4 Answers

"thou" and "thee" were for familiar use, and "you" and "ye" were formal.

To choose between addressing someone as "you" or "thee/thou:"

Thee/Thou is the informal/friendly second person singular. Use it when speaking to a friend or someone of lower social status than yourself.

You is the formal, polite second person singular address. Use it when speaking to someone of higher status or to one who is not a close friend.

The word thou ( /ða?/ in most dialects) is a second person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in almost all contexts by you. It is used in parts of Northern England and by Scots. Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee (functioning as both accusative and dative), and the possessive is thy or thine. Almost all verbs following thou have the endings -st or -est; e.g., "thou goest." In Middle English, thou was sometimes abbreviated by putting a small "u" over the letter thorn: þ?.

Originally, thou was simply the singular counterpart to the plural pronoun ye, derived from an ancient Indo-European root. Following a process found in other Indo-European languages, thou was later used to express intimacy, familiarity or even disrespect, while another pronoun, you, the oblique/objective form of ye, was used for formal circumstances (see T–V distinction). In the 17th century, thou fell into disuse in the standard language but persisted, sometimes in altered form, in regional dialects of England and Scotland,[3] as well as in the language of such religious groups as the Society of Friends. Early English translations of the Bible used thou and never you as the singular second-person pronoun, with the double effect of rescuing thou from complete obscurity and also imbuing it with an air of religious solemnity that is antithetical to its former sense of familiarity or disrespect.[2] The use of the pronoun was also common in poetry.
SOURCE:  Wikipedia

"thou" is an archaic second-person singular pronoun, and "you" was originally a second-person plural pronoun. "Thou" faded from use in the 16th and 17th centuries (and was, in fact, quint if not archaic even when the KJV was translated) and almost entirely disappeared from use by the 18th century. In it's place, "you" is now used as both the singular and plural second-person pronoun -- sometimes it refers to you individually, and sometimes it refers to you all as a group.

Source(s):

http://www.mwilliams.info/archive/2004/1…

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