LogFAQs > #885487472

faramir77 posted...

I find it weird how other languages have plural second person terms ("vosotros" and "ustedes" in Spanish for instance) but we shit on people who try to introduce plural second person terms in English (particularly "y'all").

"You" used to be primarily a plural second-person pronoun, with "Thou" being the singular form, but that got phased out and "You" just fills both roles. I'm fine with that, since the nature of second-person speech is such that quantity is usually unambiguous (and when it isn't, "you all" clarifies it immediately). Hating on "y'all" is mostly just because it's a regional thing and it's taught as part of formal English, so it gets the whole uneducated redneck stereotype going.

Judgmenl posted...

Yes they/they is valid.

"They are going to the store" could imply one or many people.

Indeed. It's valid, but I don't like it because it introduces quantitative ambiguity. I'd like to see a third-person singular pronoun, but "it" has been ruined by dehumanizing connotations because people are dicks (plus it's the go-to pronoun for concepts and objects, and therefore gets used very frequently even without using it to describe people), and making up new ones is hard.
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