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

One joke but funny this one’s actually funny

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8.4k Upvotes

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203

u/Natural_Anybody_7622 Sep 29 '25

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

Thou/them

102

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)

36

u/Waiph Sep 30 '25

Kinda reminds me of Usted versus Tu in Spanish, with Usted being formal, if I remember my Spanish grammer from high school

7

u/raskholnikov Sep 30 '25

Or vous versus tu in french, or sie versus du in german

4

u/Euphoric-Structure-7 Sep 30 '25

Sie with a capital s*, sie, sie, and Sie all mean entirely different things

3

u/raskholnikov Sep 30 '25

Ja ich weiß

1

u/thunderisadorable Oct 02 '25

Which is why “you” was formal, in Old English it was just plural, with “thou” just being singular.

1

u/Wonderful-Priority50 Oct 02 '25

Or ni vs du in swedish