KaceyNov 18, 2022
Next time someone complains about singular "they" I'll point them to this 17th century rant against singular "you"
Show threadHen Gymro Heb WladNov 19, 2022

@kacey To be honest, it all started to go wrong when those crazy kids stopped using proper Anglo-Saxon dual pronouns....

https://oldenglish.info/pro3.html

Old English Online - Pronouns

An online educational resource for learning Old English

Show threadDave Donaghy

@hengymrohebwlad @kacey

But does “us two” include the speaker and the person being addressed, or the speaker and one other who is not the person being addressed??

Nov 19, 2022 at 4:02pmWeb
Show threadHen Gymro Heb WladNov 19, 2022
@donaghy @kacey No idea. Perhaps the confusion was why the use of these pronouns died out!
Show threadDave DonaghyNov 20, 2022

@hengymrohebwlad @kacey

We have this in English, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there are languages where there are two "we" pronouns, one of reach of those.

I'm actually a thouist myself - I spend way too much time saying "you - I mean all of you, not just you..." and other stuff that adds meaning to the vague "you" that we currently use!

Show threadHen Gymro Heb WladNov 20, 2022

@donaghy @kacey Yes, this seems to be a feature of some indigenous North American languages e.g. Cree and Inuktitut:

https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/essentialsoflinguistics/chapter/6-6-inflectional-morphology-in-some-indigenous-languages/

I wouldn't be surprised if this also happens in Australian Aboriginal languages, which often encode incredibly complex and subtle information about relationships and kinship.

6.5 Inflectional Morphology in Some Indigenous Languages – Essentials of Linguistics

Show threadDave DonaghyNov 20, 2022

@hengymrohebwlad @kacey

Doesn’t the dual persist in English a tiny little bit? Isn’t “oxen” originally a dual? And although “shoon” is archaic, I think even that persists as a brand name for a shoe shop.

Show threadHen Gymro Heb WladNov 20, 2022

@donaghy @kacey Not sure about oxen. Could just be similar plural suffix to "children". English plurals are a mess because of mixed origins, loss of older endings, generalising one example to others, simplification of using "-s" as suffix etc. Some Germanic plurals based on vowel change (umlaut) e.g. goose/geese or mouse/mice. Sometimes no suffix e.g. fish, sheep.

Mind you, Welsh plurals are even worse - different suffixes, umlaut, "singulative" endings etc. Great fun!

Show threadHen Gymro Heb WladNov 20, 2022

@donaghy BTW the formal/informal "you" (using plural form) distinction is very common in Indo-European languages:

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/formal-and-informal-languages

It's known as the T-V (from Latin tu-vos) distinction, and supposedly derives from the days when there were 2 Roman emperors:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction

These days the formal aspect seems to be fading in some languages e.g. I think Swedish now seems to use "du" generally for singular "you", and even German seems to be relaxing a bit here.

Why Do Some Languages Have A Formal ‘You’?

In Spanish it's 'tú' and 'usted,' in French 'tu' and 'vous,' and that's just the start. Why do some languages have both formal and informal 'you's?

Babbel Magazine