ABSTRACT

Thou, Thee, Thy, Thine, Ye, You, Your, Yours: Second Person Pronouns in Two Bible Translations

In the King James Version from 1611 there are eight different forms of personal pronouns for second person: the singular forms thou, thee, thy, thine and the corresponding plural forms ye, you, your and yours. Because of linguistic changes in the English language the number of the second person pronouns has declined during the centuries. Accordingly, in the New King James Version from 1990 these eight earlier pronouns are represented by only three pronouns: you, your, yours. Therefore, the hypothesis of this study was that the disappearance of so many different pronoun forms might have caused some ambiguity. To examine this, The Gospel of Luke of both Bible versions was studied and all the second person pronouns were first classified according to their case and number (nominative/accusative/dative/genitive, singular/plural) and thereafter counted. The verses of the Gospel of Luke, where both one or several persons are addressed, were read and carefully studied. Furthermore, when necessary, interesting or relevant, comparisons were also made to two other translations: Gustav V´s Bible from 1917 and the Swedish Bible Version from 2000. The results of this study show that there are differences in the numbers of the examined pronouns. These discrepancies depend on several different factors which have been discussed. In addition, the investigation gives evidence of the fact that the references of pronouns are not always completely clear: several verses, which might be perceived erroneously, were found in the modern English Bible translation.