Vol. 5, Special Issue 7, Part B (2019)

Abstract
The article is devoted to the history of the development of second-person pronouns in the English language and the features of the functioning of the thou/you opposition in fiction, the Bible and the language as a whole. For all the known difficulties that arise when you are translating from English, there is one problem that isn’t so obvious, but no less important: in the pronoun system of the English language there is no formal difference between you and polite You. The article analyzes the main difficulties in translating second-person pronouns in fiction (using the works of W. Shakespeare as an example) and suggests the possible reasons for the disappearance of the pronoun “thou” from the speech of modern English-speaking people. In this work, the following methods were used: comparative, method of frequency analysis, generalization. This study can be used to organize the work of the club "Lovers of English," in elective courses for in-depth study of the English language.