Stairs intently in southern US vernacular English
Used in place of the it’s wrong, it’s just pronounced the.
There was a ye though! It was the second person plural subject word (singular was thou). So we used to have a more official word for y’all when used as a subject. Y’all is cool though, we should all adopt it. I hate saying “you guys” or something, so awkward sounding.
Forester@yiffit.net 8 months ago
Forester@yiffit.net 8 months ago
Stares intently in southern US vernacular English
Ye need to get your act straight before before y’all friends find out.
vivadanang@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Ye’uns
BallsInTheShredder@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Really happy to see people accepting “y’all” lol, It just makes so much sense!
RBWells@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Hear ye, hear ye! We do still use this sometimes.
Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
So, like “thee”?
Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Thou was the singular second second person subject word, but thee was the singular second person object. So usage would be like “thou are talking to me” or “I am talking to thee.”
Ye was the plural second person subject, and you was the plural second person object. So instead of like “y’all are talking to me” now, you could say “ye are talking to me”. Or “I am talking to you” which would be referring to me talking to more than one person (not just one person like you’d think with modern usage of the word).
Doubly confusing because for singular the word ending in the “e” sound is the object pronoun, and for plural is the subject pronoun.
The word “you” eventually took over all these usages and is used for both subject and object now, and it’s mostly just used to mean singular now. We don’t really have a word for plural second person outside of using multiple words to clarify like “y’all” or “you guys.” We still have many other pronouns with the subject object divide though like “I” vs “me,” “he” vs “him,” or “who” vs “whom.”
Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Thanks, that was an interesting read!
leftleaninghaggis@lemmy.radio 7 months ago
‘Ye’ as second person plural is very much a thing in Ireland, especially in the west, as in “Are ye going out tonight”.
Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
That’s neat! It’s definitely a handy word to have I think, I’m jealous. I hate the United States tendency toward “you guys,” or something instead like that so awkward. The south figured out the issue by using y’all.
If you hear ye in the United States, it’s probably just someone misunderstanding that y was sometimes used to represent the thorn ‘th’ sound as in “Ye Olde Shoppe” which should still just be pronounced, with a th.