Thou is the subject form (nominative), thee is the object form, and thy/thine is the possessive form Thee and you as object Ye and you used alongside thou and thee as polite singular forms Distinction between ye as subject and you as object disappeared, you being used almost universally Ye restricted to archaic, religious or literary contexts by the end of the 16th century The interesting question here is why the thee / thou forms are used in the kjv, and why they are so often still used in christian contexts
Was the plural / respectful form you considered inappropriate for theological reasons (because the god of the kjv is very much a singular, not a plural)? However, i can't imagine a typical yorkshireman who would use thee and thou being sufficiently delicate as to use the word thine I do agree with janus though, that art is the verb required in who art thou? The is pronounced thee when it precedes a word that begins with a vowel (the apple, the overtone series, etc.) or (sometimes) an aspirated consonant (the historic occasion of his birth) or when the speaker wishes to differentiate a noun by calling it out for special dramatic emphasis. Thee and you were used as object During the middle english period, ye/you came to be used as a polite singular form alongside thou/thee
I doubt this is a fax or anything Thee did not merge with ye or thou with you, but rather in most regions people simply stopped saying the singular thee and thou except perhaps when they came across it in their prayer book And when they did say it as part of the lord's prayer, they were not confused as to how it was pronounced Thee just died a death out of politeness. Fwiw, google books claims over 12,000 written instances of the noun usage a fare thee well The fifth entry in that list is from the american heritage dictionary of idioms, which defines it as to the most extreme degree, especially a condition of perfection
0 thou, thee, thy, thine were replaced by you, your, yours between 1600 and 1700 You still find thou and the connected forms in the bible and in shakespeare (around 1600) You would produce a very queer effect if you used thou in today's language.
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