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{"id":28022,"date":"2015-01-15T11:13:50","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T16:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=28022"},"modified":"2015-01-15T11:13:50","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T16:13:50","slug":"god-as-thou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/01\/god-as-thou.html","title":{"rendered":"God as Thou"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This is of religious and not just linguistic interest, as the infographic notes. God is addressed in Romance languages with the \u201ctu\u201d pronoun, and this should not surprise anyone who recalls that English used to have an equivalent pronoun, \u201cthou.\u201d Of course, as the latter ceased to be generally used in English, \u201cthou\u201d (or even \u201cThou\u201d) came to have connotations of\u00a0greater<\/em> rather than\u00a0lesser<\/em> formality. And so today, if someone calls God \u201cthou\u201d they probably think they are paying greater respect.<\/p>\n

I think the\u00a0origin of this is that the modes of expressing formality by using the plural or a plural-based form of the second person pronoun are from later than, or other languages than, those in which the Biblical tradition was first expressed. But the result is interesting \u2013 one which makes\u00a0people address God with less reverence than their boss.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"