The Second-Person Plural Pronoun

The true shame in modern English's lack of a second-person plural is that the damage is self-inflicted.

Basic pronouns, modern English

	Singular	Plural
First	I/me/my/mine	We/us/our/ours
Second	You/you/your/yours	N/A
Third	He/she, him/her, his/her, his/hers	They/them/their/theirs

You can address or refer to anyone using the pronouns on the above table, unless you are directly addressing a group. In that case, you are forced to either:

1) Say only "you" and hope people infer that you meant the whole group
2) Use a lengthy combination of words: "you all", "all of you people", "you guys", "ladies and gentlemen", "to the group of human beings I am addressing"
3) Invent a new word: "y'all", "youse", "yinz", "youins"

There's an ongoing debate about which of these solutions is best. However, what is little-known is that we have had an answer to this all along, and the reason why things are like this is because of cultural niceties.

Before discussing that, I feel it is helpful and educational to bring up the basic system of Spanish pronouns. This is what really helped me to understand the history and development of our English language, by the parallels to another well-known language. The list will not be complete, but it will be enough to give a brief overview.

Basic pronoun forms, modern Spanish

	Singular	Plural
First	Yo	Nosotros
Second	Tú, usted	Vosotros (in Spain only), ustedes
Third	Él/ella	Los/las

At a glance, you can see that Spanish has all of the major fields covered, and then some. Why the extra 'usted' form, though?

The short answer is that the words have connotations that change the meaning, that go beyond their strict grammatical usage. In particular, these forms are either 'familiar' and 'formal'. 'Usted' is the form that you use when you are addressing someone who is socially superior, or perhaps someone else you don't want to risk offending. (The corresponding English practice these days is to generously sprinkle 'sir', 'ma'am', or 'miss' through your sentences.)

The problem with having 'formal' and 'familiar' forms is the expected duality; if 'formal' language indicates respect and/or an acknowledgement of someone's social standing, what does using the 'familiar' form imply?

Back when social statuses were clearly and constantly delineated, this wasn't a problem, but as the world became democratized, using usted/ustedes became the default practice in most of the Spanish-speaking world. Only Spain still uses the 'vosotros' form, and this distinction, speaking "el español del rey", would cause you to stand out in a Latino crowd.

With this foundation laid, let's have another look at English, or rather, English as it was.

Basic pronouns, Elizabethan English

	Singular	Plural
First	I/me/my/mine	We/us/our/ours
Second	Thou/thee/thy/thine	Ye/you/your/yours
Third	He/she, him/her, his/her, his/hers	They/them/their/theirs

These forms should be familiar to anyone who has read either the King James Version Bible or Shakespeare. Because those sources are also likely to be the only place they are seen, they are largely misunderstood, to the point that 'thees and thous' have become a byword for things which are considered complicated, archaic, and 'unnecessary'.

Most people know the 'thou' form because it is a pronoun used to address God in the KJV, but they don't know why it is used. The reason is shown in the above chart: it is the second-person singular pronoun, and God is a single person, so when someone is directly addressing God, strictly correct Elizabethan grammar demands that form. Meanwhile, the ye form is similar to the modern-day 'y'all'.

The reason why we have lost this system is largely the same as the reason why the Spanish language has been transformed: the forms acquired connotations of respect or disrespect, and people felt it was needful to switch to using the 'formal' form all of the time. English doesn't have a dedicated formal form, so 'you' was made to do double-duty, as either the second-person plural or the formal second-person singular. (I suspect the logic behind that choice was similar to that of the 'royal we'.)

Incidentally, the King James' English is said to have been a little archaic even for its time. When the translators were putting together the work, the thees and thous were already on their way out; they chose to stick with those words on the grounds that it was the most direct and straightforward translation of the original pronouns (which it was, and still is). This choice was said to get some criticism from readers who felt that the use of the comparatively familiar 'thee' and 'thou' disrespected God.

At any rate, people forgot over time that 'you' was originally supposed to be a second-person plural, which effectively meant that we ceased to have one. However, there are inevitably cases where that form of grammar is helpful. Since that need has become obvious, modern everyday English speakers have taken it upon themselves to devise a plethora of conjunctions for the purpose, as alluded to at the beginning of this post.

The difficulty with these is that they all have a similar problem to what got 'thou' canned in the first place: they're perceived to be informal!

The more things change, the more they stay the same...