Ye is an old English word that simply means “you.” In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, people used ye the way we use “you” today, especially when speaking to more than one person or addressing someone formally. When a town crier shouted “Hear ye, hear ye!” he meant “Listen up, everyone!” Shakespeare's characters often said things like “How are ye?” or “Ye must come with me.”

You might see ye in old documents or in phrases like “Ye Olde Book Shoppe.” In Old English, people used a special letter called a thorn (þ) that made the “th” sound in “the.” When printing presses arrived from Europe, they didn't have the thorn character, so printers substituted a y because it looked similar. So “Ye Olde” was always pronounced “The Old,” not “Yee Old.”

Today, people only use ye to sound old-fashioned or playful, or when they're reading historical texts aloud. Nobody actually says “How are ye?” in normal conversation anymore, except perhaps in a few traditional dialects in Ireland and Scotland.