The T–V distinction (from the Latin pronouns and ) 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 / and the more formal (capitalized if addressing God), with the former supplanting the latter in most cases. Familial titles are often used in place of formal 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?").
is sometimes still used in business, politics, polite conversation, interactions with customers, and other formal settings. The second-person plural 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 in both formal and informal contexts, and Middle English followed this trend with for some time after the 1066 Norman Conquest. However, by the 13th century, the second-person plural pronoun or 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 (pronounced yo) is very close to the English you and the Middle and Early Modern English . There is no such distinction in the plural; the plural second-person pronoun is always . , a Dutch dialect with strong Frisian influence, parallels this distinction (, , ).
West Frisian is used slightly more often than Dutch . Native speakers of Dutch are sometimes warned against addressing newly acquainted people with too soon.
German and
In German, the formal address is the same as the third-person plural pronoun . Verbs used with this form of address are also identical to third-person plural forms. The polite form and its inflected forms are always capitalized in writing, to avoid any ambiguity.
The corresponding informal German address is or . The verbs and mean respectively "to address using " and "to address using " and the phrases or mean, "to be on terms". The use of often coincides with the use of the title plus surname,About.com Sie & Du . usage of which is more widespread in German-speaking areas than Anglophone areas. In general terms, is used to children, animals, and God, and between adults (or between adults and children) who are good friends of or related to each other. is used in other situations, such as in a business situation or where there is no existing relationship. In Internet chats and forums, Germans rarely use , although there are exceptions. Except in the case of adults addressing children, where it is common for the child to address the adult as , but be addressed as in return, it is not common in German for one party to address the other as , but be addressed as in return. In almost all cases it can be considered as impolite to use the "wrong" pronoun, that is a pronoun that is not expected by the other party. However, on the other hand, using an unexpected can also be a very welcome sign of affection, and using an unexpected can, in the young, be a very welcome sign of appreciation of the addressed one's maturity.
High school students in Germany are often called plus given name () by their teachers when they enter the —the last 2 or 3 years of high school—around the age of 16.
Children and teenagers are expected to use when addressing all adults except for family members and family friends whom they have known since early childhood. Street and similar social workers, sports clubs trainers will sometimes tell children and teens to address them with . In shops, bars, and other establishments, if they target a younger audience, it is becoming increasingly common for customers and staff to address each other as , to the degree that it is sometimes considered awkward if a waitress and a customer who are both in their twenties call each other .
The use of or between two strangers may also be determined by the setting in which they meet (casual/formal), as well as clothing (casual/formal), gender (same/opposite), and personal preference. For example, it is customary to use in traditional small pubs and taverns in certain regions (including the Rhineland). This applies also to older people, whom one would otherwise address as . Two people who addressed each other as in a pub may go back to when they meet in the street if their acquaintance was only very superficial. During the famous Rhenish carnival, it is customary for most revelers to address each other as . Only if the age difference is more than one generation, the younger person might still use . Another setting in which is often used between adults is sporting events.
Being has also become increasingly common in workplace environments (depending on the line of business and corporate culture to varying degrees), mostly regardless of age. In such environments, the basis may also be observed as a (sometimes necessary) mark of good social integration within a working group. As a rule of thumb, one might expect to see team colleagues on the workplace level in many industries on a customary basis with each other, though not always with the group manager and more rarely with higher-ranking managers. As entrants to a team are more closely integrated, this is often marked by making an informal affirmation to that basis or by formally offering it, as a matter of style and habituality. Both the tempo and extent of using the basis depends much on the culture (and sometimes the climate) of the business, and in some places even more so on that of the particular workgroup itself. Business cultures that pride themselves on a "flat hierarchy" are more likely to adopt or accent a general professional parlance of and given name while inside corporations tending to emphasize professional formality, a may be expected to be used always except between very close colleagues or inside closed groups (sometimes including managers meeting on the same level with the exclusion of any subordinates), and strictly always in the presence of a superior. The superior, on the other hand, has the right to address the other person informally or formally, which is a personal preference.
Customarily, the switch from to is initially proposed by the elder of the two people, the person with socially higher standing or by the lady to the gentleman. Alternatively, one person may use while they ask the other person if it is acceptable to be addressed informally, and then act accordingly. One way to propose the use of rather than is by stating one's first name (as in: ). One accepts the proposal by introducing one's own first name. Should a person later forget that they have adopted , it is polite to remind them by saying, (We moved on to terms). Sometimes switching back to is used as a method of distancing oneself from the addressee; the connotation is slightly ironic courtesy.
The inappropriate and uninvited use of towards someone who would otherwise reasonably expect to be addressed as is considered to be condescending and disrespectful, although insistence on in an environment where is largely accepted (flat hierarchies) can be interpreted as being equally disrespectful. The degree of offense that might be taken will depend on how obvious the etiquette violation was (an example of an obvious violation would be a teenager in the street addressing an elderly stranger on the street with , addressing a senior manager with as a result of a misjudged professional relationship would probably be taken with less offense), and will also depend on the upbringing of the person in question—progressive vs. conservative outlooks and age are examples of factors which can play a role in how individuals prefer to be addressed and choose to address others.
It has become the policy of some businesses for their employees to address customers with , often to set a progressive, "modern" tone, occasionally for other cultural reasons. IKEA, for instance, does this to reflect the widespread use of the form in Sweden (see ).
In Germany, an old custom (called , drinking brotherhood) involves two friends formally sharing a bottle of wine or drinking a glass of beer together to celebrate their agreement to call one another rather than . This custom has also been adopted among the Swiss-French of the Jura, in Poland and Russia (called by its German name, spelled and respectively), though the custom in Poland is now slowly disappearing. It was formerly found also in Sweden.
Although the use of generally coincides with the use of title plus surname, especially in northern and eastern Germany, there is an intermediate address combining with the first name (), whereas in the Berlin region, sometimes is combined with the surname (). The former usage also occurs when addressing teenagers, household staff, or guests of TV or radio programs, while the latter style is usually considered inferior and mainly occurs in working class environments, on schoolyards, and in barracks. It may be associated with professional contexts, when colleagues have known one another for a long time, but, e.g. due to differences of status, do not want to switch to the usual style; or in situations where strangers (e.g. customers) are present for whom it would not be appropriate to learn the first name of the addressee.