As you all know, God apparently favors 17th century English over our 21st century English, and as such we must include outdated words such as thee, thou, thy and thine when we pray to Him. But do Mormons even know how to properly use these words? Have they all taken a class in "King James English," wherein they learned the vocabulary and grammar? I certainly don't remember being taught any of that. Not even the simple differences between thee, thou thy and thine.

I believe I read this on Richard Packham's site: the word "you" is used when addressing a group of people, OR when addressing one person who is "superior" to you, such as a king...well, isn't God a king? Shouldn't we then refer to Him as "you?" I may be wrong, but I still think that the whole 17th century English thing is a bit silly. I mean, how is 17th century English somehow more sacred than modern English? Is Olde English more sacred than modern English? Is Latin more sacred than modern Italian?

It confuses the hell out of me. I still pray, but I use "you" and "yours" instead of "thou" and "thy". I really don't think it matters to the big guy. Just the simple act of acknowledging Him should be all that matters - of course, if you still believe that stuff. I also find that I'm using profanity in my prayers now. If I think something is bull s*** I just tell the big guy how I feel and if something is a f****** lie, then I tell God that way. He's my friend and I talk to him the way I would talk to a friend.

The true order of prayer is just talking to God as though he were your friend??

Shhhhh! Don't tell the morgbots that god can hear their prayers, even if they're not wearing a green polyester apron or their arms are not raised to the square!

You are correct about "you" once having been the formal 2nd person pronoun, used for addressing a superior, and "thou" being the informal 2nd person pronoun, used for addressing an inferior or someone with whom you were intimately close, such as a family member. The use of informal 2nd person pronouns when addressing God is meant to show that we have a close, personal, intimate, familial bond with him--thus "thou", "thine", "thy" etc. were once used in prayers to God. (Just as Jesus taught his followers to address God as "Abba", which means "Father" or "Dad".

As those pronouns fell out of common use in English (many other languages still have formal and informal 2nd person), English speakers continued to use those pronouns in prayers they had learned in childhood, and continued to read them in the KJV Bible. Those pronouns became associated with worshiping God. Thus, some English speakers today incorrectly assume that "thou" etc. are more formal than "you" etc., when it is actually the other way around.

Edited to add: Early Quakers used informal pronouns to address EVERYONE, as their religion taught that we are all equals, we are all children of God and thus family to one another. The use of "thou" etc. hung on in the Quaker community for many generations longer than with other English speakers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2013 12:20PM by mysid.

"thee" and "thou" are honorifics. But as you correctly said: "The use of informal 2nd person pronouns when addressing God is meant to show that we have a close, personal, intimate, familial bond with him . . ." and that is how the deity is addressed in German ("Du Sprache," and not the formal "Sie Sprache"). So are the German-speaking "saints" being disrespectful?

Hmm-where's-the-revelation-on-this-ly yrs,

S

...people who speak languages that don't have a similar formal form. I guess God doesn't hear those prayers.

What is funny about this is that the French Mormons use the familiar, intimate form when praying.

God doesn't like their praying, so he doesn't open their hearts to the gospel. Merde.

Ha ha...perfect! That explains it all!

That IS funny indeed!

The Dutch use the formal form to address HF.

I was a French speaking missionary. According to the mission rules, there were only three occasions when we could use the familiar terms. One; talking to a child. Two; talking to an animal. Three; talking to God.

A good reason to be Anglican? They invented that lingo....

I have often heard Mormons pronounce Ye, just as it is spelled. The word is actually pronounced exactly like the modern "the" is is just an archaic spelling. They desperately need a class on speaking King Jamesian, so their true orders of prayers, and their false orders too, can be properly understood by the big man upstairs. This is probably why none of their priesthood blessings ever work.

> I have often heard Mormons pronounce Ye, just as it is spelled. The word is actually pronounced exactly like the modern "the" is is just an archaic spelling.

Umm, no. Ye, meaning "you-all," is pronounced "yee."

Ye, as in Ye Olde Tea Shoppe, IS "the." Old English used a letter named "thorn" to represent the sound th, which developed into a character resembling Y.

Remember when Madonna had a "British" accent, and everytime you heard her speak you just cringed?

It's like that, they have no concept of how foolish they come across.

You people are correct about "thee" and "thou" indicating intimacy, but that is not what Spencer taught when he made it Standard Operating Procedure. If you go back and look at the speech in which he told everyone that God speaks like Shakespeare, he said that "thee" and "thou" show respect. He had it precisely backward. I continued to pray with "you" and "your" because to us modern folk, those are the words we use with our family and intimate friends.

It's a wonder the church didn't ask everyone to pray in Aramaic.

Let alone its significance.

When I went on my Spanish speaking mission, we used "usted" (formal you) to speak to investigators and members, and we used "tu" (informal you) to speak to kids, companions and in prayers.

That looks very similar to English in that regard so it makes sense that "you" is formal and "thou" is informal.

Whoever at Church HQ said we should use "thee" and "thou" when praying because it is more formal/respectful is wrong (at least if you compare it to Latin-based languages such as Spanish.) Thee and Thou are informal (like Spanish "tu").

It was Spence.

Faith Preceeds the Miracle, page 201.

You can't expect Mormons to know the correct 17th century grammar when even God himself doesn't.

The words of God in the Doctrine and Covenants are full of horrible grammar goofs, gross violations of King James grammar:

In D&C 3:10 God is speaking to Joseph only: "...repent of what thou hast done, which is contrary to the commandment which I gave you, and thou art still chosen..." (unnecessary switching from singular to plural and back again)

In D&C 6 God speaks to Oliver Cowdery, especially from v. 16 on. From verses 16 to 20, God addresses Oliver correctly with the singular forms "thou," "thee," etc. But from verse 21 to the end, he addressed Oliver incorrectly with the "you" (plural) forms. Similar switching back and forth are in sections 8 and 9.

At D&C 6:16 God says, "...there is none else save God that knowest thy thoughts..." It should be "knoweth," of course: "knowest" can only be used if "thou" is the subject: "thou knowest."

At D&C 105:1 God says, "“Verily I say unto you who have assembled yourselves here that you may learn my will....” (incorrect use of "you" as subject.)

In D&C 10 God is speaking to Joseph Smith. In the first fourteen verses he addresses Smith using the plural forms of "you" a total of 28 times. Then in verse 15 he correctly reverts to the singular: “..[Satan] has put it into their hearts to get thee to tempt the Lord thy God, ..”

"He has" is modern English. No Elizabethan would say that, but rather "he hath." ("Has" does not occur at all in the King James Bible, but 134 times in the Doctrine and Covenants, along with 100 occurrences of "hath.") The correct possessive for "it" in King James' time was not "its," as in modern English, but "his." (See the first chapter of Genesis for numerous examples.)

Some grammatical points and then a significant one.

Richard is right about "it" and "its." The truth is that the possessive case for most nouns and pronouns comes from "his." Elizabethan English was transitional. The older way was to say "John his book." That transitioned into "John's book." "That book is her his" became "that book is hers." "See that dog? It his tail is long" became "See that dog? Its tail is long." The possessive "his" was contracted into the possessive "s" we stick on the end of words. There are exceptions, but that is the dominant pattern.

If you read Shakespeare, you'll see the same sort of evolution with last names. In one of his plays he might call someone "John the Cooper" in one case and then "John Cooper" in another. "Albert the Smith" became "Albert Smith."

I remember when Spencer made his declaration about Elizabethan English. I tried to do what he demanded but soon got frustrated because it sounded ridiculous. If you are going to use "thou," you basically have to say "hast" instead of "has" and "beggeth" instead of "beg." Try praying like that in church without being laughed at! Hell, soon soon "hath" sounds like "hast," and words like "brethren" have you basically speaking German.

Finally my important point. I think Spencer was an ignoramus. I really doubt that he understood English grammer or history. So why did he demand that we all speak awkward and inconsistent English to God? I think it was largely about domination. Old Spence was a control freak, a man who hated individuality and wanted everyone to be the same: every young man a missionary, every member a missionary, a single form of sexual expression (no oral sex allowed). Lock step, everybody.

That speaking stilted and unnatural English actually puts more distance between humans and their God was something that did not bother him. Or perhaps that was his goal, since he said that the purpose of "thee" and "thou" was to show "respect," which can be a form of distance. Spence was completely out of touch with the warm, nurturing, loving side of humanity and family relationships.

This is one of my favorites from the Book of Mormon.

Alma 39:10 (Alma is talking to his son Corianton) “And I command YOU to take it upon YOU to counsel with YOUR elder brothers in YOUR undertakings; for behold, THOU art in THY youth, and YE stand in need to be nourished by YOUR brothers. And give heed to their counsel.”

From the 'You too can learn Wiganese site' - a local site dedicated to the local dialect (aka Old English as is still spoken by older folks in particular in these parts):

"MAJOR BLOODY NEWSFLASH!!!

New Doctor Who to be revealed Sunday 7pm on BBC1.

But I can tell ye now between me and thee. It's me!!! "

Now THAT I can relate to. BOM never did convince me that the writer knew the finer grammatical points - how on earth did I get through it?

Just my two penneth :-)

Briggy

It cracks me up when folks are ending talks or testimonies and will rattle off, "....I say these things in the name of thy son Jesus Christ, amen." And I lean over to my wife and ask her if we have a kid by that name.

Inspired Stupidity wrote:
> The truth is that the possessive case for most nouns and pronouns comes from "his." Elizabethan English was transitional. The older way was to say "John his book." That transitioned into "John's book." "That book is her his" became "that book is hers." "See that dog? It his tail is long" became "See that dog? Its tail is long." The possessive "his" was contracted into the possessive "s" we stick on the end of words. There are exceptions, but that is the dominant pattern.

I'm afraid I have to disagree. That is a widely held (but historically mistaken) idea. It is what linguists call a "false etymology."

The -s (or now in English, the -'s) possessive ending is common in all the Germanic languages and many other Indo-European languages. It is the standard possessive (genitive) ending. Only English has the apostrophe, which is a rather late development, when people mistakenly thought it was a contraction of "his."

The examples that Inspired gave are nowhere found in actual use.

Richard
(with 4 years postgraduate study in history of the Indo-European languages)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/2013 10:31AM by RPackham.

Richard,

I respect your understanding of Indo-European languages but am not convinced by your explanation. I was taught the "his" theory by a professor of English at an Ivy League university. That doesn't mean that my understanding is correct, but it certainly is not unfounded.

More particularly, you state that my usage is nowhere attested. That is false. Shakespeare used it at least once, though I forget the play. Now, he may have used it mistakenly because the debate between the two schools--your "es" contraction versus my "his" contraction--was already raging by his time. But the OED records many usages of "John his book," or, more specifically,"Mrs. Sand his maid," in 1607; and "Moses his meekness" in 1568. There are many other such attestations in the OED.

Now it could be that the true etymology is as you suggest, with "es" abbreviated to "'s," and then people started using the "his" explanation incorrectly. A bit of evidence for that is the more common usage of "his" after words ending in s, so "Moses his meekness" but "Abraham's pride." The "his" then creates a more audible possessive because it does not get confused with the "s" at the end of Moses's name. In that case the "his" theory would be based on an early popular misinterpretation. But the case in favor of that derivation is by no means definitive.

The bottom line is that etymologists have been arguing about this question for over 400 years and will probably continue to do so for a long time to come.

IS

Inspired Stupidity wrote:
>Richard, I respect your understanding of Indo-European languages but am not convinced by your explanation. I was taught the "his" theory by a professor of English at an Ivy League university. That doesn't mean that my understanding is correct, but it certainly is not unfounded. ....

I was also taught that explanation during my graduate studies, but not as an explanation of the ending, but as an explanation for the apostrophe, which people began using because they (wrongly) thought the standard -s WAS a contraction for "his." The examples you cite for actualy usage of phrases like "John his book" are what linguists call "back formations" (German: "Rückbildungen"), a kind of false etymology. (Another example of back formation is our word "pea" which was mistakenly taken to be the singular form of what looked like a plural: "pease," from Latin "pisa" - a real plural, singular "pisum," - singular, with the 's' as part of the root.)

The -s ending was always there, without the apostrophe, (just as the plural -s ending) until people began to wonder what it was, with the loss of the other case endings on nouns.

A phrase like "the queen his army" does not make sense as an explanation for why people said "the queens army"

From a standard text, Albert C. Baugh, "A History of the English Language" 3rd edition, p. 240:
"An interesting peculiarity of this period [1500-1650], and indeed later, is the "his"- genitive. In Middle English, the -es of the genitive, being unaccented, was frequently written and pronounced -is, -ys. The ending was thus often identical with the pronoun "his," which commonly lost its 'h' when unstressed. Thus there was no difference in pronounciation beween 'stonis' and 'stone is (his), and as early as the thirteenth century the ending was sometimes written separately AS THOUGH the possessive case were a contraction of a noun and the pronoun "his." This NOTION was long prevalent and Shakespeare writes "'Gainst the count his galleys I did some service..."... Until well into the eighteenth century people were troubled by the illogical consequences of this usage; Dr. Johnson points out that one can hardly believe that the possessive ending is a contraction of "his" in such expressions as "a woman's beauty" or "a virgin's delicacy." He, himself, seems to have been aware that its true source was the Old English genitive, but the ERROR has left its trace in the apostrophe which we still retain as a graphic convenience to mark the possessive. [emphasis added]

Sorry I did not make my point more clearly.

(This is now WAY off topic! Apologies to all!)

Off topic, but fun.

I know the etymology you describe. It is entirely possible that people in Shakespeare's day, or somewhat before, wondered about the apostrophe "s" and then inferred a contraction of "his." Back formation. But that does not fully end the confusion about why the apostrophe was inserted in the first place. Your theory assumes that it was to replace the "e" in "es," leaving others later to wonder what "'s" meant and to falsely assume it was a contraction of "his."

The problem with that theory is that there is no clear evidence that the apostrophe really did signal the dropping of the "e." We stumble on "'s" in literature without evidence showing its evolution from earlier usage and then try to figure out what came before. It could be that the "es" theory is itself back formation, which is why the debate persists.

On Johnson's point, whether it makes sense to say "Jane his book," the answer is not all that straightforward. There are other languages in which male pronouns are used for women. Most of these are non-Indo-European tongues, but even in English "mankind" was long used to refer to women as well as men.

Thanks for the off-topic fun. The bottom line, on which I think you and I agree, is that Spencer Kimball and the bureaucrats in Salt Lake City have little understanding of these questions or of how 17th century was spoken. It is difficult for me to believe that a loving God cares what pronouns a child of his uses!

"Off topic, but fun."

Yep. :)

Language changes and language evolves. Who cares if it is divinely inspired 17th century English? It clearly isn't. The point is that they use it for their religious worship and the context of that language should be viewed through the lens of their culture.

Many groups in the past have done the same thing. Occasionally somebody will criticize it, but it is rarely rational.

Ugh...
I am no expert by any means on Modern English, much less Elizabethan English, but when my husband starts his prayers every...single...time...by saying "Dear Lord, Heavenly Father, thou art in Heaven," even after I told him he is just saying "heavenly father, you are in heaven"
...It gets harder with each passing year not to hurt him badly. And yes, I have told him many, many times.
The grammar freak in me now insists I apologize for the run-on sentence that makes up the bulk of the first paragraph. *hangs head in shame*

Or in welsh ( cymric)dialectical,

'There is thou are the Father, with you, up by there, happy we are with us ,
oh dammo cannot say it correctly with me"
LOL LOL

Shit I used to always be asked to offer prayers but also demurred because I consistently wanted to offer Pentecostal style prayers

and apart from that I have got a loud voice,with me, and I do not whisper ( whisper whisper) when praying so I would have been accused of being "violent" in my speech, no doubt.
And whilst we are on that topic,
what in the h*** are they actually saying when they pray up by the podium? It is so insanely silent, tiny tiny tiny wee little voices I never heard ninety per cent of what was said.