# Quaker English ?? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 31, 2000, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quaker-english/39121 "2000-10-31T19:02:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tinker\_Grey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tinker_grey/32/8136_2.png) [@Tinker\_Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tinker_Grey)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2000, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quaker-english/39121/1 "2000-10-31T19:02:05Z")
Anybody out there know enough about the Quakers to answer this? I am consistently perplexed at the apparent misuse of the King’s English (James’, that is). If you read the KJV or Shakespeare, or other old works, it doesn’t match up with Quaker English. The current perpetrator of mis(?)-representation is a Newberry award winning children’s novel The Witch of Blackbird Pond which I am currently reading to my 8 yr. old. This book replaces all non-possessive “you” pronouns with “thee.” I suspect 3 possibilities:[ol] [li]The authors are idiots, or[_]they think they are making things easier, or [_]in the process of the evolution of the English language, the Quakers represent the missing link.[/ol][/li] For example, The Bard: “Thou art ugly.” Quaker: “No, Thee is ugly.” Comments? Tinker ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2000, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quaker-english/39121/2 "2000-10-31T19:38:00Z")
If I understand your OP, you think Shakespeare and the KJV Bible had it right. I agree. Though a long time ST fan, I am perplexed in the episode “Amok Time”, in which T’Pau, the leader of the planet Vulcan uses Quaker like constructions. For example, when somebody addressed her, she said, “Thee speaks?”. I find the whole thing very grating since the correct way sounds more “natural” to me. ---
**Author:** ![Tinker\_Grey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tinker_grey/32/8136_2.png) [@Tinker\_Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tinker_Grey)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2000, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quaker-english/39121/3 "2000-10-31T21:11:17Z")
Thank you for your reply, **javaman**. Naturally, I think the Bard and the KJV have it right since they were writing what was natural to them. A more concise version of my question is this: 1. Did the Quakers speak Shakespearian English (at least when Quakers were still distinctive in their speach) or, 2. are the authors of “Amok Time”, The Witch of Blackbird Pond and C.J. Cherryh’s Morgaine series (Gate of Ivrel, Well of Shiuan, Fires of Azeroth, Exile’s Gate) correct if you move, say, 150 years beyond Shakespeare? Tinker ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2000, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quaker-english/39121/4 "2000-10-31T23:00:14Z")
I think what may have happened is that by the time Quakers became a distinct group, the grammar of “thou”, “thee”, and “thine” had already passed out of common knowledge, and that the Q’s, at about that time, decided consciously to use “thee”, because in older English, “thee” and “thou” were familiar pronouns much like “du” and “dein” in German. When the proper usage of “thou” and “thee” was current, they were ‘familiar’ second person singular forms like “du” in German or “tu” in French. For your social “betters” you would use “you” in the singular (though not when addressing God, strangely), and “you” was used for the plural no matter whom you were addressing. I read somewhere that the Q.'s started saying “thee” to each other because it had been a familiar, “friendly” form (remember they’re called Friends, too). Evidently this fact was still remembered even if the grammar was forgotten. This is strange, what with all the Bible reading that was being done. You would expect that to have reinforced the correct usage. At any rate, it seems to have gotten muddled somwhere along the way, much like people today think “ye” meaning “the” was a word in Middle English, when actually it was only an alternate spelling, the “Y” standing for an old letter called “thorn” that meant “th”. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/74df32/32.png) [@The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Devil_s_Grandmother)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2000, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quaker-english/39121/5 "2000-11-01T00:11:27Z")
Darn it, javaman, now I have to go look something up. I was sure that “you” was the familiar form and “thee” was the respectful form and the reason the Quakers were using it was for a “respect for all people” sort of thing. The Quakers were originally the “Religious Society of Friends”, but I don’t think that had anything to do with their speech patterns. I’ve never heard of the German reasons before either. That strikes me as strange as most of the early Quakers got started out of England. Drop “quaker” into any search engine and you’ll get some sites. BTW, you use the informal/familiar term when addressing God because he is your father. It’s not so very strange. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2000, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quaker-english/39121/6 "2000-11-05T04:32:24Z")
I misspent most of my college education studying Germanic languages, and thou/thee/thine is definitely ‘familiar’ second person singular. German has du/dich/dir/dein (nom/acc/dat/gen) in the singular, and it also has a familiar plural ihr/euch/euch/euer/. These are what Germans use in their own families and among friends, though people younger than about 50 are a lot freer with it. University students usually call each other ‘du’ from the first. German, Dutch, Frisian, and English all have a familiar singular second person pronoun that is somewhat like “thou”, and the verbal conjugation that goes with it features the -st sound, so in archaic English we had “Thou hast” (you have). German has “du hast”, and since in Chaucer’s time the word “thou” was actually pronounce more like “thoo”, so it approached the German pretty closely. The reason the Quaker’s usage grates on me is because I’ve had the other, correct grammar drilled into me. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2000, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quaker-english/39121/7 "2000-11-05T05:40:17Z")
Would [THIS SITE](http://www.quaker.org/thee-thou.html) help any? I am not linguist enough to appreciate it. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2000, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quaker-english/39121/8 "2000-11-05T17:41:01Z")
Susan Meredith Burt, quoted in the link above, seems to agree with my view that the Quakers adopted, incorrectly, the use of ‘thee’ because they no longer possessed command of the relavent grammar. The article in the link is very interesting and has a lot of food for comment, but I will limit myself now to the following: First, it was interesting to see that ‘to thou’ someone was used as a verb. This is like German today where we have the verb “dutzen”, (to address as “du”). Then about those Northern English dialects where ‘thou’ is still used–do they use the ‘art’ conjugation of “be”, or do they use ‘bist’? I have seen literary examples of rural dialects, spoken by working class people, who said “Tha bist” (you are).