You

[Astraios]

In all of those that I speak, at least. (Swedish and French. Although I'll admit I've only just assumed that to be the case for the latter, but I'm fairly sure no one addresses the listener with associates included with "tu"; I've definitely never heard it and it instinctively seems very strange.)

It's true for French, and also for Hebrew, Chinese and Lakota. Given that all four of those are completely unrelated, I'd guess it's universal. Besides, it's just common sense.

[Jashan]

Agreed that Northerners spelling y'all as ya'll is annoying. It even parses wrong. 'll is an abbreviation for will; thus ya'll is ya will.

Also agreed on y'all vs. all y'all: y'all is a group of people, whereas all y'all is either a wider group (encompassing the first group, plus some) or is used as emphasis. "Y'all need to get out of here. All y'all!"

I usually use your as the possessive form of y'all, but with all y'all, using y'all's is rustic, but acceptable. All y'all's does not, for me, parse as "thing(s) belonging to all you people" but rather as "all things belonging to you people".

[zuben]

I would guess it won't last very long. Almost every dialect of English has come up with an alternative colloquial form of the 2P Plural.

I tend to say 'you lot' most of the time. My dad still says 'youse', bless him. Although under the influence of the rest of the family, he has now begun to conflate the two and say 'youse lot'.

[finlay]

Yous! No e! for heaven's sake, i don't understand why this spelling has persisted!

[Yng]

Hevven! For hevven's sake, I don't understand why this spelling has persisted!

[Xonen]

Yous! No e! for heaven's sake, i don't understand why this spelling has persisted!

One guess I can come up with is a that monosyllabic English words don't tend to end in -ous, so maybe the -e is added to make the word appear more familiar somehow. Since it's a pronoun, people might not be as conscious of the -s being a plural marker, and even if they are, it still has a special status that may justify the special spelling. In any case, there are much worse issues with English spelling than this (and yet, curiously enough, I seem to recall you vehemently defending some much less rational spellings just a couple of weeks back…).

[finlay]

Good for you.

(I'm a really boreding person at the moment, so I end up picking silly fights on the ZBB )

[Yng]

I would also pronounce 'yous' with an /s/, whereas 'youse' seems to demand a /z/ (which is how I pronounce it). I have no idea why this is, though.

[tezcatlip0ca]

hevven

/hju:@n/?

[Nortaneous]

and that is why doubling v is a horrible idea

[Chuma]

Yeah, English "you" is a tricky business. Ideally I would like to revive "thou", only maybe change the initial fric to something more comfortable, like a d or s. If that's not possible, "yous" would have been nice, but the collision with "use" is annoying. "You guys" is obviously too long to last, so we would have to go through another century or more of painstakingly sound changing it to something more convenient, with conservative people insisting on the "proper" pronunciation. "Y'all" sounds horrible to me intuitively, but logically it's a pretty neat word. That is, after you lose the apostrophe, and get over the awkward feeling of tautology when saying "yall all".

I would also use "ye" to refer to a group, even if only one person of the group is there, just as I would use we to refer to a group I'm in, even if I'm the only representative. Is that also the case in languages that have a clearly defined singular and plural 2nd person pronoun?

It certainly seems like the normal way to do things. My conlang distinguishes between the two (plural where the other people are present too, and where they aren't) but I don't know if this is attested in natlangs.

[Travis B.]

Yeah, English "you" is a tricky business. Ideally I would like to revive "thou", only maybe change the initial fric to something more comfortable, like a d or s.

That is not going to happen, though; while there are English dialects that preserve thou as tha, it is extremely unlikely that other English varieties that have already changed you to 2sg. and have innovated new 2pl. pronouns are going to readopt that.

If that's not possible, "yous" would have been nice, but the collision with "use" is annoying.

Homophony hasn't stopped anyone before, especially since the two are unlikely to be confused due to their distribution (unlike with how in some NAE varieties pin became stick pin and pen became ink pen).

"You guys" is obviously too long to last, so we would have to go through another century or more of painstakingly sound changing it to something more convenient, with conservative people insisting on the "proper" pronunciation.

The only reduction of you guys that I see at the present is the you [ju(ː)] to ya [jə(ː)] as very often is the case, and it could somehow be merged with the initial /g/ in guys... I do not see you guys going away, though, aside from being reduced more, especially since in the varieties that use it guys has become a generic word to address people with and to refer to people with, including even sometimes innovating new forms like we guys (1pl. inclusive).

[Declan]

I would also pronounce 'yous' with an /s/, whereas 'youse' seems to demand a /z/ (which is how I pronounce it). I have no idea why this is, though.

Same here. Then again, I really dislike yous(e), it reminds me of certain Dublin accents which I don't really like at all.

[Bedelato]

I would use "you guys" to refer to a group of friends (regardless of whether they're actually guys), but I'd use "you" if I was addressing a large audience or something.

[----]

I've been in the South my entire life and I never say y'all; I use you guys when referring to more than one person.

[finlay]

If that's not possible, "yous" would have been nice, but the collision with "use" is annoying.

Homophony hasn't stopped anyone before, especially since the two are unlikely to be confused due to their distribution (unlike with how in some NAE varieties pin became stick pin and pen became ink pen).

Eye can't think of any other pronouns that have such homophonic discrepancy...

[Xonen]

hevven

/hju:@n/?

Yeah, just like savvy is pronounced /sO:i/… That being said, I'm not such a huge fan of using <vv> in English myself.

"You guys" is obviously too long to last

I wouldn't be so sure. Plenty of languages have two-syllable pronouns; some have even longer ones. There may be some tendency for reduced forms of those to develop in fast speech, yes, but I doubt that usually takes a "century or more of painstakingly sound changing"… I'm actually pretty sure you could already pretty much get away with using something like [j@:z], if you find the extra one or two tenths of a second it takes to say [j@] too inconvenient.

[Chuma]

I most certainly do!

But [j@:z] is good - if that becomes standard, I expect it will soon become just [j@z]. We could also perhaps reach the same thing through a compromise between "yous" and "y'all": How about "yas"?

[Yng]

hevven

/hju:@n/?

Hahahaha ghoti look it sounds like fish!

[Ser]

"You guys" is obviously too long to last

It doesn't seem to me Spanish speakers are simplifying "ustedes" at all, or Spaniards, their "vosotros" (and those are three syllables long); although ustedes is by itself actually a simplification of the good ol' "vuestras merçedes" (five syllables long!).

[Chuma]

Well there you have it. Also I think English is more reductive than Spanish.

[TaylorS]

Around here "You Guys" has slurred into "y'uys" /jaIz/ and using "you" as a plural feels awkward.

[linguoboy]

If that's not possible, "yous" would have been nice, but the collision with "use" is annoying.

Homophony hasn't stopped anyone before, especially since the two are unlikely to be confused due to their distribution (unlike with how in some NAE varieties pin became stick pin and pen became ink pen).

"Stick pin", really? I grew up on the border of that isogloss (and ended up pin-pen merged, although others in my family did not) and I've heard "straight pin" before, but never "stick pin". (I don't use these extensions myself--I can think of only one time in my entire life when the homophony caused any confusion.)

[Radius Solis]

I sometimes use "stick pin" myself, whereas I wouldn't automatically know what a "straight pin" meant. And I don't even have the pin-pen merger or live within a thousand miles of that isogloss. So I'm certainly not using it to contrast with "ink pen", a phrase I do not even have. Rather it contrasts with "push pin", to specify that I do not mean the thumbtack sort of pin.

[CaesarVincens]

I would use "you guys" to refer to a group of friends (regardless of whether they're actually guys), but I'd use "you" if I was addressing a large audience or something.

I'd analyze that more as switching between native dialect and formal/standard English than a native distinction.

I know I use "you guys" as a plural, probably more than I even notice, but it'll be interesting to see where it goes.