Timeline for Is English unusual in having no second person plural form?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 21, 2019 at 23:37 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @Wilson Scottish Gaelic does it; Irish Gaelic does not use the plural for polite address (in fact Irish has no polite pronouns of address). | |
| Jul 10, 2019 at 16:38 | comment | added | Carsten S | German manages to take it one step further and uses 3pp. | |
| Jul 10, 2019 at 14:14 | comment | added | Omar and Lorraine | It really was both! for example Ukrainian and Gaelic do exactly the same thing @amalloy | |
| Jul 10, 2019 at 10:47 | comment | added | OrangeDog | @amalloy in many Indo-European languages, the second-person-plural doubles as formal. | |
| Jul 10, 2019 at 2:46 | comment | added | Tashus | @amalloy It was a singular/plural distinction doing double duty as formal/informal. Similarly to French, 2pp was used to address single people in a less familiar way. | |
| Jul 10, 2019 at 1:09 | comment | added | amalloy | Was "thou" vs "you" really a singular/plural distinction? I always thought it was informal/formal. | |
| Jul 8, 2019 at 23:24 | history | answered | b a | CC BY-SA 4.0 |