Talk:Thou

kipling

I seem to recall that in 'Kim (novel)' Kipling renders conversations in the indian vernacular(s) using the second-person singluar, and those in English using the plural. This creates an interesting effect and might be worth including in this article under 'More recent uses' (I haven't added it myself as I don't have a copy to hand to check). Maybe someone else could? 82.18.224.223 (talk) 02:53, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Carol Ann Duffy

Contemporary poet Carol Ann Duffy makes effective use of "thou" in her love poem Rapture. Vernon White ^{. . . Talk} 20:34, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Problems with the article

It's a very well written article; and it's marked FA, but it achieved that in 2003, and it wasn't exactly difficult. It was reviewed in 2006, but standards weren't as high as they could have been.

One problem is that the article name is a pronoun, whereas WP:MOS says that it should be a noun or noun phrase. But that's fairly minor, it's just a guideline.

And most of the article consists of usage guide information for this word. That's worse, it's policy.

Which brings us to the central problem I see with it, WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary says that articles are supposed to be on a concept or thing, but this is single English word. Single words as the concept are disclaimed, because that's what dictionaries are about.

So it's a dictionary article. It's a long one, and most dictionaries would cut it for length considerably, but nevertheless that's what it is.

Just making a dictionary article longer gives you a long dictionary article, it doesn't make it encyclopedic. This is simply about four letters 't' 'h' 'o' 'u' and where you can, and where it has been, put in a sentence.

It just seems that this slipped through the cracks. There aren't exactly a lot of words (truthiness is one that basically everyone IARs on) that made FA, and I think we're just looking at one where nobody joined up the dots; I don't see anything about thou that makes me want to IAR anymore than I would with ye or something.

I checked, and this question had never come up before on the talk page or the reviews. It's seems to have been a lacuna; if it had been discussed before that would have been fair enough.

It also would be fine if it was merged with something. There's no article on Personal pronouns in Early Modern English for example, and I'm sure that could be a very fine article.

Anyway, that's what I think what does anyone else think?

As I say it's well written, a well written extended dictionary entry, and it would meet the policies easily if it was merged properly, but the fact that it's one of so very few word articles is probably telling us something, and I think this is what it is.

I'm not planning to FAR or AFD it, but I wanted to put this out there as a point of view; I think that improving the wikipedia sometimes involves looking at things in a different way. I'm sure that the wordinistas from linguistics section of the wikipedia will go ballistic at the mere idea that word articles like these are not Terribly, Terribly Important (tm), but I guess that goes with their territory.

(p.s. First person to say "I think it's done enough" can do something anatomically incorrect; it's not a criteria in any policy, how would we ever be able to prove it was enough or not enough, it's just words that mean nothing except 'I like it'!)- Wolfkeeper 15:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

A noun phrase that reflects the contents of the article is "the pronoun thou in English"; therefore the article can be in Wikipedia, because "thou" is a good summary of that noun phrase. 167.107.191.217 (talk) 15:30, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but you can do that with any word in the English language: "the adverb pretty in English" and then just list all the usages.- Wolfkeeper 15:58, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Saying that this is an “unencyclopedic dictionary entry” is completely missing the forest for the trees. The purpose of the restriction against dictionary entries in Wikipedia is that, if any word definition becomes encyclopedic, the scope of the encyclopedia balloons unmanageably and its focus is diluted. Including a page about thou really doesn’t have that problem, because it’s not just a definition, but also has all kinds of information which would be way out of scope for a dictionary entry but is relevant for an encyclopedia (namely, a complicated history). I think you’re right that Personal pronouns in Early Modern English would be a fascinating article; go ahead and write one. If you do, this article should still remain as the “summary style” expansion of one section of that article. –jacobolus (t) 19:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

That editor retired, after years of related discussion at WT:NOTDICT and an incomplete RfC.

(Currently: The policy still needs updating, but there's a fairly strong consensus that agrees with your comment above.) HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:12, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

KJV where most know it from?

"Most modern English speakers encounter "thou" only in the works of Shakespeare, in the works of other medieval and early modern writers, and in the King James Bible."

Ref 1 is dead, and ref 2 doesn't quite state this. But I'm surprised if this really the case. Are there any stats anywhere? My inkling is that hymns are a more common source of familiarity, as Christians in this day and age are more likely to read more modern Bible translations (which generally use "you" in its place). -- Smjg (talk) 00:08, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Shakespear section gets it backwards!!

First, Falstaff addresses "Hal" as an intimate comrade, emphasizing "you"; then he switches to a facetiously contrasted "thou" for a future majestic but still graceless King.

No, no, was the other way 'round in Shakespear's day, as stated elsewhere several times in the article.