Other commenters have already covered the you/thou thing, so to cover the printing press bit: that did happen, but with a different word. “Ye” as in “Ye Olde Village Inn” is the one. The “ye” here is “the”, and it was pronounced as “the” too. It would have been spelled “þe” before, and in blackletter style (𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰 𝔰𝔱𝔶𝔩𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔩𝔢𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤), “y” and “þ” looked awfully similar. If your press came from a country that didn’t use the thorn - and many presses in Europe did - and therefore didn’t have that character available, then you’d just use the y since they were close enough anyway
A similar thing happened with the letter yogh (ȝ) in Scotland. It wasn’t in most presses, but it looks close enough to a z, so just use a z, and now the name “Menzies” is spelled that way despite being pronounced “ming-iss”
That this “ye” is spelled the same way as the second person plural subject pronoun “ye” is a total coincidence
Wait, was ‘Ye Olde …’ really still pronounced ‘The old’? Holy crap, why did nobody ever correct how stupid I am. I thought people just said things funny back then. Sigh
Stop. You are making some of the senseless things in English make sense. How I’m I supposed to feel superior because my first language is read the way it is written? 😩
That’s the annoying part of English. How we got here is perfectly logical for the most part, and that does absolutely nothing to make any of it make sense.
Other commenters have already covered the you/thou thing, so to cover the printing press bit: that did happen, but with a different word. “Ye” as in “Ye Olde Village Inn” is the one. The “ye” here is “the”, and it was pronounced as “the” too. It would have been spelled “þe” before, and in blackletter style (𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰 𝔰𝔱𝔶𝔩𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔩𝔢𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤), “y” and “þ” looked awfully similar. If your press came from a country that didn’t use the thorn - and many presses in Europe did - and therefore didn’t have that character available, then you’d just use the y since they were close enough anyway
A similar thing happened with the letter yogh (ȝ) in Scotland. It wasn’t in most presses, but it looks close enough to a z, so just use a z, and now the name “Menzies” is spelled that way despite being pronounced “ming-iss”
That this “ye” is spelled the same way as the second person plural subject pronoun “ye” is a total coincidence
Wait, was ‘Ye Olde …’ really still pronounced ‘The old’? Holy crap, why did nobody ever correct how stupid I am. I thought people just said things funny back then. Sigh
Stop. You are making some of the senseless things in English make sense. How I’m I supposed to feel superior because my first language is read the way it is written? 😩
That’s the annoying part of English. How we got here is perfectly logical for the most part, and that does absolutely nothing to make any of it make sense.