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Tag: Demotivatedpinkiepie

http://fluttershyponders.tumblr.com/post/74486871143/pinkie-yeah-and-how-come-ponies-keep-not

Okay, serious answer time.

There are two distinct uses of "ye”: The first means “the” and the second means “you all” (back when “thou” meant “you” in the singular). These two aren’t related.

The first use (in “Ye Old Shop”, for example), actually comes from an letter called thorn (uppercase: Þ, lowercase: þ), which represents the “th” sound. (It survives today only in Icelandic.) The word “the” used to be written as “þe”, but people started using “th” (probably after the French conquered England). Despite this, some people kept the thorn and used “y” as a substitute, because printing type from other countries didn’t have the thorn. This results in “ye” meaning “the”; it does not mean “you all”.

EDIT: The title of this post was originally “If ‘Ye’ Means 'The’…”, which does not reflect the issue being discussed.