Speaking of Words
By MICHAEL FERBER
English now has only one pronoun for the person we are talking to: you. It was not always so, as readers of the Bible or Shakespeare are well aware. At one point there were four forms. The singular subject form was thou, as in For thou art with me or Thou canst not then be false to any man. The object form was thee, whether direct, as in I love thee, or indirect, as in I gave thee my pledge or Hail to thee, blithe spirit! (These forms are akin to three German forms still in use: subject du, direct object dich, and indirect object dir.) The plural subject form was ye, as in Oh come all ye faithful, and the object form was you, the only one that remains today: it has now supplanted the other three. As a result, the second-person pronoun today is unique among personal pronouns (other than it) in not distinguishing subject and object: we have I and me, we and us, he and him, she and her, and they and them. You is alone.
The absence of the subject-object distinction does not seem to bother most speakers, some of whom are happy to say Me and Tiffany went shopping or just between you and I or In a democracy decisions are made by we the people. But everyone has often felt the need to resort to a second-person plural of you that makes it clear that it is a plural. So we say you all or y’all or you guys or youse or yuns or you lot, or whatever—there is no standard form, but y’all seems to be gaining traction.
I imagine something similar will happen to the new use of they/them/their as the unmarked or nonbinary third-person singular pronoun. We’ll come up with something like th’all or thuns to mean what they used to mean, and let they become singular. Another possibility is to say they is for the new singular use and they are for the plural, but I haven’t heard anyone trying that out, and changing the verb won’t cope with the object and possessive forms them and their.
It seems to be written into the nature of things that there should be three grammatical “persons”: the person speaking, the person spoken to, and the person or thing spoken about. And it is probably no accident that many languages have three “deictic” or pointing positions for adverbs and demonstrative pronouns. English now has two such pronouns, this and that, but it used to have a third, yon, meaning “that over there.” We also had here (by me), there (by you) and yonder (at some distance). Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin had threefold systems, as in hic, iste, and ille, and so do some modern European languages, such as northern Italian: questo, codesto, quello. Japanese has kono (this), sono (that), and ano (yon). These threesomes seem to map onto the three persons; it all seems very neat.
But then we find that some languages, such as Northern Sami, have four deictic positions, and some even have five. Golomo, spoken in Sudan, has words for the equivalent of this, that, and three yons: up there, down there, across there; they are single words, not phrases. Llocano, spoken in the Philippines, also has five terms: three for things in sight (this, that, yon), one for things not in sight, and one for things that no longer exist! I wish I knew Llocano: then I could discuss the archaic word yon using the fifth deictic position.
These extra positions make us ask if there could be a fourth person, or a fifth. Some languages do make a distinction between two forms of we, inclusive and exclusive. The inclusive form includes the person spoken to, and maybe others, while the exclusive form leaves the addressee out. English we is ambiguous, as the equivalent is in most European languages, but in many tongues around the world you must choose between two pronouns for we/us, inclusive or exclusive of the person you are talking to. But they are both first-person plural pronouns, however, not a fourth or fifth person.
What we often do find, in languages other than English, are distinctions in register or politeness in the second-person pronouns. In French, vous is not only the plural form of singular tu but the polite singular (and plural) as well; in German the singular du has a plural ihr, but Sie is the polite singular and plural. When French or German young people went out on a first date, there used to be an awkward moment when one or the other ventured to switch from vous to tu or from Sie to du. They might even ask, “May I tutoyer you?” “May I dudichten you?” I gather the social scene is more relaxed these days, and most young people assume that the intimate or friendly form is OK from the start.
It is interesting to note that German Sie, the polite you, is simply a capitalization of sie meaning “they,” and when it is the subject it requires the plural verb. The same is true of Italian Lei. Japanese has a great number of personal pronouns for “you”: anata is the closest to the general meaning of “you,” but it will not do in many circumstances. More polite than anata is otaku (which strictly means “your honorable house”); more polite than otaku, in fact very deferential, is kikan; more informal is kimi; and downright rude is temae. With some of these there is a corresponding I form: if you adress someone as kimi you probably refer to yourself as boku, matching the more formal anata is watashi, and so on. During my time in Japan, with a slender grasp of the language, I am sure I insulted several people, or abjectly flattered them, because I picked out the wrong pronoun from a bewildering list.
Though English you does not distinguish singular from plural, most languages do so, and some distinguish a dual number from both singular and plural. In Old English, in fact, there was a form git (pronounced yit), object form inc, meaning “you two”; the t in git probably came from an older form of two. There was a corresponding first-person dual: wit for “we two” and unc for “us two.”
Some languages distinguish gender in the second person. Spanish does so in the plural: vosotros (masculine) and vosotras (feminine). The original form, direct from Latin, was the ungendered vos, but in some parts of the Spanish-speaking world it was used as the singular familiar, like tú; to make sure it is plural you can add otros or otras (“others”), as the French do with vous autres, “you all”) but you bring gender with them. I don’t know what Spanish speakers are doing to accommodate non-binary addressees in the plural, or for that matter with “we”: nosotros, nosotras.
Our word you, then, unlike its equivalent in many other languages, comes with neither gender, nor number, nor case, nor level of courtesy. Its nakedness is very democratic and egalitarian, I suppose, but I wonder if we may have lost something. We no longer have to pay attention to just who it is we are speaking to. You are all the same.
I am happy to hear from readers with questions or comments: mferber@unh.edu.
Michael Ferber moved to New Hampshire in 1987 to join the English Department at UNH, from which he is now retired. Before that he earned his BA in Ancient Greek at Swarthmore College and his doctorate in English at Harvard, taught at Yale, and served on the staff of the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy in Washington, DC. In 1968 he stood trial in Federal Court in Boston for conspiracy to violate the draft law, with the pediatrician Benjamin Spock and three other men. He has published many books and articles on literature, and has a deep interest in linguistics. He is married to Susan Arnold; they have a daughter in San Francisco.