / mē: mē: mīn Dual wit: uncit: unc: uncer Plural wē: ūsic: ūs: ūser / ūre