4 ms·
"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 wh
by kawa 3y ago
"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.
- LAC-Tech 3y agoIndeed, it's the same word! In the ancestor language of both English and German (and also Dutch, Low German, and many others) it's been reconstructed as "þū".
- amelius 3y agoWhat is the ancestor language, and how do you pronounce þū?
- pvg 3y agoproto-West Germanic by current thinking (at least, by Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languages#Validity_of_West_Germanic_as_a_subgroup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languages#Validi...