Learn English – the meaning and etymology of the adjective “jamthe”, of Yorkshire English

I grew up in West Lancashire (near the Yorkshire border), and pretty well every one of my parents generation used thee, thou, thy and thine. The first three were sometimes combined into a multipurpose “tha”.

Along with this perseverence of the informal second person singular, the equivalent verb form was still often used, e.g. “where goest thou?” instead of “where are you going” and “what dost tha want?” instead of “what do you want?”.

It can still be heard in the Lancashire/Yorkshire region particularly, in rural areas.

Alas, both words most probably do not come from the same root. So far as we know, their identical spelling is completely accidental. They were already spelled the same more than two thousand years ago by the Romans.

Our word German comes from Latin Germanus, first attested in Caesar, which was used to describe the Germanic tribes by the Romans. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.), it may be of Celtic origin, as a name used by the Celts to designate their neighbours; but there appears to be no consensus yet.

The word germane comes from Latin germanus (adjective "related, relative", noun "brother") This comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *gen-, which means something like "give birth". Our word germ, from Latin germen, "sprout", is from the same root, as is genetic, through Greek genesis, "birth".