Re: Old Norse (was Re: New to the list)

Marcus Smith wrote:

> Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> >> One of those things I don't really understand how they
> >> could happen
> >
> >Basically, "you" was used to be polite, and later "thou" fell into
> >disuse, supposedly because of the Quakers who said "thou" to everyone,
> >whether king or peasant.
>
> That's an account I hadn't heard before.  The story I was taught actually
> worked in the other direction.  As the merchants became richer than the minor
> nobles, they began to demand the same amount of respect, so people began using
> the polite "you" rather than common "thou."  The number of rich commoners
> rose, and they took offense to "thou".  Before long, it was difficult to tell (in
> the middle class) who should be "thou" and who should be "you", so everybody was
> called "you" to avoid offending a potential client/supplier/partner.
> Eventually "thou" dropped out of common usage altogether.
Sounds reasonable.  That's about contemporary with the early period of the
rise of Britain's bourgeoisie.  I do know that Nik's anedote is true, though.
Voltaire wrote a work called something like "Letters on the English Nation" in
which he mentioned meeting a Quaker who insisted on the use of 'thou' rather
than 'you'.  Naturally, Voltaire used it to satirize the French.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: trwier
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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