{"id":972,"date":"2015-10-20T09:51:22","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T07:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/?p=972"},"modified":"2015-10-30T14:24:54","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T12:24:54","slug":"why-did-people-stop-saying-thou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/why-did-people-stop-saying-thou\/","title":{"rendered":"Why did people stop saying &#8222;thou&#8220;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">German has <em>Sie<\/em> and <em>du<\/em>, French has <em>vous<\/em> and <em>tu<\/em>, Spanish has <em>usted<\/em> and <em>t\u00fa,\u00a0<\/em>and modern English has&#8230; <em>you.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But this was not always the case. In the 15th century,\u00a0<em>you<\/em> was used in a similar way to\u00a0the German\u00a0<em>Sie.\u00a0<\/em>The equivalent of the German <i>du<\/i> was the English\u00a0<em>thou\u00a0<\/em>(and <em>thee<\/em> for <em>dir<\/em>), words that will be familiar to anyone who has read Shakespeare in the original English. So to say English has no\u00a0<em>Sie\u00a0<\/em>form is not totally correct &#8211; more historically accurate would be to say English has only a <em>Sie<\/em> form. See more below:<\/p>\n<div style=\"max-width: 1280px;\">\n<div style=\"left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 68.9063%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/cdn.iframe.ly\/bxg1Vh?summary=true\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" webkitallowfullscreen=\"true\" mozallowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>German has Sie and du, French has vous and tu, Spanish has usted and t\u00fa,\u00a0and modern English has&#8230; you. But this was not always the case. In the 15th century,\u00a0you was used in a similar way to\u00a0the German\u00a0Sie.\u00a0The equivalent of the German du was the English\u00a0thou\u00a0(and thee for dir), words that will be familiar to [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[22,16,18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=972"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions\/974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}