When it comes to the development of the second person pronoun you, a seemingly simple word, there is actually quite a bit of history behind it. Initially, it was used only in dative and accusative plural forms, with thou as the singular version and ye as the nominative form. However, over time, you started to be used as a term of respect and eventually became more prevalent, leading to the decline of thou altogether. The word you has been present in some form for as long as English has existed, appearing as iow, eow, geau, ȝeu, yhw, æu, ȝow, and yewe before the modern spelling became widely accepted in the late sixteenth century. This modern form of the word is believed to have been influenced by the various declensions of ye and the German word euch, meaning “to you”. The usage of you in literature has been on the rise since the 1960s, now making up about 0.3% of all English words.
