Because of its mixed Latin and Germanic roots, English is full of different words that mean almost the same thing. For example, ‘begin’, ‘start’ and ‘commence’ are interchangeable (‘commence’ is a bit more formal). ‘Build’ and ‘construct’ mean the same but come from German and Latin respectively.
This richness is great for poets and writers, but can be a little confusing for anyone learning English.
Another interesting aspect of the English language is the lack of distinction between formal and informal. Most Indo-European (and many world languages) allow speakers to show deference or superiority to their addressee through address.
English does not. But it has not always been this way.
Respectfully I say to Thee…
As Spanish has ‘tu’ and German has ‘du’, English once had ‘thou’ (and ‘ye’ as a plural). ‘You’ was the formal plural. As anyone who struggled through a Shakespeare play at school will know, the great bard’s prose was full of ‘thee’ and ‘thou’. The Fool’s words in King Lear, “Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest,”are still sound advice.
In 1603, at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh – the dashing chap who brought tobacco to England – the prosecutor, Sir Edward Coke, sought to insult Raleigh by saying, “I thou thee, thou traitor!” Ouch.
But shortly after Shakespeare and Raleigh’s time, just as big frilly collars gave way to new fashions, use of the informal ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ all but stopped in most of England. In Shakespeare’s plays, characters refer to each other either in the formal or informal depending on the situation and their emotions at the time.
Nowadays, in the vast majority of the English-speaking world, ‘you’ is used for singular and plural, nominative and accusative in both formal and informal situations.
As with so much of British history, the reason for the the decline and fall of ‘thou’ is tied to the class system.
The growth of a middle class in England, neither aristocratic nor peasant, made the choice of ‘you’ or ‘thou’ much more complicated. Should you refer to someone who grew up poor but made a fortune shipping slaves, sugar or cotton in the formal or informal? Did they deserve to be treated with the same respect as someone born with a title? What about the risk of offending someone who felt they should be addressed formally with a casual ‘thee’?
The safest option was to stick with the formal ‘you’, to avoid upsetting anyone. And that is what we use today.
We are not amused
One interesting consequence of thee and thou’s decline is that English now has no distinct second person plural. Following a French tradition, English people in the seventeenth century addressed aristocrats and royalty in the plural. Even today, the queen speaks about herself as ‘we’ instead of “I”. This made the second person informal singular redundant.
As use of ‘ye’ fell away, English was left with no distinct second person plural. When American rappers say “y’all”, Londoners say “you lot” or people in the Liverpool say “youse”, they are actually making up for a missing part of the world’s most widely spoken language.
Meanwhile, in Sweden…
Liberal Sweden in the late 1960s effectively abolished the formal and informal from the Swedish language. The du-reformen saw an end to addressing people of higher social status as herr, fru or fröken and Swedes now address each other as ‘du’.
What do you think?