Ye (IPA: /jiː/) is a second-person, plural, personal pronoun (nominative), spelled in OldzğEnglish as "ge". In Middle English and early Early Modern English, it was used as a both informal second-person plural and formal honorific, to address a group of equals or superiors or a single superior. While its use is archaic in most of the English-speaking world, it is used in Newfoundland, Northern England, Cornwall, and Ireland to distinguish from the singular "you".
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Confusion with definite article
"Ye" is also sometimes used to represent an Early Modern English form of the word "the" (traditionally pronounced /ðiː/), such as in "Ye Olde Shoppe". "The" was often written "" (here the "e" is written above the other letter to save space but it could also be written on the line). The lower letter is thorn, commonly written þ but which in handwritten scripts could resemble a "y" as shown. "Thorn" is the predecessor to the modern digraph "th". The word The was thus written Þe and never as Ye. Medieval printing presses did not contain the letter thorn so the letter y was substituted owing to its similarity with some medieval scripts, especially later ones. This substituted orthography leads most speakers of Modern English to always pronounce "ye" as /ji:/ even when "ye" is not intended as a pronoun but as the definite article and the pronunciation is /ðiː/ or /ðə/.
Etymology
In Old English, the use of second-person pronouns was governed by a simple rule: þū addressed one person, ġit addressed two people, and ġē addressed more than two. After the Norman Conquest, which marks the beginning of the French vocabulary influence that characterised the Middle English period, the singular was gradually replaced by the plural as the form of address for a superior and later for an equal. The practice of matching singular and plural forms with informal and formal connotations, respectively, is called the T-V distinction, and in English it is largely due to the influence of French. This began with the practice of addressing kings and other aristocrats in the plural. Eventually, this was generalised, as in French, to address any social superior or stranger with a plural pronoun, which was believed to be more polite. In French, tu was eventually considered either intimate or condescending (and, to a stranger, potentially insulting), while the plural form vous was reserved and formal. In Early Modern English, ye functioned as both an informal plural and formal singular second-person nominative pronoun. "Ye" is still commonly used as an informal plural in Hiberno‐English and Newfoundland English.
Many other variations are noted in Middle English sources due to difference in spellings and pronunciations. See Francis Henry Stratmann (1891). A Middle-English dictionary. [London]: Oxford University Press. and A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 TO 1580, A. L. Mayhew, Walter W. Skeat, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1888.