Re: USAGE English 'thou' (was: Proto-Romance)

Singular/plural and informal/formal distinctions in the second person
merged and conflated in a wide variety of ways in I-E languages.
Usually there's a cycle: what used to be considered form X becomes
form Y, necessitating a new coinage to be the new form X,
then something gets abbreviated in some way, etc.

Spanish originally had "tú" in the singular and "vos" in the plural.

Then "vos" came to be used as a polite singular.  This required a new
coinage to take the place of the familiar plural - "vos otros" (you
others), which was contracted to the single word "vosotros".

But over time "vos" lost much of its air of formality, so yet another
new coinage became the polite singular: "vuestra merced", literally
"your grace", which had a built-in plural form (vuestras mercedes, "your
graces").  These phrases were contracted to "usted" and "ustedes".
Meanwhile, people went back to using either tú or vos, depending on
dialect, as the familiar singular.

But the process didn't stop there.  In most of the Spanish-speaking
world the plural "ustedes" has completely lost its formaility,
supplanting "vosotros" as the familiar plural form.  This may mean that
there will come a new coinage to become the new "really formal" plural
in those areas, but cultural factors will likely prevent that from
happening; there seems to be a general tendency toward familiarization
and dropping of the familiar/polite distinction, not just in Spanish but
many languages and cultures.

Anyway, the result in current Spanish is the following locale-dependent
mishmash:

                Sing            Plural
Familiar        tú or vos       vos or vosotros or ustedes
Polite          usted           ustedes

-Mark

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