thou = Du
thee = dich
thy/thine = dein

http://alt-usage-english.org/pronoun_paradigm...

Danke Andreas, das klaert die Angelegenheit ein fuer alle Mal.

bluejay thanks, too!

When do sudents in america learn what thou, thee etc. mean?

When they start reading the Bible.

And when is that? About which age?

Well, thanks Werner!

The Bible in English is a translation, and modern translations do without thou etc.

But you need to know "thou" to read Shakespeare. (And ideally, you have to know it's different from "you")

That's intersting. Thank you escoville!

What I am wondering about is wether a six year old child knows these words or do learn these in highschool? I am no Christian, I don't know when you start reading the bible.

Most American childeren won't know the words and only begin to learn them in high school. Even many (most?) children from Christian families won't know them. As escoville said, you need to learn them to read Shakespeare in high school, but the modern Bible translations don't use them any more.

KJV (King James Version) uses thee, thou, thine as a matter of course.
NASV (New American Standard Version) uses Thee, Thou, Thine only in prayers and Psalms addressed to God; for "normal" speech it uses modern forms; this reflects usage in fundamentalist and conservative Protestant congregations
NIV (New International Version) does not use thee, thou, thine at all. This is one of the most widely used translations in the US.

Other translations (Good News, Revised Standard, American Standard, New King James, the Message, Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible, etc., etc.) use one of the three formats given above. The third one (no thee, thou, thine) is the most common; the middle one is the least common.

I grew up reading the KJV (my first "adult Bible" at age 8 or 9 was a KJV) and have never had any problem understanding this. However, I had to explain it to most of my friends in high school because they had no idea what was happening. This was in the 1960's, and use of the KJV has declined since then.

Today, I point out to my German students that "Thou hast" (etc.) is exactly analagous to "Du hast" (etc.), and that helps most of them understand the English when they read Shakespeare, so German becomes a vehicle to enlighten English.

Thank you very much Robert for your detailed explanation!

Now I can imagine well when children get confronted with thou, thee etc.

THY Majesty! = Eure Majestät!
THEE = Euch
THINE = Euer
THOU shall not kill! = Ihr (3 Person singular) sollt nicht töten!

Bei Goethe etc. haben wir ja auch die alten Anredeformen.

2. Pers. sing., nicht dritte.

lala is talking nonsense. To say "Thy Majesty" would be oxymoronic, and hence presumably sarcastic.

"Thou" is (a) singular, and (b) when it was still a part of the living language, used very much like "du", i.e. to God, close friends, family and (importantly) perceived inferiors. There is a play called (if I remember rightly) "Hickscorner" written at some time in the 16th century in which the following line occurs:

"Avaunt, caitiff, dost thou thou me! I am come of good kin, I tell thee!"

The speaker is insulted at having been addressed as "thou", because he regards himself as superior. (Like being addressed by a lorry-driver as "mate" when you think he should have called you "guv'nor".)

The Quakers made a point of calling everyone "thou" to emphasize their perceived equality. (In the same way they did not remove their hats.)