Re: Old Norse (was Re: New to the list)

Nik Taylor wrote:

>> One of those things I don't really understand how they
>> could happen
>
>Basically, "you" was used to be polite, and later "thou" fell into
>disuse, supposedly because of the Quakers who said "thou" to everyone,
>whether king or peasant.
That's an account I hadn't heard before.  The story I was taught actually
worked in the other direction.  As the merchants became richer than the minor
nobles, they began to demand the same amount of respect, so people began using
the polite "you" rather than common "thou."  The number of rich commoners
rose,
and they took offense to "thou".  Before long, it was difficult to tell (in
the
middle class) who should be "thou" and who should be "you", so everybody was
called "you" to avoid offending a potential client/supplier/partner.
Eventually "thou" dropped out of common usage altogether.

Marcus