What is your plural for "you"?

**O'Searcaigh** · 6th November 11, 08:05 AM

Originally Posted by Jock Scot

NOTE:With my tongue placed firmly in my cheek!

YOU mess around with a perfectly serviceable language that all understood and what do we have now? Misunderstandings, with the same language!

Jock now dives swiftly for cover.

Who, me? I didn't do it!!! It must've been all those other guys. Then of course there is the infamous "We'll come by tomorrow morning and knock you up." Hmmm, lots and lots of potential for misunderstandings there. Personally, I just wished you'd stop whistling those dirty nasty little songs!

**piperdbh** · 6th November 11, 08:14 AM

Originally Posted by Jack Daw

Well, the use of ya'll or youse or you guys seems to me to be nothing compared to the loose use of prepositions.

You mean like the time the little boy was under the table, and his mother ordered him to "Come on out from up in under there"?

**piperdbh** · 6th November 11, 08:15 AM

Originally Posted by thescot

Oh the other hand, I'm pretty sure God speaks with a Southern accent and wear a Gunnery Sergeant's unifirm.

Where's Lewis Grizzard when you need him?

**Bob C** · 6th November 11, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by Father Bill

Oddly enough, in Ontario most of us speak English, so the plural of "you" is "you."

Ditto here in upstate New York.

**J_Mimbs** · 6th November 11, 11:38 AM

Originally Posted by piperdbh

Where's Lewis Grizzard when you need him?

Right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckFjK_zoYgo

**Jack Daw** · 6th November 11, 12:59 PM

Makes you wonder how initially confused Winston Churchill could have been having an English father and an American mother.

**OC Richard** · 10th November 11, 05:32 AM

We all speak English... you and thou and yinz and y'all are all English. Each usage as "correct" as the other, when used in its environment.

Prescriptive Grammar went out of fashion many years ago... Jonathan Swift's 1712 position seems silly today:

"Some method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our language forever... I see no absolute necessity why any language should be perpetually changing."

Samuel Johnson saw the absurdity of the above, writing in 1755:

"Sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables and to lash at the wind are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength."

The use of "you" in the singular is a modern simplification, or laziness if you will, which made the language less clear and precise.