The T–V distinction (from the Latin pronouns tu and vos) is a contrast in a given language between various forms of addressing one or multiple conversation partner(s). The distinction occurs in a number of the world's languages, and may be specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, age or insult toward the addressee.
Indo-European languages
West Germanic languages
Afrikaans Modern Afrikaans rarely distinguishes between the informal second-person singular jy/jou and the more formal u (capitalized if addressing God), with the former supplanting the latter in most cases. Familial titles are often used in place of formal u when speaking to a significantly older person, who can be of a different family, e.g. Sal oom my asseblief help? ("Will uncle please help me?") or Hoe gaan dit met ouma? ("How is grandma doing?"). U is sometimes still used in business, politics, polite conversation, interactions with customers, and other formal settings. The second-person plural julle is used in all social contexts.
English
Modern Standard English uses a single second-person pronoun you for all grammatical cases, numbers, and social contexts. Old English used the second-person singular þū in both formal and informal contexts, and Middle English followed this trend with þou for some time after the 1066 Norman Conquest. However, by the 13th century, the second-person plural pronoun ȝe or ye had been adopted in formal contexts. As part of English's continued divergence from its synthetic origins following the Norman Conquest, grammatical case was largely lost in the transition from Middle to Early Modern English. Accordingly, you (objective case) had almost entirely supplanted ye (nominative case) by the 15th century. In Early Modern English, ye and you were used to address superiors and strangers, while thou and thee were reserved for familiars and subordinates. The more widespread and observed this division became, the more pejorative it became to address strangers with familiar thou and thee. By the 17th century, such usage among nobility was seen as strongly and deliberately contemptuous, as in the declamation of the prosecutor at Sir Walter Raleigh's 1603 trial "I thou thee, thou traitor!" Use of thou rapidly declined and by the 18th century was effectively extinct in most English dialects, supplanted by the formal pronoun you, even when addressing children and animals. This was also seen in Dutch, most Brazilian Portuguese dialects and Spanish spoken in parts of Costa Rica and Colombia. Despite this, translators of the King James Bible chose to keep the older forms in their work (1604–1611) in order to convey the same grammatical distinctions as their Hebrew, Greek, and Latin sources. Its subsequent popularity and the religious rationale of many who continued to employ thou has preserved its use in English, but made it seem pious and ironically more formal and respectful than the everyday you. In the United States, some Protestant sects, such as the Quakers, insisted on addressing everyone as thou, because they considered every person to be a friend and an equal. This persisted until the 19th or early 20th century.
West Frisian In West Frisian, the formal singular nominative jo (pronounced yo) is very close to the English you and the Middle and Early Modern English ye. There is no such distinction in the plural; the plural second-person pronoun is always jimme. Stadsfries, a Dutch dialect with strong Frisian influence, parallels this distinction (dou, jou, jimme). West Frisian jo is used slightly more often than Dutch u. Native speakers of Dutch are sometimes warned against addressing newly acquainted people with do too soon.
German
Sie and du
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