ti/chi - tu/vous - thoo/thou

[jacey]

heleninwales  has been talking about learning Welsh and the resulting unintentional offence given when beginners mix up the intimate/formal terms of address. It reminded me of a story told to me by a bookshop owner in a little village in the Yorkshire Dales. Apparently there used to be this difference in Yorkshire dialect. The familiar form of address being 'thoo' and the formal one being 'thou'. (The use of thee, thou and thy survives to this day in the dialect of my part of the Yorkshire, much further south in the county, but I'd never heard of the 'thoo' form.)

So the example goes...

A farmer takes on a new apprentice and works with him closely for the first day. By supper time the boy is addressing the farmer as 'thoo.' Offended at the familiarity, the farmer turns to him sternly and says. 'Dun't thee thoo me 'til ah thoos thee first!'

Comments

[camies.livejournal.com]

And the cutoff point varies from language to language .... in Spain it seems practically everyone is 'tu' but in Greece it's best not to use the familiar form to someone unless you know them. Or so I've found.
Nice story too, I'd not heard of 'thou' being a formal singular.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

What would you use for the singular if not 'thou'?

In Yorkshire dialect it tends to get abbreviated to 'tha' with the last vowel being more of a schwa. I've never studied linguistics, so I can't get technical, but a man might say to a single person: ''Astha gorra leet?' (Has thou got a light?)

Yorkshire dialect is slowly dying out - gradually being replaced by accent so these days that might turn into, ''Avyer gorra leet?' or even, ''A'yer gorra leet?'

My mother in law was the last consistent dialect speaker. She spoke broad Barnsley to the day she died. English was her second language. I can speak dialect, but I slip up sometimes and use accent instead. What's worse (in my husband's opinion) is that I use posh vowels: I pronounce 'road' as 'rode' and a true Barnsley speaker would pronounce it 'roo-ad' (with the 'a' being a schwa).