# Re: Quaker English: Why is it "wrong"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 31, 2003, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-quaker-english-why-is-it-wrong/222020 "2003-12-31T22:03:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**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:** [December 31, 2003, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-quaker-english-why-is-it-wrong/222020/1 "2003-12-31T22:03:30Z")
I was thinking about this after watching _The Philadelphia Story_ last night. There’s a scene in a library where a librarian asks Jimmy Stewart, \*What does thee wish? \* and says to him later, _If thee will consult with my colleague in there_. JS responds by asking, _Dost thou have a washroom?_ And from what I recall, Jimmy Stewart’s character actually gets it right. Typical early Modern English as used by Shakespeare, or in the KJV Bible, would have: - I do **thou dost** , \*but:\*something is done **to thee** he/she/it doth we/you/they do. \* But Quaker English seems to have: I do **thee does** \*and \*something done **to thee** he/she/it does, etc. - So in Quaker English, it seems that the original 2nd person singular subjective _thou_ is not used at all, and that rather than the 2nd person singular verb form ending in _-est_ is also discarded in favor of the modern 3rd person singular _-s_. Why is QE so muddled with respect to what is considered correct in other contexts involving early Modern English? On a side note, I’m sure the Quaker character was put in the movie as an amusing example of Pennsylvania fauna. Does one still run into Quakers in PA? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2003, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-quaker-english-why-is-it-wrong/222020/2 "2003-12-31T22:34:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Spectre of Pithecanthropus \* > \*\*On a side note, I’m sure the Quaker character was put in the movie as an amusing example of Pennsylvania fauna. Does one still run into Quakers in PA? \*\* According to the Ontario Centre for Religious Tolerance: [http://www.religioustolerance.org/quaker.htm](http://www.religioustolerance.org/quaker.htm) there are 125,000 Quakers in North America. And according to: [http://www.quakerfinder.org/](http://www.quakerfinder.org/) there are twenty Quaker meeting houses in Pennsylvania. Richard Nixon was a Quaker, as was Herbert Hoover. So, you know, they’re around. ---
**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:** [December 31, 2003, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-quaker-english-why-is-it-wrong/222020/3 "2003-12-31T23:10:42Z")
I don’t want to get too far into the way of life of contemporary Quakers, because I’m more interested in the origins of their peculiar way of speaking, and why it diverges so much from other archaic English which was presumably still often heard in the 1600s. But do Quakers still use Quaker English in everyday discourse? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2003, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-quaker-english-why-is-it-wrong/222020/4 "2003-12-31T23:23:01Z")
[This site discusses the use of thou and thee by Quakers.](http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6362Yaswen2.htm) It speculates that the dropping of _thou_ was a late development. (If I were to offer a WAG, it would be along the following lines: Quakers adoptrd exclusive _thou/thee_ at a time when society used both _thou/thee_ and _you_. As society dropped all the inflected forms, settling on _you_ as the sole second person address, Quakers also shed more complicated inflection, but settled on the accusative _thee_ rather than the nominative _thou_ as they drop the additional forms.) ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2004, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-quaker-english-why-is-it-wrong/222020/5 "2004-01-01T08:57:42Z")
Around here, in deepest Yorkshire, thee, thou, thy and tha are regularly used, nothing at all to do with religeon and everything to do with a local dialect which is slowly disappearing. They can be used almost interchangeably but there is a subtle set of rules that seems prettty flexible, tha and thee are often used in a slightly admonishing manner. The questions as per the OP would probably be spoken, What’s thee wanting ?(some places might use thy) Tha needs to talk with ma colleague ovver yonder Has(t) tha got a washroom? ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2004, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-quaker-english-why-is-it-wrong/222020/6 "2004-01-01T12:43:05Z")
Quakers (Friends) don’t do that anymore, at least noone in the mainstream. Friends are incredibly tolerant and generally not stodgy at all. People tend to confuse Quakers with Amish or Mennonites, and nothing could be further from the truth. Anyway, “plain speech” has gone the way of the horse and buggy and corporate responsibility. My wife is a Quaker, and we were married in the “Care of the Meeting”.