Even More Geekery
Dec. 15th, 2006 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twincityhackerI've been thinking on why it's "You're" instead of "you's" when when one is just addressing a singular you.
I was flipping though a book in a bookstore that was a series of small essays on English and other languages, and there was a section on informal and formal you, and it's singular and plural forms.
Apparenlty, there was singular thou and plural ye in (Middle or Old) English - this then moved to singular thee and pluarl you. Then somewhere along the line, thee got dropped.
So the reason why it's "you're" with a contraction plural of a "to be" is because you is considered to be in the plural, so the "to be" has to be plural to agree with the plural subject.
Yes, it's geeky, but it's fun, dammit! And way better than ranting on why you should be able to split infinitives in English.
I was flipping though a book in a bookstore that was a series of small essays on English and other languages, and there was a section on informal and formal you, and it's singular and plural forms.
Apparenlty, there was singular thou and plural ye in (Middle or Old) English - this then moved to singular thee and pluarl you. Then somewhere along the line, thee got dropped.
So the reason why it's "you're" with a contraction plural of a "to be" is because you is considered to be in the plural, so the "to be" has to be plural to agree with the plural subject.
Yes, it's geeky, but it's fun, dammit! And way better than ranting on why you should be able to split infinitives in English.
