The general explanation I've heard was a combination of two things: the reformation of the writing system and society post-Norman Conquest and the printing press issues.
For the former, the idea was that William removed a large part of the English-speaking bureaucracy and replaced them with primarily French speaking or Latin literate people, who used different systems to write vowels and consonants. This is why, for example, th was adopted in some parts to replace the thorn and eth, because French had no equivalent and the recorders randomly decided to pick two letters that together meant nothing in French to symbolize the sound. Thou suffered similarly in the transition. The other reasoning given was that post-Norman led to a strengthening of the feudal roles and enforcing much stricter dependence on proper respect for superiors. Eventually, that led to people speaking with "thou" only to people they were very intimate with to show respect, and because the kids grew up never being able to speak using the thou form the vast majority of people they talked to(parents, lords, churchmen, other elders, etc.) it eventually faded out of the system.
And the other problem was that the printing press did not have the thorn or eth either so areas that had retained it needed to adopt alternatives, which often included the style created by Norman monks and bureaucrats, which gets "thou" replaced with "you" because the vowel sound is the same but there was little way to replicate the thorn.
Back to the original question, the best chance for the survival of thou on a widespread basis is averting the Norman Conquest or altering it to a large extent that prevents the rapid changeover to different writing styles and forms of address.
American dialects in general have adopted unofficial variants to create a plural second person. There's obviously y'all, but the Midwest uses "You guys" regardless of gender and in technically ungrammatical ways such as "This is you guys's class right?", for example. I don't know how far the survival of Youse/Youse guys extends, though it does supposedly exist to some extent in certain areas.
For the former, the idea was that William removed a large part of the English-speaking bureaucracy and replaced them with primarily French speaking or Latin literate people, who used different systems to write vowels and consonants. This is why, for example, th was adopted in some parts to replace the thorn and eth, because French had no equivalent and the recorders randomly decided to pick two letters that together meant nothing in French to symbolize the sound. Thou suffered similarly in the transition. The other reasoning given was that post-Norman led to a strengthening of the feudal roles and enforcing much stricter dependence on proper respect for superiors. Eventually, that led to people speaking with "thou" only to people they were very intimate with to show respect, and because the kids grew up never being able to speak using the thou form the vast majority of people they talked to(parents, lords, churchmen, other elders, etc.) it eventually faded out of the system.
And the other problem was that the printing press did not have the thorn or eth either so areas that had retained it needed to adopt alternatives, which often included the style created by Norman monks and bureaucrats, which gets "thou" replaced with "you" because the vowel sound is the same but there was little way to replicate the thorn.
Back to the original question, the best chance for the survival of thou on a widespread basis is averting the Norman Conquest or altering it to a large extent that prevents the rapid changeover to different writing styles and forms of address.
Some Scots use it and, in a random quirk, so does Pittsburgh.Don't some forms of Scots (Glaswegian?) use "y'ins"?
American dialects in general have adopted unofficial variants to create a plural second person. There's obviously y'all, but the Midwest uses "You guys" regardless of gender and in technically ungrammatical ways such as "This is you guys's class right?", for example. I don't know how far the survival of Youse/Youse guys extends, though it does supposedly exist to some extent in certain areas.
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