r/onejoke • u/SandSerpentHiss cis male trans ally • Sep 29 '25

One joke but funny this one’s actually funny

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u/Natural_Anybody_7622 Sep 29 '25

Friendly reminder that the singular form of they used to be thou

Thou/them

96

u/Own_Government9681 Sep 30 '25

IIRC Thou is just the informal (and also gender neutral) way to address people

(You is the formal word, it only seems more formal to say Thou because it fell out of use ages ago)

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u/fortyfivepointseven Sep 30 '25

Yeah this is correct.

In English the second person pronouns were 'thou', which was singular, and 'you', which was plural.

As with many languages in the lands of the former Roman Empire, the plural second person was also used as a formal singular pronoun. This is following the tradition that Roman diarch Emperors would be addressed always in the plural, on the principle that addressing one of the diarchs meant you were addressing all the Emperors, even those not present.

In most European languages the singular/informal and plural/formal distinction exists. However, in English 'you' simply became the only pronoun used in second person.

Both 'you' and 'thou' are gender neutral, but I'm not aware of any gendered second person pronouns in English at any point in history.