Modern German has separate formal and informal pronouns ("du bist" vs. "Sie sind") and verbs. English used to have them too ("thou art"/"you are"). Even though people assume "thou" is more formal, it's actually the informal/intimate version.
Apparently we (~Angles/Saxons) also used to have a separate tense for "a group of exactly two of you" and words like "both" (vs all) and "either" (vs any) are residual traces of this.
I have always enjoyed the insult "I thou thee thou traitor" offered to Sir Walter Raleigh, presumably just before he was executed. There is a semi-plausible explanation of how thou died out in England
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Just to share something I think is fun:
Modern German has separate formal and informal pronouns ("du bist" vs. "Sie sind") and verbs. English used to have them too ("thou art"/"you are"). Even though people assume "thou" is more formal, it's actually the informal/intimate version.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
Apparently we (~Angles/Saxons) also used to have a separate tense for "a group of exactly two of you" and words like "both" (vs all) and "either" (vs any) are residual traces of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number)
I have always enjoyed the insult "I thou thee thou traitor" offered to Sir Walter Raleigh, presumably just before he was executed. There is a semi-plausible explanation of how thou died out in England
https://www.quora.com/English-language-Why-did-people-stop-u...
but it leaves open the question why it persists in other languages.