Word of the Week: ty – ‘you’

Ty is one of the ways to say ‘you’ in Czech, specifically the singular, informal version. It’s part of a big family of related words for ‘you’, all descending from one ancient source. You can find one relative in French: tu. It’s also there in Spanish as tú.

Other languages may have their own version that has gone through certain sound changes. This happened in the ancient history of English, when the original T-sound became a TH. This led to the archaic pronoun thou, which also has the form thee and possessive thy. The three work like ty, tě and tvůj in Czech. Thou is very nearly extinct in English, having been replaced by the originally plural you, but you can find plenty of it in Shakespeare’s plays.

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