I believe I read somewhere that the singular for “they” used to be “thy”, but that makes language sound terribly old. Doubt it’ll get picked up in the mainstream
‘Thy’ is the disused informal ‘your’. There’s ‘thou’/‘thee’ but that’s still second-person.
Interesting! Do you have any etymological sources that go into this more? I’d be curious to learn
This looks like an alright starting place:
I think “thy” is singular for “your”, “thou” would be singular “you”.
Familiar rather than singular. You wouldn’t use thee and thou on someone of higher station, you’d use singular you and and singular your (QE2 used singular “we” in the same mold)
I think you have it backwards. A lot of languages (including mine) use some form of plural to address people at a higher station, which isn’t really a thing in Egnlish any more since it uses “you” for both singular and plural, but “thy” and “thou” is 100% singular - you would never use these words when addressing a group of people, no matter how familiar or above them in station you are.
Yeah that is correct, I was only describing singular usage. It is commonly believed by English speakers that thee, thou, thine were formal or that you and your are newer
Really we dumped the informal words and started addressing everyone as if they were due respect of rank or station
