You - Usage

Usage

In standard English, you is both singular and plural; it always takes a verb form that originally marked the word as plural, (i.e. you are, in common with we are and they are). This was not always so. Early Modern English distinguished between the plural ye and the singular thou. As in many other European languages, English at the time had a T-V distinction, which made the plural forms more respectful and deferential; they were used to address strangers and social superiors. This distinction ultimately led to familiar thou becoming obsolete in modern English, although it persists in some rural English dialects. Because thou is now seen primarily in literary sources such as the King James Bible (often directed to God, who is traditionally addressed in the familiar) or Shakespeare (often in dramatic dialogs, e.g. "Wherefore art thou Romeo?"), it is now widely perceived ahistorically as more formal, rather than familiar.

Everyday speech among large sections of the population in Northern England commonly used and still uses dialect versions of thou, thee, thy, and thine. In South and West Yorkshire, for example, they are expressed as tha', thee, thi' and thine. In a South Yorkshire mining village in the late 1940s, among males only the village schoolteachers, doctor, parson and children in school exclusively used the 'you' form in the singular. Children who had grown up in households where 'tha' was the norm were forcibly reminded of the standard English at school and quickly became 'bilingual' using 'you' at school and in formal settings, and 'tha' at home and with friends. There was a distinct difference in usage between males and females, possibly due to women (who were almost exclusively homebound at that time) constantly hearing standard English on the BBC radio and at the cinema, and copying it as being more genteel. Younger women and girls used the 'you' form in most public speech, and the dialect form 'tha' rarely except perhaps in anger or exasperation. Very old women who had spent most of their lives unexposed to radio or cinema, used 'tha' in most circumstances except, sometimes, when dealing with officialdom. In the same village in the 2000s the dialect form is now mainly used in familiar interpersonal relationships, even among people who have received higher education.