[ANON POST] Greetings in English other than Hello, Good Day, etc.

[orange_fell]

Research: History of hello (and related cognates), salutations, greetings, historical meeting protocol, history of hail/ave/ahoy, etc. I have found a great deal on why we currently use hello, but not what was used previously as a greeting beyond good day/morning/evening/afternoon

Comments

[dragonbat2006]

I'd think "I greet thee" would be one. Or "God's blessing upon ye."

[reapermum]

Off topic, but is there any reason why you spell "thee" out in full in the first greeting and abbreviate it in the second?

[dragonbat2006]

Not really. I was thinking back to historical fiction I've read and phrases I've heard the characters say.

[reapermum]

Fair enough.

[crescentium]

Just to interject here, "ye" is actually not an abbreviation of "thee". "Thee" is singular informal while "ye" is either plural or formal singular. So "I greet thee", the person is greeting just one person that they are familiar with, while "God's blessing upon ye" he is wishing blessings for several people or a single person in a formal situation. "Thee" is another grammatical form of "thou" which is the equivalent of the common informal "you" in singular.

[reapermum]

But what modern orthography prints as y in this context is the old letter thorn, pronounced as th.

[crescentium]

This tendency to spell thorn as "y" in many modern places has become popular in modern ortography, but it is very much unnecessary and if you want to mimic the medieval speech it is incorrect. There is no reason to spell "thee" as "ye". But it depends on whether you want to actually write to represent the style in which people spoke.

ETA: Okay, to clarify this a little -- there's a lot of confusion around the word "ye" but "ye" the pronoun is not the same word as "ye" the article in spellings like "Ye Olde Shoppe", which is probably what you're thinking.

[reapermum]

I think I've worked out part of my confusion. Some of it is the thorn and eth survival in some contexts and the rest is the nominative/accusative use of ye/you (or is it the other way round?). It's a long time since I was taught that at school.

[crescentium]

I think a big part of the confusion is that "ye" as representative of "the" really isn't necessary in modern writing anymore, and it will lead into people confusing it for the word "ye" = pronoun. As I recall, spelling "the" as "ye" started because in some texts, "y" was used to represent "th" in certain contexts while in others it was still "th", before spelling became standardised and "th" was used universally. Partially this happened because there actually are two different sounds for the sound that is nowadays represented only with "th", and some prints tried to replicate that by substituting one of the sounds with "y

[reapermum]

And I'm more familiar with it in spoken English, though I lost the dialect in my teens, 50 years ago.

[crescentium]

This comment thread has long since gone off topic from the original post (argh, I'm sorry) but I just wanted to say that if you've still been using "thee/thou/thy" and "ye/you" in spoken dialect in your teens, I'd love to know more details. I was under the impression they'd disappeared from spoken English pretty much everywhere by now, except that in some dialects you might hear "you" pronounced as "ye".

I'll end rambling here. I'm really sorry, this is within my field of study, and I'm infinitely fascinated.

[sushidog]

"Ye" is still used in Hiberno-English, although "thee/thou/thy" is not.

[crescentium]

As a replacement for "you" (as in you pronounce "you" as "ye", or as a separate grammatical form of "you"?

[sushidog]

Don't quote me on this, but I think it's a specifically plural form, to distinguish from "you". Certainly people who use it also use "you" in some contexts.

[crescentium]

Oh, that is really interesting! Thanks! :D I may have to see if I can find some research on this, it's a few years since I last touched this specific subject.

[bopeepsheep]

I heard them used in my teens (25 years ago) although I suspect all the original speakers are now dead - I have grown out of the habit of using thee/thou/thy but I do occasionally hear myself say "ye's commin' bain't ye?" in my old next-door-neighbour's voice. :) AFAIK it did mean you-plural to her, since she did say 'you' when talking to me alone.