you

In Modern English, the word "you" is the second-person pronoun. It is grammatically plural, and was historically used only for the dative case, but in most modern dialects is used for all cases and numbers.

== History == You comes from the Proto-Germanic demonstrative base , from Proto-Indo-European (second-person plural pronoun). Old English had singular, dual, and plural second-person pronouns. The dual form was lost by the twelfth century, and the singular form was lost by the early 1600s. The development is shown in the following table. {| class="wikitable" |+Second-person pronouns in Old English, Middle English, & Modern English ! ! colspan="3" |Singular ! colspan="3" |Dual ! colspan="3" |Plural |- ! !OE !ME !Mod !OE !ME !Mod !OE !ME !Mod |- !Nominative | | | rowspan="4" | | colspan="2" rowspan="4" | | | rowspan="3" |you |- !Accusative | rowspan="2" | | rowspan="2" | | rowspan="2" | | rowspan="2" | | rowspan="2" | |- !Dative |- !Genitive | | | | | |your(s) |} Early Modern English distinguished between the plural ' and the singular '. As in many other European languages, English at the time had a T–V distinction, which 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 modern English, although it persists in some English dialects.