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John Donne died 1631 (by my Oxford Companion to English Lit.
The history of how "thee" and "you" and their German and French counterparts came to signify what they do today is interesting (I'll have to go back and look at Donne. Remember that as a young man he wrote passionate love poetry and once he "got religion" he wrote sermons, etc. That may also have had an impact on his use of familiar, formal, and plural second person pronouns. Great topic for a paper!)
However, I stand by what I wrote. In today's usage, there is a marked difference in how English, German and French deal with intimate friends and strangers in pronoun usage.
Thanks for this piece of the thread.
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