Episode 41: Thou

Words for Granted - An etymology and linguistics podcast - A podcast by Ray Belli

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Up until Modern English, the English language distinguished between its singular and plural second-person pronouns. Thou was the singular, and ye was the plural. Today, these have been replaced by a single pronoun, ‘you.’ Thou and ye are common Biblical pronouns in English, but there's more to their usage in the Bible than just preserving an old linguistic tradition. In today's episode, we examine the semantic implications of these archaic pronouns in English translations of the Bible.