[Lexicog] Thou -- Indo-European Roots

[bolstar1]

Leave it to those Indo-Europeans to be the root of our enlightenment. 
Rudy, you may be right about `thou' being calqued from French; 
however, it's history might be more oblique. Most of the sources I 
checked cite Indo-European as the primary source, with the offshoots 
of that form embedding itself into Old German (du/thou (thou being a 
dialectic variant of du) and Latin(tu) – whence into French. Greek 
apparently absorbed it as 'sy' (Merriam W.) or 'su' (Online Etymology 
Dictionary). I listed them verbatim below.  

 Oxford American English Dictionary:
Old English thu, of 
Germanic origin; related to 
German du, from an Indo-
European root shared by 
Latin tu. 

Merriam Webster: 
Middle English, from Old English thu; akin to Old High German du 
thou, Latin tu, Greek sy


Online Etymology dictionary || www.etonymonline.com
*thu (cf. O.Fris. (Old Frisian); thu, M.Du. (Middle Dutch); M.L.G. 
(Middle Lower German) du, O.H.G. (Old High German), Ger. (German) du, 
O.N. (Old Norse) þu, Goth. þu), from PIE *tu-, second person singular 
pronoun (cf. L. tu, Ir. tu, Welsh ti, Gk. su, Lith. tu, O.C.S. ty, 
Skt. twa-m).

Scott 




 
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