The T–V distinction (from the Latin pronouns and ) is a contrast, within one language, between various forms of addressing one's conversation partner or partners. This may be specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, age or insult toward the addressee. The T–V distinction occurs in a number of world's languages. Germanic Afrikaans Modern Afrikaans rarely makes the distinction between the informal second-person singular / and the more formal ( when addressing God), with jy supplanting u in most cases. The distinction is sometimes upheld in a formal setting, such as in politics, business or polite conversation. The second-person plural is used in all social contexts. Dutch Old Dutch did not appear to have a T–V distinction. was used as the second-person singular, and as the second-person plural. In early Middle Dutch, influenced by Old French usage, the original plural pronoun (or in the north) came to be used as a respectful singular pronoun, creating a T–V distinction. However, the formal started to be used in more and more situations. By the 17th century, had largely fallen out of use, although it lingered on in some of the more peripheral areas. At this point, the original T–V distinction had been lost, and the original V-pronoun / was used universally for both singular and plural regardless of the type of address. This resembled the state of English today, which has also (outside of dialectal, literary or religious use) lost its original T-pronoun thou. Around this time, a new formal pronoun started to come into use. This was also the object form of the subject pronoun /, and how it came to be used as a subject pronoun is not exactly clear. It is usually related to a form of address in writing of the time: letters were often addressed formally to , standing for ("Your Highness"), which is thought to have been shortened to eventually. It can be compared to the Spanish , which is a similar contraction of a phrase of indirect address. As in Spanish, the Dutch was originally conjugated as the third person in verbs, although most verbs had identical second- and third-person singular forms, so that this difference was not apparent for the most part. It remains today in the use of ("you (formal) have", like "he has"), compared to ("you (informal) have"). However, is now also common. Around the same time, it became