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In Spanish, there are the "vosotros" (only used in Spain) and "ustedes" (formal in Spain) forms for use when talking to a group of people. These also use specific conjugations different different from the regular single "tú" or "usted" (formal) forms. I don't speak it, but I've heard French also has this. However, these are both Romance languages, so it makes sense that they'd be similar in such a fundamental thing.

In standard English, we have no such thing; "you" can be used when talking to one person or to multiple people, with no distinction necessary. Is English unusual? Do more languages have a second person plural form or not?

Sir Cornflakes
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Stormblessed
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    In these case, the other languages you mentioned being Romance happens to be irrelevant: Germanic languages, like English is, do distinguish between 2nd person singular and 2nd person plural (German: du vs ihr, Swedish: du vs ni), and English itself had this distinction until not too long ago, with thou vs you, where thou has the same etimology as du and tú. If anything, the many varieties of Spanish come close to showing an evolution similar to English, where in some varieties vos (not quite the same as vosotros, but both derive from Latin vos) is now singular. – LjL Jul 09 '19 at 01:47
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    In French, vous is formally plural, and in "intimate" settings contrasts with singular tu; but in general settings vous is used for both singular and plural, so the result is very much like English. (I put "intimate" in quotes, because there isn't really a good English word for the contexts in which French speakers will use tu). – Colin Fine Jul 09 '19 at 09:13
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    It does. Unfortunately it's the same as the singular form, just to confuse people. – RedSonja Jul 09 '19 at 12:39
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    Y'all never heard of "y'all"? ;D – jpmc26 Jul 09 '19 at 12:55
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    @jpmc26 - or "you guys"? – Chris B. Behrens Jul 09 '19 at 17:23
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    @jpmc26 and Chris — I said specifically standard English; y'all is used informally in some dialects, but you'd very rarely hear it, say, in Britain. – Stormblessed Jul 09 '19 at 17:43
  • Apropos y’all: the population of the southern US states constitutes 15 % of English speakers worldwide. – gen-ℤ ready to perish Jul 09 '19 at 23:16
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    The beauty of English is that it can mold and adapt itself in response to common use and take on new words. There seems a rising tide of people writing/saying yous in common parlance. Over time I expect this will morph into you's, use (as a result of auto-correction algorithms trying their best) and finally uz. Whether any of these delights will achieve recognition by a respected dictionary, I've no idea – Caius Jard Jul 10 '19 at 08:33
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    Which languages are you considering? Just Indo-European? Plenty of language families deal with things like plurals and conjugations completely differently than Indo-European languages. – J... Jul 10 '19 at 12:17
  • @ColinFine German was similar when I was growing up. Sie (formal/plural) was used except within families and between friends; those other more "initmate" relationships used Du. My understanding (I haven't been to Germany in years) is that this has changed, now Sie is used only in very formal settings e.g. when addressing a government official, say, a judge. – David Jul 10 '19 at 12:32
  • @David: yes, and that pattern is common, as mentioned in various answers. I was specifically commenting on the original question's mention of French, and of second person plural for singular (which is not the case in German or Spanish). – Colin Fine Jul 10 '19 at 15:32
  • Why do you think it's "you are", when "are" is used for all plural forms? "You" has always been the plural, and as it came to replace the singular "thou" it's more correct to say that "English has no second person singular form". – Shautieh Jul 10 '19 at 18:32
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    @Shautieh that would be true diacronically, but syncronically, it would make no sense to claim that English lacks either the singular or the plural form: they are just the same, and the fact they are historically derived from a plural is interesting but it doesn't really impact their current usage. – LjL Jul 12 '19 at 21:46
  • @LjL I agree it doesn't impact current usage (I was never told that whilst learning English), but it just makes much more sense to consider that English stopped using the singular thou altogether, and English speakers only use the plural/formal you. This way "you ARE", "you WERE", etc. stop being the weird irregularities that many people struggle with at first. – Shautieh Jul 13 '19 at 13:15
  • @Shautieh I'm not sure I understand what you mean: it's true that "are" and "were" are used for all the (other) plural forms, but then the whole verb "to be" is quite irregular, so I imagine "am" and "is" are also weird irregularities to learners... and if "thou" were still around, that'd be "thou art", which is yet different from the other forms. All in all the verb "to be" has to be learned as seemingly arbitrary forms for each person. – LjL Jul 13 '19 at 16:17
  • @LjL the thing is, all plural forms are the same (are/were), which means there is a logic in there. If you argue that "you" is singular, which it is not, then you throw that tiny spark of logic out of the window, and make English look even more arbitrary than it already is. – Shautieh Jul 18 '19 at 15:07
  • Hmm, well, languages aren't really based on logic like that, and the current plural forms "are" evolved from a paradigm when plural forms were not all the same. "You" can most definitely be singular in today's language. Considering it "not singular" because it was plural historically seems like an anachronism. – LjL Jul 18 '19 at 15:11
  • Among reasonably familiar European languages, and since you mention Spanish, most dialects of European Portuguese are somewhat similar in that they have a 2sg (tu), but no 2pl (vos is still used in some northern dialects, but it’s dead in most of the country), using exclusively the originally polite-marked 3pl (vocês, cognate with ustedes). Many Brazilian dialects have taken it one step further and lost the singular as well, essentially losing the second person entirely. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 21 '19 at 23:43

5 Answers5

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English marks plurality in first and third person pronouns (I vs. we, he/she/it vs. they), but not in the second person (you). (The singular thou did exist in English in the past, but is now considered obsolete.)

According to WALS chapter 35 (paragraph 5.1), about 20% of languages distinguish plurality in either first person or second person but not both. So the partial lack of plurality marking in English is present in a minority of languages, but it isn't incredibly rare.

Among Indo-European languages, I think the lack of plurality marking on pronouns is less common, but I don't have any statistics.

b a
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Although largely archaic, in some locations (some parts of Northern England/Cornwall/Ireland, among others) the word "ye" is still used as second-person-plural. It can also be found in some older works, such as the King James Bible:

"Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you." John 15:16

(Note that here both "ye" and "you" are both being used as plural second person, with "ye" as the Subjective form - vs "thou" as the singular second person Subjective - and "you" as the Objective form - vs "thee" as the singular second person Objective)

This should not be confused with "ye" as a typographical approximation of "þe" (i.e. "the") as in "þe olde shoppe"/"ye olde shoppe", which arose from the similarities between the cursive gothic letter "y" and "þ" (pronounced "thorn") which was not widely available in movable type.

(Alternatively - for those of you living in the Southern States of America, there's always "y'all". *shudder*)

Chronocidal
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    +1 for y'all, that was my first thought when reading the question. – towe Jul 09 '19 at 11:35
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    or "you guys" in the Midwest. – live-love Jul 09 '19 at 12:16
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    Or "youse" in Brooklyn. – MTA Jul 09 '19 at 12:41
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    Also "yous" in Scotland. – CriminallyVulgar Jul 09 '19 at 13:31
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    And let's not forget the uniquely Pittsburgh "yinz", my personal favorite second person plural pronoun. – Nuclear Hoagie Jul 09 '19 at 13:53
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    "You all" is certainly better and more grammatically correct than the Northern "yous guys"!! – RonJohn Jul 09 '19 at 15:39
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    @towe: Unfortunately, in some parts of Texas and other Southern states, "y'all" has stopped being seen as a contraction for "you all" and has become a replacement word for "you", with all the ambiguity re: singular or plural. Hence the use of the phrase, "all y'all". – John Bode Jul 09 '19 at 19:59
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    @JohnBode I've seen no evidence of that as Southern. all (of) y'all : y'all is equivalent to all (of) us : we/us , mean "each and every one, individually, not as a collective group". What many folks outside of the South think is a singular use of y'all is often one that combines a present reference (you, the person I'm talking with) with an abstract or non-present reference (the store you're working at or your coworkers, for instance). – user0721090601 Sep 23 '19 at 22:04
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According to The Paradigmatic Structure of Person Marking by Michael Cysouw, the absence of the 2PL form in English pronoun despite having 3PL form is extremely unusual. The only language that has the exact five-way system of 1SG 1PL 2 3SG 3PL paradigm is the Xokleng language in the Amazonian basin.

On the other hand, there is Berik paradigm (1SG 1PL 2 3) and Sierra Populuca paradigm (1EXC 1INC 2 3) that is much more common. Both have only 1 second-person pronoun, but both also have only 1 third-person pronoun. The language that has Berik paradigm includes Berik and Kuman, while the language that has Sierra Populuca paradigm includes Jaqaru and Campa.

brass tacks
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Xwtek
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    Most Mayan languages (e.g, Pocomchí) have 1Sg-1Pl, 2(Sg/Pl), 3Sg-3Pl, just like English. Of course these are prefixal ergative languages, so they don't have subject or object pronouns per se, but those are the pronoun categories for all inflections. – jlawler Sep 23 '19 at 23:13
  • @jlawler nice information. – Xwtek Sep 25 '19 at 02:57
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In German, in the polite register, the same form is used for 2sg, 2pl, and 3pl ("sie sind"; in 2sg and 2pl it is written "Sie sind", but that is purely a matter of orthography). But in the familiar register the three are different (du bist, ihr seid, sie sind).

A lot of other modern European languages (e.g. French, Russian, modern Greek) neutralise the second person singular/plural distinction in the polite register only.

fdb
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The English language does have familiar and familiar plural forms; though they are not commonly used. "Thou" is familiar for "you" and "ye" is the familiar plural. Other than in reading scriptures, you probably won't see them in use.

Brian
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