| Subject | Object | Possessive Adjective | Possessive Pronoun | Reflexive | Number | Gender |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SECOND PERSON | ||||||
| you | you | your | yours | yourself | singular | neutral |
| you | you | your | yours | yourself | plural | neutral |
In times gone by English had a clear distinction between subject and object and between singular and plural in its second person pronouns, however after the 1600s this usage became fuzzy and eventually dropped entirely with you taking on all four roles.
While no-one seems particularly to care (or even understand) about the subject/object distinctions, English syntax makes the subject/object distinction clear.
However there are common problems with singular/plural using the same word. Don’t believe me? Consider this:
You are invited to attend my birthday.
Is such an invitation addressed to one person, or a whole family?
You said you would let me enroll.
Is this speaker accusing the poor lad behind the counter, or the institution?
Most of the time there are other clues to guide us.
Good morning class, how are you this morning?
The teacher is obviously addressing the class as a whole. Yet these syntactic clues are not always present, and sometimes people just don’t feel that they have made it clear enough, so we see things like “you all” or “you both” and less formally “you guys” or “you lot” and even the use of “youse/yous”.
The use of yous is not a perfect solution either, for a start it has the stigma of shortage of education. It shows up the use of what seems to be a rule in English (ie plural of a noun is formed by adding an s to the end of the word) but this is incorrectly applied to a pronoun. Complicating things further, yous is not always used in a plural situation. Regardless the word is now in the language, and you will find it in any recent dictionary, although there is still debate about how it should be spelt.
You also gets used as an indefinite pronoun, as in:
After all that, you’d think he would compromise.
In such sentence you is an informal substitute for one, a pronoun which is somewhere between second and first person (I’ll deal with one in a later section). Also writers of government documents are often urged to translate:
All tax returns must be filed by October 31.
into
You must file your tax return by October 31.
Which may seem very direct, but with more use has become accepted.
What is especially interesting about all this is that English did once have a very clear distinction between both singular/plural and between subject/object in its second person pronouns.
| Subject | Object | Possessive Adjective | Possessive Pronoun | Reflexive | Number | Gender |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SECOND PERSON | ||||||
| thou | thee | thy | thine | thyself | singular | neutral |
| ye | you | your | yours | yourself | plural | neutral |
Now however these pronouns are only found in the old translation of the Bible (specifically the King James Bible). Even in Shakespeare’s work the use of these words is not strictly maintained.
A note about Ye which gets called into service for quasi-old shop signs such as “Ye Olde Tea Shoppe”, this is not (and never was) a pronoun. The Y is an attempt to match the Old English character “thorn” (borrowed from the runic alphabet, see image) which represented “th”. So Ye is simply The. In Tudor handwriting and printing, y was used instead of th in the and a number of other words: that, they, this (and sometimes them, their, this) to save space. It ceased to be common practice by the eighteenth century, but it lingers in the Ye of pub and shop signs, wherever the whiff of antiquity seems to be a commercial asset.
Correct use of ye and you from the King James Bible:
Ye have not chosen me; I have chosen you.
Also examples of thou and ye:
O thou of little faith.
Said by Jesus to Peter, when the disciple seemed to be thinking twice about his ability to walk on water.
O ye of little faith.
Addressed to the crowd assembled to hear the sermon on the mount.
For a short while, before dropping from the language entirely thou/thee took on use for friendly and intimate address to an individual, while ye/you was used for neutral, public and more distant address, to either and individual or a group. But this distinction was short-lived in English even though still present in French, German and other modern European languages.
Also see:
Part Zero — The problem with the English language is you!
Part One — First person pronouns
Part Three — Third person pronouns
Part Four — Miscellaneous, Conclusion and References