betsy@dartvax.UUCP (Betsy Hanes Perry) (09/15/85)
> I've now gotten completely confused by the "Plain Speech", "thee/thou" > discussion. > > Do the Friends use "thee" and "thou" to be formal and polite, or do they > use them to be "intimate" -- that is, are they using them because "all > men are brothers" and you address your close relations as "thee/thou"? > > Will Here's my understanding of the matter. My credentials are that I was raised a Friend; I attended 'history of Quakerism' classes as a teenager, and most of my close friends were Friends. (ummm..) In any case. Historically, English had two uses of direct address. Thou (accusative form thee) was used to equals and inferiors. My servant was "thou"; my oldest friend *might* be "thou" in moments of deep emotion. Hence the popular "thou dog!" in forsoothly novels. You was used to superiors, and as the distant/courteous address. The King was most definitely "You", if not "Your Majesty". Someone of equal status who was not a close friend was "you". Along came George Fox, and founded a new religion. Among other things, the new religion did not believe in social class; all men were equal, being equally gifted with the interior Light. Quakers, therefore, disliked titles, and disapproved of using different degrees of courtesy to different men. Quakers used only "Friend" as a title, and only the familiar "thou" as a direct address. William Penn, the son of gentry, once addressed King Charles as "Friend Stuart", and with the familiar "thou". Luckily for Penn, the Merry Monarch was merely amused. Okay. So, Quakers began using only one form of address, the familiar. Shortly after the period I mentioned, William Penn received his land-grant from the King, and large numbers of Quakers emigrated to the new land, thus forming a linguistic island. Meanwhile, in the larger English-speaking community, a common form of address was also being developed. As it happened, the *formal* address became the standard in British English, while the *familiar* thou atrophied. We now have two communities: one using *thou* as the standard address (the Friends), one using *you* (everybody else). The Friends' *thou* gradually vestigialized into an in-group speech; instead of using one form of address, Friends used *thou* to members of their community and *you* to everybody else. At some point, the very declination of *thou* wore away, and *thee* became both nominative and accusative. (Aren't you sorry you asked?) Many modern Friends no longer use the plain speech, feeling that it is counter to the spirit of Fox's teachings to distinguish between Friends and non-Friends in common address. Those Friends I knew as a child who still used plain speech used it only within their own families. -- Elizabeth Hanes Perry UUCP: {decvax |ihnp4 | linus| cornell}!dartvax!betsy CSNET: betsy@dartmouth ARPA: betsy%dartmouth@csnet-relay "Ooh, ick!" -- Penfold