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are song

corrected for your song

Look up you in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

You is the second person plural pronoun in English. In standard English, it serves as the second person singular pronoun as well.

In modern standard English, you serves as both the nominative and oblique case. The corresponding possessive adjective is your, and the independent possessive pronoun is yours.

1 Etymology
2 Both singular and plural
3 Forms in other European languages
4 See also

Etymology

It is descended from Old English ge or ȝe, (both pronounced roughly like Modern English yea) which was the old nominative case form of the pronoun, and eow, which was the old accusative case form of the pronoun. In Middle English the nominative case became ye, and the oblique case (formed by the merger of the accusative case and the former dative case) was you. In early Modern English either the nominative or the accusative forms have been generalized in most dialects. Most generalized you; some dialects in the north of England and Scotland generalized ye, or use ye as a clipped or clitic form of the pronoun.

Ye and you are cognate with Dutch jij and jou (gij in dialect or old Dutch), German ihr, and Gothic jus. The specific form of this pronoun is unique to the Germanic languages, but the Germanic forms ultimately do relate to the general Indo-European forms represented by Latin vos.

Note that in the early days of the printing press, the letter y was used in place of the þ, so many modern instances of ye (such as in "Ye Olde Shoppe") are in fact examples of the and not of you.

Both singular and plural

In standard English, you is both singular and plural; it always takes a verb form that originally marked the word as plural, such as you are. This was not always so.

Early Modern English distinguished between the plural you and the singular thou. This distinction was lost in modern English due to the importation from France of a Romance linguistic feature which is commonly called the T-V distinction. This distinction made the plural forms more respectful and deferential; they were used to address strangers and social superiors. This distinction ultimately led to familiar thou becoming obsolete in standard English. Ironically, the fact that thou is now seen primarily in literary sources such as the King James Bible (often in reference to God) or Shakespeare (often in dramatic dialogs, e.g. "Wherefore art thou Romeo?"), has led many modern anglophones to perceive it as more formal, not familiar (case in point: in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader addresses the Emperor saying, "What is thy bidding, master?").

Because you is both singular and plural, various English dialects have attempted to revive the distinction between a singular and plural you to avoid confusion between the two uses. This is typically done by adding a new plural form; examples of new plurals sometimes seen and heard are you-all/y'all (primarily in the Southeast United States), you guys (Midwest, Northeast, West Coast), youse/youse guys (Australia, New York City region, Michigan's Upper Peninsula), and you-uns/yins (Pennsylvania). [1] All of these new plurals are marked as basilectal, though they may be useful. English spoken in Ireland, known as Hiberno-English, sometimes uses the word ye as the plural form of you, but more commonly uses youse, which is more commonly spelt as yous.

You is also unusual in that, being both singular and plural, it has two reflexive forms, yourself and yourselves. However, in recent years singular themself is sometimes seen: see singular they.

For a discussion of the alternative "ye" spelling of the definitive article, please see Thorn (letter).

Forms in other European languages

English and Dutch are similar in that both lost their old second person singular forms (those relating to the word "thou"), due to the use of the second person plural form as singular formal, with the plural ultimately replacing the singular totally as the informal forms came to be viewed as impolite. Ironically, this did not happen in French, the inventor of the formal plural; it has kept the system intact. Vous is still used as formal and plural, while tu is used for informal singular. Russian uses the French system also; vy (вы) is formal/plural and ty (ты) is informal singular. This probably resulted from the Russian aristocracy's use of French in Czarist Russia, and was likely strengthened by the T/V similarity in the French and Russian pronouns. This kind of system is also found in other languages, like Finnish and Swedish.

While English, Dutch, French and Russian use or have used the plural forms as the polite forms, other European languages use forms deriving from the third person. German, for example, uses the third person plural pronoun sie, capitalized Sie, as its formal pronoun (in other words, Sie literally means They). Danish and Norwegian languages similarly use De. Italian has separate forms for singular (Lei) and plural (Loro), which are derived from the Italian words for she and they respectively; a partial similarity to the German system (especially since the German word for she is also sie, but conjugates differently from Sie). However, sometimes the French system is also used in Italy, using the plural pronoun voi as singular.

Spanish and Portuguese use actual words which take third-person forms, and each has singular and plural forms. For Spanish, it is usted (pl. ustedes), and for Portuguese, você (pl. vocês). As in English, they seem to be supplanting the original second-person pronouns, which are now informal. The original Spanish second-person plural pronoun, vosotros, is now used only in Spain. Portuguese is farther along in losing them; the plural pronoun vós is gone totally in Brazil and used sporadically in Portugal, while the singular tu is dying out in Brazil, used sporadically in the southern region and certain rural parts of the country.