Crossing your thees and dotting your thys

It may not be as universal an experience as it used to be, but I’ll wager that most of you had to read at least one Shakespeare play in school. And for most teenagers (not including me, because I was that sort of nerd), the experience was a bit of a slog, largely due to the weird, archaic language. Personally, I rate Shakespeare’s skill at stylistically conveying characterisation and emotion (and also dirty jokes) very highly, but it’s hard to share that passion when the language is so difficult for people to follow.

I’m not going to attempt to solve every part of the problem at once, but I can take a first step by explaining one part: “thou” and its relations “thee”, “thy”, and “thine”.

So how do these words actually work? Let’s break it down.

Words like “thee", “thou”, “thine”, and “thy” are second-person pronouns: they are used to indicate the person being spoken to. If you’re at all familiar with their use, you probably know that already. But something that isn’t so readily obvious is that these are informal second-person pronouns. Because “thee” and “thou” are so archaic, we tend to associate them with Big Important Texts like the Bible and Shakespeare, and they therefore sound more formal to our modern ears. However, in context, calling somebody “thou” is a bit more akin to calling them “mate” or “dude”, whereas “you” was saved for more formal relationships.

Although English no longer uses distinct formal and informal modes of address, a number of other languages do, such as Spanish, German, and Japanese. If you’re familiar with any such languages, you’ll probably have a pretty good idea already of when you might use informal pronouns. If not, here’s a general idea:

• Close friends: THOU
• Strangers: YOU
• Small children: Probably THOU
• Doctors: YOU
• Little brothers: THOU
• Other relatives: Eh, depends on how close you are
• Bosses: YOU (unless your boss is really chill about it)
• Cats: THOU (frequently so, in our house)

Alright, now you know when to use the informal pronouns, but which one do you use? What’s the difference between “thee” and “thou”, “thine” and “thy”? (I know this isn’t a Grammar Talk post, but you’re getting grammar anyway. Tough.)

• THOU is used for the subject of a sentence, i.e. the person doing the thing. It’s the second-person grammatical equivalent of the first-person “I”.
  Thou givest me a lifetime of sweet words and sweeter smiles.
• THEE is used for the object of a sentence, i.e. the person the thing is being done to. It’s equivalent to “me” in first person.
  Don’t move! I have a present for thee.
• THY and THINE are both used to show possession. They are equivalent to “my” and “mine”, respectively.
  Is this thy handkerchief? Oh, yes, I can see it is thine from the strawberry pattern.

Now, whether thou wishest to take on a 400-year-old play, or write romantic poetry to thy beloved to say “I’m thine”, or simply baby-talk to thy pets, thou hast a handy cheat sheet to help thee do so with grammatical accuracy.

Have fun, and I’ll catch you again next week!