And what language and region is it?

I've noticed my language teacher uses the informal you in one language and the formal one in the other.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Technically English has this too but it's not used outside of extremely formal situations. You = formal, Thou = informal.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    I'm certain there is no situation like that. It's just a dead part of the language. Most native speakers don't even know how to use it properly when imitating old-timey speech.

    Quakers use "thee/thou" sometimes, but only because the movement has been around since just before the end of the shift to "you" for everything, and it's fossilised in as a result. There's a few weird British Isles dialects that preserve it too, but they're not widespread.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's archaic. I can't really imagine a situation in which we'd use "thou" today for formality reasons. If you say "thou" , you're pretending to be someone from hundreds of years ago or you're quoting the King James Bible or something that is hundreds of years old.

    I think a more-reasonable division between formality and informality would be whether or not one uses a title like "sir" today.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment