Thou and You. The Pronouns of Address : 9783668094765 : 30 Nov 2015 : Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Mannheim (Lehrstuhl für Anglistische Linguistik), course: Diachronic Linguistics, language: English, abstract: The diachronic development of the English language is marked by the loss of nearly all inflections - except for the pronouns' inflections. When comparing the Modern English pronoun paradigm to the Old English one, especially the personal pronouns are worth looking at. For a native German speaker, it stands out that in Modern English both "Du" and "Sie" are translated with only one word, you. In English, there seems to be no distinction between familiarity and politeness in the second person pronoun. This is true for Modern English, but not for earlier forms of English. It is interesting to see that between Early Modern English and Modern English the thou, which would be translate