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The Goblin Emperor by Sarah Monette (writing as Katherine Addison) is a secondary world fantasy that uses you/thou as a way of incorporating formality. It's interesting way of helping understand the whole manner/formality system of the setting.
There is a scene in The Lord of the Rings (Book) where Éowyn switches to using "thou" and "thee" when begging Aragorn to take her with him when he takes the Paths of the Dead. If you don't know (as I didn't for a long time) that she has switched to intimate/informal language then the scene has less impact. Especially since Aragorn keeps things formal in his reply. http://coco.raceme.org/literature/lordoftherings/retu…
> Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
In German, we use "sie" the German equivalent of "they". Thus, to be polite, you address someone as many people that aren't part of the conversation.
No, it's "Sie", not "sie", and therefore not identical to third person.
Incidentally, in Norwegian the formal form is now so archaic that short of communicating very formally with a very old person, in most cases it will come across as rude and sarcastic (you're implying someone is seriously up themselves)
There is a scene in The Lord of the Rings (Book) where Éowyn switches to using "thou" and "thee" when begging Aragorn to take her with him when he takes the Paths of the Dead. If you don't know (as I didn't for a long time) that she has switched to intimate/informal language then the scene has less impact. Especially since Aragorn keeps things formal in his reply. http://coco.raceme.org/literature/lordoftherings/retu…
Tolkien also talks in Appendix F of The Return of the King about how hobbits had largely lost the distinction between "you" and "thou" - so when Pippin speaks to Denethor in Minas Tirith and addresses him with the familial term, people assume that he must be royalty himself to address the Steward in such an informal manner.
Did English ever have a formal version of “you”? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7215834 - Feb 2014 (193 comments)
There is a scene in The Lord of the Rings (Book) where Éowyn switches to using "thou" and "thee" when begging Aragorn to take her with him when he takes the Paths of the Dead. If you don't know (as I didn't for a long time) that she has switched to intimate/informal language then the scene has less impact. Especially since Aragorn keeps things formal in his reply. http://coco.raceme.org/literature/lordoftherings/retu…
Also see, the sun also rises because hemmingway transliterated a ton of Spanish, including thees, thous, some colloquialisms
He uses "thee" and "thou" to simulate the informal Spanish "tú".
Afterthought: the post below illustrates the paucity of modern English in that nowadays in modern English no distinction is made between the second and third person 'you' whereas in other languages such as German it still is. __ I've mentioned on HN previously when discussing languages that when my father was learning German his old textbook had the English thee, thou, and thine/thy as the second person for the Germa…
Not sure if any native German speakers that had that reaction.
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou This should be common knowledge for native English speakers. It's hard to read Shakespeare without knowing this. But for non-native speaker, this would be mysterious.
Or King James Bible - some Christians stick to the original translation (1611).
The informal T vs formal V causes confusion in conversation with semi-strangers. Eg. At work you never really know which way to speak to someone at a watercooler. If you choose the informal T you make them your equal. Ehich might be perceived as insulting to them, since they might want to keep a perception of superiority to you for eg. being older, more tenured, etc. Often you'd rather choose not to even engage in a conversation and just keep your thoughts to yourself. Better than ending up in a inferior position when choosing the safe V, or risking insulting someone when using the informal T form.
This felt to me like one of the reasons why English became the dominant language for business over time. Together with simplified morphology (you only need to learn the plural by adding 's' at the end, vs. 5+ other tenses of each word) it just ended up being much easier to pick up and less risky to engage in conversations and therefore higher chances of adoption by non-speakers.
"Thou" sounds very similar to german "du" which is the current informal form. In older german the second person plural ('Ihr', similar to "vous" french from which "you" may come) was also the formal form, but it's out of fashion for a few centuries now.