_Gollum_
Formerly Alexei_Kirillov
- Mar 9, 2024
- 1,675
In a lot of other languages, there are two different words for referring to a group of people and one singular person (ex. vous and tu in French). We used to have this distinction in English as well, with thou being the singular form and you being the plural, but this distinction disappeared in common speech in the last century or two, meaning we now use you for both plural and singular.
But having a way to specifically address a group of people is so useful that many dialects of English just created their own, with the most notorious probably being "y'all" in the American South.
But it didn't end there: now we needed a way to refer to the possessions of this group of people (ex. a waiter asking for a group's orders), so different English speakers had to create a corresponding possessive form for this ad-hoc second-person plural pronoun. I'm just curious to see what the distribution is like for the different terms!
But having a way to specifically address a group of people is so useful that many dialects of English just created their own, with the most notorious probably being "y'all" in the American South.
But it didn't end there: now we needed a way to refer to the possessions of this group of people (ex. a waiter asking for a group's orders), so different English speakers had to create a corresponding possessive form for this ad-hoc second-person plural pronoun. I'm just curious to see what the distribution is like for the different terms!
You can answer if you're a native speaker or non-native. Comment with where you're from/grew up/learned English. I'm from Western Canada and I say your guys's (pronounced like your guyz-iz).
