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Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe
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You know that's what the Voynich Manuscript was really about.
Somewhere, Shakespeare is spinning in his grave.
Thou swell! Thou witty!
Thou sweet! Thou grand!
Wouldst kiss me, pretty?
Wouldst hold my hand?
Both thine eyes are cute, too...
— "Thou Swell", A Connecticut Yankee
Be the tale set in 1300s Scotland or 1840s Cardiff, appropriately "old-fashioned" English in the mind of a TV writer is based on the archaic King James Bible. The formula is simple: addeth "-eth" and "-est" to random verbs, scattereth silent Es like the leaves of autumne, bandyeth about the words "thee", "thou", "thine", "doth", "hast", and "forsooth", reverseth thine noun-verb ordere every other occasion, and strewth, thou doth be the next Billy Shakespeare!
Yea verily, this doth makest the characters (and thus, writers) soundeth like idiots complete to any viewer that possesseth a high school education... especially if it goes on for long passages. *
This sort of faux-Shakespearian writing is popularly called "Old English", though it isn't—see Useful Notes: History of English.
The silent "e" is somewhat Truth In Television, as before the mid 18th century, there wasn't really a standard for spelling. You could spell any word whatever way you felt like spelling it, which is where we get quotes like (this is real, I swear) "Noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle...".
There are too many examples to list. It's very difficult to find any examples of early modern English used correctly in TV or movies (though please do note any particularly wretched examples you run across).
If only gods, aliens, or other powerful beings are speaking in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe, especially if they speak in verse, that's Pardon Me Stewardess I Speak Iambic Pentameter. Magick also makes frequent use of Butchered Englishe. Compare Antiquated Linguistics and Talk Like A Pirate.
A quick reference to medieval pronouns:
Examples
- One particularly pervasive example appears in the title of this article: the substitution of "ye" for "the". No speaker of early Modern English would do this, as it derives entirely from the fact that the Anglo-Saxon letter "thorn" (þ) was used to render "th" in writing at the time, and in some fonts (especially blackletter), it looks very much like a "y". Since the patent on printing presses was German, and England's earliest printers imported types from the Netherlands, the presses lacked the Anglo-Saxon letter, and "y" was substituted instead. Don't confuse this with the second person plural pronoun "ye," meaning "you," as in "Gather round, ye lads and lassies," which is a different word entirely and is pronounced as written.
- Similarly, in the English-speaking world until the early 19th century, the letter "s", at the beginning or middle of a syllable, was written as a long "s": ſ, or, in case your computer can't see this symbol, something which amounts to an f minus the cross-stroke. (It, like the f, is often even longer, descending below the line like a p or y as well as extending above it.) The character ß (Eszett or sharp "s") in modern German (pronounced and sometimes written "ss") originated as a ligature
 of ſz. In addition, the integral symbol and the IPA letter esh (representing the "sh" sound) were both derived from the italic version of ſ and look nearly identical * well, at least in typefaces that have proper italics and not just obliques .
- Ever read a book that used the ſ? After a while you begin to imagine the text sounding like Sylvester the Cat.
- One quotation ("O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?") has misled most people about "wherefore", which means "why" not "where". Juliet is not asking where Romeo is, but rather, complaining about his name (she goes on "A rose by any other name..."), signifying his family, feuding with hers. The word "wherefore" is related to "therefore", but as the latter is still in common use it doesn't cause the same confusion.
- It doesn't stop joke writers who should know better from having Romeo answer, "Over here!" (And it's probable that many of them do know better, given that it would make no sense in context to have Romeo shout that to Juliet, because he's sneaking up in the middle of the night to her balcony to see her. Stock Parodies are not required to be faithful to the play, though.)
- Don't expect anyone to correctly distinguish thou art/beest from thou wast/wert.
- Star Trek misuses archaic English in "Amok Time". The writer apparently wanted to show that the Vulcan language had separate second-person singular and plural forms (as French does with "tu" and "vous"). They showed this by using the archaic second-person familiar pronoun "thee" for "you" - but the characters used "thee" even when "thou" would have been the correct word. Even if Vulcan used the same word for both pronouns (as modern English does with "you"), the translator should have been programmed to recognize the difference between subjective and objective pronouns.
- If thou art the subject of a sentence then the object of the sentence wouldst be thee.
- Fantasy novels can be especially bad with this. The Inheritance series tends to have "yea" and "thou art" thrown in with what is normal, modern English, with no reason and to no end.
- not to mention the annoying usage of "mine (subject)" by the dwarves.
- Though this seems to be dialectical rather than unintentionally butchered english.
- No, no. That's giving the author WAY too much credit.
- In the early days of MMORPGs (especially in Ultima Online), the fastest way to identify newbies was to see if they talked like this.
- Or roleplayers. Generally, though, the only roleplayers who actually talk in "Shakespeare speech" are newbies who don't know any better or Trolls making fun of them.
- Referring to someone higher on the social ladder as thou or thee. Thou was the equivalent of tú in Spanish, tu in French, or du in German: second person familiar address, to be used with intimates or social inferiors.
- Truthfully, though, this really depends on the period. The use of "ye" or "you" as a formal second person pronoun originated in the mid-15th century; prior to this, there was no distinction between formal and familiar address. Thou was the singular pronoun, and ye/you was the plural. By the mid-18th century, you had supplanted thou entirely as the sole second-person pronoun for all situations. So for a work set around Shakespeare's time, you should use thou only for familiar address. For one set in pre-Renaissance times, thou should be used only as a singular pronoun, and you/ye solely as a plural pronoun. And for one set in the 19th or late 18th century, thou shouldn't be used at all in everyday speech.
- Later on in time "thou" got the connotation of being solemn and respectful thanks to it being used in older literary works like the Bible and Shakespeare. Stuff like calling God "thou" in prayer as a "term of respect" isn't exactly *wrong*, since the tradition of doing so is itself now hundreds of years old, but it's not *authentic* to what "thou" used to mean back in the actual Middle Ages. "Thou" was passing out of use even when the King James Bible was written and the translators mostly used "thou" in order to be authentic to the original Hebrew and Greek texts (which always distinguish between singular and plural pronouns) rather than to propagate any specific "respectful language" for talking to God.
- Quakers notoriously adopted use of "thee" as a pronoun as part of their tradition of "plainspeaking", in order to make the point that they eschewed *all* forms of flowery respectful formal speech, even ones that were centuries old and no one thought of as "respectful" anymore like addressing people as "you". The unkind stereotype, of course, is that since they started doing this in the 18th century long after "thou" had passed out of common use they did so incorrectly — "Quaker speech" stereotypically just uses "thee" all the time without regard for nominative or objective case.
- The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, from circa 1590, contains certain features (such as the "y-" past participle prefix), used with varying degrees of success, that hadn't been current for about 200 years, making this trope older than steam.
Live Action TV
- Behind Mr. Bumble in the workhouse/orphanage in PBS's 2009 dramatization of Oliver Twist on Masterpiece Theatre, just before Oliver approaches to say "Please sir, I want some more," we see in capitalized foot-high lettering painted on the wall, "GOD SEEST THOU" rather than "GOD SEETH THEE."
Fanfiction
- Odious Twilight fan fic Forbidden Fruit depicts Edward Cullen speaking in horribly butchered pseudo-Elizabethan English (liberally sprinkled with the author's own native 'txt mssg!' language) presumably to lend him a sense of old-fashioned grandeur. Author seems unaware that Edward was born in America in the early 1900's and doesn't speak like this. As it really does need to be seen to be believed, here's an excerpt:
"OMG SWEET LADY!! THY MUST NOT TELL ANYONE! " he screamed "it was a moment of madness thats all!! Im so so sorry for watt happened,i hope thine can forgive me, but ive promised myself to bella and thats just how it is, no matter how much thou intrests me!"
Voldemort Vloxemort from My Immortal also speaks like this, and it makes about as much sense as the above example. Of course, this is My Immortal, so it's to be expected.
Film
Anime
- The anime Romeo X Juliet is dubbed in English using this technique, it makes it rather interesting but to some Your Mileage May Vary.
- In the Inu Yasha English dub, Kaede speaks absolutely normally except for replacing you with "ye." It's made even stranger by the fact that other people from her era don't do it. Other old people from her era don't do it. Other old Shrine Maidens from her era don't do it.
Music
- Many metal bands try to use archaic English in their lyrics because it sounds cool. Most fail badly.
- Bal-Sagoth spam "thou" regardless of number and "thine" regardless of what the next letter is.
- Nile spam the "-eth" ending without regard for person and number.
- Arcturus make a brave attempt with the song "To Thou Who Dwellest in the Night". Alas, it falls flat already in the title. ("To thou" is a hypercorrection. It should be "to thee".)
- "I shalt", "thou shalt", "he/she/it shalt", "we shalt", "ye shalt", "they shalt." Only one of these is correct, but Cradle Of Filth will happily use the other five anyway.
- At least Stormwarrior keeps it to the titles and liner notes in Heading Northe.
- Oddly enough, so do many churches, with a largely similar failure rate. It's fine when you're singing a hymn that was indeed written in that era, but all too often, churches either (1) convert part of the archaic English, but not all of it, to modern English, or (2) insert archaic English in a modern song.
Video Games
- When Final Fantasy Tactics was remade for the PSP, they retranslated the dialogue to contain fakey Middle English and loaded it down with Purple Prose. The fans didn't take the change well.
- ...so they preferred the Narmtacular original version?
- Yes we did. Almost everyone I've spoken to really got annoyed about at least one aspect of the re translation.
- The re-translation was actually critically well received and widely preferred based on several dozen web polls and a few magazines. Many fans found the translation and multiplayer the only saving graces that made putting up with the in-battle slowdown worthwhile.
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption (a great game by all means, by the way) makes extensive use of this trope: all these thou's and thee's can easily make your head spin - but only before you realize that it actually sounds fun. It is curious, however, that the game (first half anyway) takes place in medieval Prague and Vienna.
- The difficulty selection screen in Heretic is terrible in this respect, so bad it is obviously done as a joke. "Bringest them oneth" is especially bad ("on" is not a verb); and of course the presence of "yellowbellies-R-us" in the middle doesn't help either.
Subversions, Parodies, etc.
Comic Books
Literature
- Discworld
- When characters are involved in correspondence (e.g. Carrot, Vimes, and William de Worde), they are shown writing in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe and basically read like Samuel Pepys, despite speaking in modern English.
- Technically, not actually English. The language spoken depends on where the book is set. For example, they speak Morporkian in Ankh-Morpork. Morporkian translated to English for our convenience.
- Even more technically, whether Morporkian is translated for our convenience or is, in fact, identical to English is left gloriously unclear, and may actually change from book to book. And de Worde's style is based on the leader column of The Times, which was still being written like that well into the 20th century.
- In Mort, Ysabel says that the Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe book was written "before they invented spelling."
- In Science of Discworld 2: The Globe, the wizards are trying to evict the Elves from Roundworld (Earth). Towards the end they visit Shakespeare in the chapter "A Woman on ftage?"
- Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch mentions in a footnote that Paley's watch argument was almost old enough to use these, leading to 'manifeftation of defign'
- Soul Music played with ſ, mentioning the guitar primer "Play your Way to Succefs in Three Easy Lefsons and Eighteen Hard Lefsons."
- In Witches Abroad, where Magrat pronounces ſs as "f"s while quoting her herbal, prompting Nanny to tell her that a "herbal drink" (absinthe) would "put a cheft on your cheft".
- Played with in Lords and Ladies, when the magically sleeping bodies of a long-dead army are casually reawakened.
Ancient King: What tyme does thou art call thys then?
- Michael Crichton's Timeline. The main character goes back in time to Medieval periods, and can't understand a word he hears. When he does understand a word, "genteel", he takes it to mean the current meaning "gentle" - instead of the old meaning "noble".
- The one guy who actually knows the language thinks his speech probably sounds close to this to the locals.
- One interesting aversion is that while Henry Fielding's 18th century writing style is somewhat similar to what is commonly thought of as Olde English, in his novel Jonathan Wild, when detailing Wild's ancestry, he depicts the one living in the Dark Ages speaking actual Old English.
- This is actually a minor clue in the third book of the Dresden Files. Part of the backstory has Harry and the Chicago PD taking down a sorcerer. In a flashback, you hear the sorcerer talking with "thee"s and "thou art"s strewn about his language, to which Harry responds something like, "Shut up, nobody talks like that any more." Later, when the demon pursuing him speaks the same way, Harry says the same thing. He doesn't catch on to it for awhile, but it's the first clue as to the real identity of the villain.
- Harry also subverts this by correcting other people's Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe. When a demon tells him, "I will tear out thy heart! I will hunt thy friends and their children!" he replies, "It's THINE heart."
- In Peter S. Beagle's The Folk of the Air, the Olde Englishe spoken by members of a society based on the SCA is derided as "Castle Talk." One character remarks, "It's got no rules!"
- In David Weber's Heirs of Empire series, Jiltanith insists on speaking in "Elizabethan English". She says she does this to show her disdain for the modern world, but everyone else, including her father Horus (who has been around long enough to have inspired the Egyptian god), finds it annoying.
- The British series What the Tudors Did for Us has episode titles like this, e.g. "Desygner Livinge."
- Dave Barry Slept Here has this "actual example" (we are pretty sure that Dave Barry is making this up) of British colonial tax forms:
To determineth the amounteth that thou canst claimeth for depreciation to thine cow, deducteth the amount showneth on Line XVLIICX-A of Schedule XVI, from the amount showneth on Line CVXILIIVMM of Schedule XVVII... No, waiteth, we meaneth Line XCII of Schedule CXVIILMM... No, holdeth it, we meaneth...
- Elminster. Maybe this doth somehow reflect that olde lecher liveth there for more than thousand years, how do ye think?
- In Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones, Hathaway, who lives in the past, sends Quentin Sykes a letter with "f" used freely instead of "s". (In the TV adaptation, the effect is retained by having the letter read aloud by a meffenger with a ftrange fpeech impediment.) Hathaway himself speaks modern English to the main characters, but period English to his wife and children.
- In Nick Harkaway's The Gone-Away World, students of the Jarndice University take an oath stating that they will looke upon ye world with an eye to ye proper managemente thereofe, ye goode conducte of ye businesse of livynge and ye keeping of ye pease, and that all magisters will give heede to ye thoughts one of another, and not take untoe themselves an excessive pryde.
- 1066 and All That presents examples of Eaold Ynglishe poetry.
- From Henry Beard's short Raymond Chandler parody "The Big Recall": ". . . the El Olde English Pubbe, with beer in test tubes and a menu that offered mafhed potatoef and firloin fteak."
Live Action TV
- The ſ became a Running Gag in an episode of Cheers: "Life, liberty, and the purfuit of happineff" (which was actually written "happineſs").
- In an episode of of MST 3 K, the 'bots are complaining about Mike's really outdated encyclopedia, with at one point Crow remarking that "Congress is spelled with an 'f'! How do you pronounce it? 'Congrefffffff'?"
- Then there was the Roger Corman movie "The Undead" (the plot involves no undead, which should be a clue to it's quality) where everybody in the past portions talked in an especially bad form of this, up to and including words like "now-eth". Mike and the bots got a lot of comedic gold out of that.
- Lampshaded to amusing effect in the Doctor Who episode The Shakespeare Code, in which companion Martha Jones speaks briefly in some rather horrid-sounding 'Olde Englishe', at which point the Doctor quickly quiets her and tells her to just speak normally.
- Blackadder II:
Blackadder: Tell me, young crone, is this Putney?
Young Crone: [in a cackling Cockney accent] That it be. That it be.
Blackadder: "Yes, it is", not "that it be." You don't have to talk in that stupid voice to me. I'm not a tourist.
- The ſ was also used as an extended gag in The Benny Hill Show, in a novelty song called "Fad Eyed Fal," in which all of the Ss were replaced with Fs.
- In an episode of The Vicar Of Dibley, The Ditz Alice Tinker reads from a very old Bible, and pronounces all the ſs as "f"s. The vicar stops her before she gets to the word "succor".
- In The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon criticizes a historically inaccurate Renaissance Fair, saying, "My God, those people need to learn you can't just put 'ye olde' in front of anything you want and expect to get away with it."
- This is the episode where he makes "historically accurate undergarments" from Leonard's pillowcase, right? Then, when they go back, dresses as Spock and pretends that he is exploring a planet similar to Medieval Earth (because of the small discrepancies)?
- Truth In Television. This troper works at a ren fair, and encounters several groups like that in a year, though they tend to be more oriented toward steampunk than Star Trek. There was a group of Trekkers who claimed to be in a holodeck program, and severely broke up with laughter when asked if their "ho-lo-deck" was simulating an English village in 1567, or a Renaissance Faire in 2005.
- Averted in Babylon 5: When a guy who believes he is King Arthur arrives at the station, one of the crew theorize that he may be the real King Arthur abducted and kept alive by the Sufficiently Advanced Vorlons. (It happened before with a Victorian character, after all.) This is shot down by another member pointing out that he speaks modern English with a heavy British accent, whereas the real King Arthur would be speaking a completely different language. *
Brythonic (a variety of Celtic), ancestor of modern Welsh .
- In an episode of Dempsey And Makepeace, Dempsey finds Makepeace at an archery range and launches into a fake monologue full of butchered English before Makepeace tells him to "stop butchering the language".
Music
- Stan Freberg used this gag for his "United States of America Volume One" album.
- Just for the sake of completeneſs, the English comedy songwriting team of Flanders and Swann mentioned this in their treatment of Greensleeves. "And at the top it said, Green Fleeves. [Thomas] Kyd looked at this; he thought, 'Well, that's a pretty unlikely title ... for a fong.'"
Newspaper Comics
- In a Sovisa filler Ryn murders a bartender while trapped in the past because he's talking like this. And because It's Ryn we're talking about apparently it really annoys her, she states it bugs her more than being shot.
Theatre
- The Rodgers and Hart musical A Connecticut Yankee (based on Mark Twain's novel In Name Only) gleefully mixed archaic diction with twentieth-century slang. The show's hit song "Thou Swell" (quoted above) is representative.
- "The Golden Ram" from Two By Two begins, "Ye who thirsteth, come and drinketh." It Gets Worse.
Video Games
Web Animation
- Thy Dungeonman starts with the title and goes downhill from there, mixing with modern slang and Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe. To illustrate how bad (and funny) this is:
- Ye find yeself in yon dungeon. Ye see a FLASK. Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS. What wouldst thou deau?
Web Comics
- Lampshaded in this episode of Not Quite Daily Comic.
- This strip from Order Of The Stick has police tape that says "Ye Olde Crime Scene - Do Not Crosse".
- Terror Island has this as a joke. Everyone speaks like this in the flashback, even though it was five seconds ago.
- DM Of The Rings:
Legolas: Oh man, sucks to be you.
DM: Oh, come on. You're not even trying [to stay in character]. I know you can do better than that.
Legolas: Hark, thy fate sucketh?
DM: That is...much worse.
- Eight Bit Theater takes this to extremes in this strip.
WANTED: 4 Ye Olde Lighte Warriorse Ofe Destinye Toe Rescuee Kingdome Frome Darknesse. Inquiree Withine.
- Goblins: Forgath's prayer.
- The space dragons in The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob. "Prison transport, thou hast cleared ye upper atmosphere. Accelerateth for 20 zarps, & then unfurleth thy ramscoop!"
- Arch-Angela from Super Stupor talks extensively in this (though Milholland does get the words right).
Western Animation
- Family Guy: Peter Griffin names the bar in his basement "Ye Old Pube" after mistaking which word was supposed to have the "e" at the end in Old English.
- A brief gag on Futurama features an amusing clash between Fry's delusion that he's a robot and his ubiquitous idiocy.
Fry: "Fear not, for I shall assist ye!"
Hermes: "Robots don't say 'ye'! ...Quit thinking you're a robot!"
Fry: "I'll show ye..."
- Don't forget George Washington's head: "Oh, Bender, thou robots cracketh me up!"
- A particularly odd example is the Angry Archer of Transformers Animated, who talks like this all the time... even though he's in The Future.
- Mildly justified in that he's somewhere between Robin Hood and Green Arrow in terms of his gimmick, and has occasionally spoken in actual (mangled) Shakespeare quotes. Now, his excuse for doing that is pretty up in the air.
- He's from the future... surely he's trying to blende inn with olde folke in ye paft?
- Lampshaded in an episode of Rugrats when the parents take the babies to a renaissance fair. Didi takes the babies to "Ye Olde Daycare" and the following conversation takes place:
Didi: Raiseth thy gate, good sir, so I may droppeth off my kids...eth!
Gatekeeper: Yeah, whatever, lady.
- Mocked in Batman The Brave And The Bold with the Cavalier.
The Cavalier: "If thou thinkest thou can stop me, then have at thee!"
- Lampshaded and nicely combined with Buffy Speak in the Kim Possible pirate episode.
- Kinda surprised that the olbligatory Simpsons connection wasn't made before now. Homer became the town cryer of a festival, and would speak in this way whenever he rang his bell. He even refused to listen to Marge at one point unless she (reluctantly) played along.
Homer: Hear ye, hear ye! What's for breakfast?
Marge: Toast.
Homer: I can't understand thee.
Marge: (sigh) Ye olde toast.
- Also used in the segment where Selma is Queen Elizabeth I. There is a gag using a banner that reads Miſſion Accompliſhed poking fun at a certain premature victory celebration aboard an aircraft carrier.
- And nobody's said _anything_ about Robin Hood Daffy
- Nobody commented on Sponge Bob Square Pants? Shame on ye. the episode where they went back to midevil Bikini Bottom had everyone add -eth to the end of their every third word!
Other
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