"ye": "the" vs. "thee"?

Mark Mandel thnidu at GMAIL.COM
Wed Oct 1 01:50:49 UTC 2008


There's no etymological connection between the pronoun "ye", the
pronoun "thee", and the article "the".

The article in "Ye Olde Booke Shoppe" was, as you say, derived from
"þe" (that's thorn + e, in case it doesn't come through).

The pronoun "ye" was written with (the contemporary version of) 'g',
or with yogh, which resembles a '3' (and has sometimes gotten confused
with the IPA voiced palatoalveolar symbol for the middle consonant in
"vision" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogh).

The pronoun "thee" and the demonstrative that became the article "the"
were separate words, both written with either edh or thorn.

m a m

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 9:23 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> I have managed to confuse myself about "ye" in 18th-century
> writings.  I have understood the Y to stand for thorn.  But were both
> "the" and "thee" spelled with thorn, and the latter became the "ye"
> meaning "you" (in addition to the "ye" meaning "the")?
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
Mark Mandel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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