My liefe (ſayd ſhe)ye know, that long ygo, / Whileſtye in durance dwelt,ye to me gaue / A little mayde, the whichye chylded tho ; / The ſame againe if nowye liſt to haue, / The ſame is yonder Lady, whom high God did ſaue.
1671, Elisha Coles, chapter 6, inΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ: Or, a Metrical Paraphraſe on the Hiſtory of Our Lord and Saviour Jeſus Chriſt : Dedicated to His Univerſal Church[2]:
Queſtion me then no more; whate'erye want, / Ask in my Name, and God ſhall ſurely grant. / You've asked nothing yet for Jesus sake : / Ask and receive, and of my joyes partake.
1995,Elizabeth II, “Legal Notice 247 of 1996”, inHong Kong Government Gazette[3], pageB1096:
KnowYe that We have declared and by these Presents do declare our Will and Pleasure as follows—[…]
(archaic)You (the singular person being addressed).
Knowye now, Bulkington? Glimpses doye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; [...]
Ye was originally used only for the nominative case (as the subject), and only for the second-person plural. Later,ye was used as a subject or an object, either singular or plural, which is the way thatyou is used today. In modern Hiberno-English usage,ye is used as a subject or an object in the plural, to contrast withyou (singular).
FromMiddle Englishþe. Earlypresstypographies lacked the letterþ(“thorn”), for which the lettery was substituted due to their resemblance inblackletter hand (etymologicaly was for a while distinguished by a dot,ẏ). Short formyͤ continued long after the digraphth had replacedþ elsewhere.
Now vntoyͤ king eternal, immortall, inuiſible, the onely wiſe God, be honour and glory for euer ⁊ euer. Amen.
1647,The old deluder, Satan, Act. (cited inAmerican Public School Law, K. Alexander, M. Alexander, 1995)
It being one cheife proiect ofye ould deluder, Satan, to keepe men from the knowledge of Scriptures, as in formr times by keeping ym in an unknowne tongue, so in these lattr times by perswading fromye use of tongues, yt so at leastye true sence & meaning ofye originall might be clouded by false glosses of saint seeming deceivers, yt learning may not be buried inye church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting or endeavors,—
Many of Catawba's names for tribes incorporate this word, e.g.yę iswa(“the Catawba”, literally“people of the river”),yę manterą(“the Cherokee”, literally“people born in/on the land”).
The vowel of this word is generally nasalized; this is reflected in different ways or not at all in different transcriptions:ye,yę,yen. Sometimes, an initiali, also nasalized, is found:inyen /įyę.
Transcriptions of Mandarin into the Latin script often do not distinguish between the criticaltonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without indication of tone.
Ȝe knowe ek that in fourme of ſpeche is chaunge / With-inne a thousand ȝeer, and wordes tho /That hadden pris now wonder nyce and ſtraunge /Us thenketh hem, and ȝet thei ſpake hem so / And ſpedde as wel in loue as men now do / Ek forto wynnen loue in ſondry ages / In ſondry londes, ſondry ben vſages[…]
You also know that the form of language is in flux; / within a thousand years, words / that had currency; really weird and bizarre / they seem to us now, but they still spoke them / and accomplished as much in love as men do now. / As for winning love across ages and / across nations, there are lots of usages[…]
The formal singular usage, following theT-V distinction, was used to address one's superiors, elders or others to whom one might wish to show politeness or respect.
1 Used preconsonantally or beforeh. 2 Early or dialectal. 3Dual pronouns are only sporadically found in Early Middle English; after that, they are replaced by plural forms. There are no third person dual forms in Middle English. 4 Sometimes used as a formal 2nd person singular.
Álvarez, José, Bravo, María (2008) “ye”, inDiccionario básico de la lengua añú [Basic dictionary of the Añú language][8], Maracaibo, Venezuela: University of Zulia,→ISBN, page108.
1946, “Nuns”, inVolapükagased pro Nedänapükans, page34:
Söl: ‚Tarnow’ äbinom konletan zilik dinas valik teföl valemapükis valasotik. Bukem valemapükik omik, kel äbinon ba gretikün un Deutän,ye pedistukon ti löliko.
Mr. Tarnow was an industrious collector of all things in the field of world languages of all kinds. His library about world languages, which was perhaps the largest in Germany, has,however, been almost completely destroyed.
↑1.01.11.2Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor,A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published1867,pages80, 94 & 114
^Kathleen A. Browne (1927) “THE ANCIENT DIALECT OF THE BARONIES OF FORTH AND BARGY, COUNTY WEXFORD.”, inJournal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of lreland (Sixth Series)[1], volume17, number 2, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, page129
