In what region is "thou", etc. used in dialect?

Question

My mother often uses words like "thou", "thy", and "thine" in everyday speech. A typical example is:

"Thou art a jammy bugger!"

She is from the north of England. I'm wondering whether this quirk of language is unique to her or if it's something to do with the area she comes from or possibly her age group.

She's in her late 50's and comes from Yorkshire. I am just curious, because I also picked up this habit, and now that I'm living abroad and talking to non-native English speakers it's struck me how strange it is.

Answer 1

I grew up in West Lancashire (near the Yorkshire border), and pretty well every one of my parents generation used thee, thou, thy and thine. The first three were sometimes combined into a multipurpose “tha”.

Along with this perseverence of the informal second person singular, the equivalent verb form was still often used, e.g. “where goest thou?” instead of “where are you going” and “what dost tha want?” instead of “what do you want?”.

It can still be heard in the Lancashire/Yorkshire region particularly, in rural areas.

Answer 2

Thou art is normally shortened to thar/tha in Yorkshire - but thee, thar, thine are still relatively common, and useful if you want to refer to just one person.

So "Don't thee thar me, thee thars them that thars thee" makes perfect sense oop north

edit: my understanding is that the plural you/your originally was a polite form used to social superiors and thee/thine was the familiar (like tu/vous or du/sie). Gradually everybody adopted the more formal/polite form to sound gentlemanly. Quakers and similar groups deliberately used the familiar thou form to show that they believed everyone was equal.

Yorkshiremen (and women) continued to use the familiar form because nobody is their social superior.

Answer 3

Here tells us that "thou" is restricted to:

It is used in parts of Northern England and by Scots.... In the 17th century, thou fell into disuse in the standard language but persisted, sometimes in altered form, in regional dialects of England and Scotland

It remains, what are these regions? I did a wee bit o' research, and came up with:

Cumbrian:

thew : you

Lancashire:

In south Lancashire...where older people,...will still use the pronoun "tha" or "t'" (thou) and "thi" (thee) instead of "you" as the 2nd person singular personal pronoun, subject and non-subject form respectively; "thy" as the 2nd person singular possessive adjective instead of "your"; and "thine" as a second person singular possessive pronoun instead of "yours"

This is Lancashire below:

Yorkshire:

Use of the singular second-person pronoun thou (often written tha) and thee.

This is Yorkshire below:

East Midlands(rare):

Up until the mid 20th century it was not uncommon to hear the use of informal forms of address, Thee and Thou

This is East Midlands below:

Black Country:

The traditional Black Country(English West Midlands) dialect preserves many archaic traits of Early Modern English and even Middle English, and can be very confusing for outsiders. Thee, Thy and Thou are still in use,

This is English West Midlands below:

Black Country is to the north and west of Birmingham, and to the south and east of Wolverhampton.

Potteries dialect(Spoken by north Staffordshire):

noticeable features of the dialect....and the use of thee and they in place of you

This is Staffordshire below, and remember, only north Staffordshire speaks Potteries:

Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cumbrian are all in northern English, and the northernmost parts of it speak nearly identically with Scots, who also use "ye", and "thee".

Hope that helps!

Answer 4

Yes, it is or was relatively common in Yorkshire (I don't go to Yorkshire, and I don't know anyone from Yorkshire who uses the old forms, but it doesn't mean people aren't still doing it there). The North has a variety of dialects that remain relatively strong, most obviously Geordie.

Answer 5

The Amish, mostly in Lancaster county in the USA state of Pennsylvania still use those pronouns.

They also still use horse-drawn carriages and plows though.

Their dialect page on Wikipedia actually doesn't mention this, so I suppose it could be an inaccurate depiction of the language I got from movies and TV. I used to live in a neighboring county, but I didn't talk with many of them personally.

Mentions of Amish speaking this way are trivially easy to find in pop culture though. Among ones I found quickly are Amish Pickup Lines.

The Thou Wikipedia page mentions that "such religious groups as the Society of Friends" (Quakers) use it. Amish are in fact a religious group very similar in outlook to the Society of Friends.