Languages other than English distinguish between the singular “you” and the plural “you.” They even distinguish between male and female contexts, and between informal and formal settings. Why is English an outlier?
The Italian singular for “you” is tu, and the plural is voi. In Spanish, the singular “you” is tú or usted and the plural is vosotros or ustedes. The Chinese singular is ni and the plural is nǐ men. In Hebrew, the singular for “you” is ata for males and at for females; the corresponding plurals are atem and aten.
French distinguishes between tu for the informal singular “you” and vous when more formal. Likewise, the German du is informal for the singular you and Sie in more formal usage.
To explain how“you” became the catchall for any “you” that you may ever encounter in English, we need to get into the weeds a bit. Starting with Old English, there was the obsolete letter “þ,” known as “thorn” (unrelated to prickly bits on a plant) and pronounced “th,” as well as references to the nominative and the accusative. The nominative is the subject in a sentence (“You are smart”) and the accusative is the direct object in a sentence (“I love you”). The Old English singular “you” was þu (pronounced “thoo”) for the nominative case and þe (pronounced “thee”) for the accusative case. The corresponding plurals were ge” and eow.
In Middle English, the thorn letter dropped out, and the singular “you” was “thou” for the nominative and “thee” for the accusative. The corresponding plurals were “ye” and “yow.”
During the Middle English period (1150 to 1500), in situations requiring more politeness and respect, the plural “ye” and “you” applied when addressing just one person (compare to the royal “we”). By the 14th century, the pronunciation of “ye” and “you” merged into “you.” By the 17th century, as that usage increased, “thou” and “thee” evolved to be used only in a personal or superior-to-inferior relationship. And so “you” evolved to apply in the singular and the plural.
That ambiguity has spawned various ways to distinguish one “you” from many, so now we have “you guys,” “youse,” and “you-uns” in the U.S., and British English distinguishes “you lot” from the singular “you.” In Northern England, Scotland, and Ireland, the plural is “yous.”
Southern English may have the best solution: “y’all” for the plural and “all y’all” for even more plurality.
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