Origin & Evolution of Languages
Elizabeth Whitaker
elwhitaker at FTC-I.NET
Sat Jun 12 16:07:55 UTC 1999
At 11:00 PM 6/10/99 -0500, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Something like that. Remember that in Middle English, the "ye" form,
>originally a plural, became a polite pronoun. Out of politeness, the
>older "thou" forms were lost. There was some degree of egalitarianism,
>or at least a more democratic society.
The Society of Friends' (Quakers') use of "thou" and "thee" instead of
"you" forms
was a reason they encountered so much disapproval in various forms.
In other European languages, such as French, Russian, and German, there are
definite
social and cultural protocols about the circumstances in which one should
use intimate
or formal "you" forms.
Elizabeth Whitaker
More information about the Indo-european
mailing list