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''You'' is the Second Person Singular and Plural Pronoun in English . 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''. 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 Dialect s. 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 '': The Empire Strikes Back'', Darth Vader addresses the Emperor saying, "What is thy bidding, my master?"). Because ''you'' is both singular and plural, various English al, 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 ''. ''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. In Hungarian , ''te'' is informal, while there are different, synonymous words for formal (''ön'' and ''maga'' being the two most commonly used). Spanish and Portuguese use pronouns derived from third person phrases which originally meant ''your mercy'', ''sir'' or ''madam'', along with their plural forms. For Spanish, they are ''usted'' (pl. ''ustedes''), and for Portuguese, ''você'' (pl. ''vocês''), ''o senhor'' (pl. ''os senhores'') and ''a senhora'' (pl. ''as senhoras''). ''Você'' is often employed informally in Brazil, as the original singular pronoun ''tu'' is dying out in this country, being only used sporadically in the South and certain rural regions, but ''o senhor'', ''a senhora'' and their plurals are still used and always formal. In some Spanish speaking countries, the original second person singular pronoun ''tú'' has been dropped entirely, thus erasing the distinction between formal and informal addressing. In others, it was replaced with an old form of the second person plural pronoun, ''vos'', now used as an informal counterpart to ''usted''. See Voseo . Modified versions of ''vos'', ''vosotros'' and ''vosotras'', are still used in Spain as informal second person plural pronouns. Portuguese has moved farther away from the original paradigm; the plural pronoun ''vós'' is gone totally in Brazil and used only in small regions of Portugal . SEE ALSO
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