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**incizarry** · 05-02-2010, 01:07 PM

*Actually Engish does have a formal second person pronoun but we don't use it anymore: thou.

Thou wasn't formal. It was singular, in contrast to the plural ye (you in the accusative and dative cases). Due to the influence of Norman French, the plural became also formal and eventually you became the nominative, replacing ye, as well as the general singular, replacing thou and its other declensions. Thou seems formal to most modern speakers because the main place is survives is in certain Christian groups, where it is commonly, but not exclusively, used to refer to God.

To keep this mildly on task, the Japanese omae (お前) went the other way. It was originally honorific, but is now quite the opposite.

05-02-2010, 01:07 PM	#11
incizarry Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 436 Senior Member	Actually Engish does have a formal second person pronoun but we don't use it anymore: thou*. Thou wasn't formal. It was singular, in contrast to the plural ye (you in the accusative and dative cases). Due to the influence of Norman French, the plural became also formal and eventually you became the nominative, replacing ye, as well as the general singular, replacing thou and its other declensions. Thou seems formal to most modern speakers because the main place is survives is in certain Christian groups, where it is commonly, but not exclusively, used to refer to God. To keep this mildly on task, the Japanese omae (お前) went the other way. It was originally honorific, but is now quite the opposite.
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