[wces]

South Asian languages routinely employ plurals to refer to/call a person with added respect. Even when speaking English many South Asians won't find anything amiss when he/she is replaced by they.

[jacobolus]

In Old English, thou was the singular second person pronoun and ye the plural, but would be used when talking to someone of higher status. From what I understand, the ye evolved into you while thou mostly disappeared, so now we all get to be plural. I’m not sure about third person pronouns though.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction

[dragonwriter]

> In Old English, thou was the singular second person pronoun

Not just Old English; it survived in active, everyday use well into Modern English.

[mitchty]

Don't the Pennsylvania Dutch still use it? I vaguely recall there being a community out east that uses either thee or thou still with regularity.

[JoshTriplett]

> South Asian languages routinely employ plurals to refer to/call a person with added respect.

Sounds almost like a third-person equivalent of the first-person use of "royal we".

[Florin_Andrei]

> South Asian languages routinely employ plurals to refer to/call a person with added respect.

Fairly common for some Eastern European languages, too.