First,
some basics:
Вы [vy]. Here we
look at the
pronoun “Вы” in its
singular form as at a formal polite
pronoun; while Ты [ty] is used
when talking to a friend or a
person you know very well.
Russian
pronouns are written in lower case, unless they are at
the beginning of the sentence, of course.
So, we write the pronoun “I” – я
[ya] in
lower case, it's even considered
impolite to write about yourself in a capital letter.
However,
like with any rules, there
are exceptions.
The 2nd person
pronoun Вы and its
variations in different cases,
e.g., Вы, Вам, Ваш, Вами etc.
are written in upper case if you write a letter to a person, one person
(singular ). It’s considered polite to use in this case Вы with a
capital В.
And it doesn’t matter if it’s an official letter or a personal one.
When
writing to a group of people вы is
always written in lower case.
Where did "Вы" come from?
Вы came
into the Russian language only in the 18th century
from Western European
languages and was the result of influence mainly of French and German
languages. It all started with Peter
the Great who was
a huge fan of everything European and
“cut a window through to Europe” as Pushkin said
about him.
Before that it was traditional to use Tы pronoun
when talking to the Tsar (King)
or elders and even when praying to the
God.
In his
famous Dictionary of the Russian Language Vladimir
Dal wrote
that the use of Вы was “a
fake politeness”.
Nevertheless
starting from the 18th-century Вы became a
generally accepted pronoun in
Russian.
