I've been thinking about you. No, not you personally. I mean that I've been thinking about you, the actual word. I can already tell that this might get confusing. You is such a common word that it's difficult to pull back from its everyday usage and discuss it deeply and objectively. However, the very fact that you is used so frequently means that it can offer tremendous insight to those who are willing to discuss it. You has passed over the lips of so many people in so many contexts over so great a time that it touches on nearly every aspect of history, society, and language in the English speaking world. What follows is only a brief introduction to a word that can speak volumes.

You is a pronoun. More specifically, you is a second-person personal pronoun, and it's the only second-person personal pronoun that contemporary English speakers use with frequency. No other word is really necessary for the job; you is incredibly one-size-fits-all. It is singular and plural, nominative and objective, formal and familiar. The subject of an address, when not called by name, is nearly always called you. I'm writing for you, now, and I am able to call you you no matter who you are, simply because it is you that I am addressing. That's the rule.

Many other languages offer a little more variety. French, for example, has two words that translate into English as you. The first of these, tu, can only be used to address one person on a familiar level. The other word, vous, must be used instead of tu when addressing groups of two or more people. Vous can also be used to address one person in a way that conveys additional respect. The English word you offers no such distinctions.

There is also no difference in English between you when it used as the subject of a verb, and you when it is used as the object of a verb (or the object of a preposition). This is quite unlike the situation for the first- and third-person pronouns in English. I, we, he, and she can only be used as subjects. Me, us, him, and her can only be used as objects. You is an exception; it works in either setting.

You was not always used in so many different contexts. In the 1500s, Early Modern English possessed two distinct second-person personal pronouns: thou and ye. Thou was singular, so it was used to address one person. Ye was plural, so it was used to address groups of two or more. In addition, each of these two pronouns had two distinct forms: a nominative form that could only be used as the subject of a phrase, and an objective form that could only be used as the object. Thou and ye were both nominative forms. Their objective forms were thee and you.

The collected works of William Dunbar (c. 1460 - c. 1520) provide a good example of the way these four words were used at the beginning of the Modern period.

Over the course of the16th and 17th centuries, the words thee, thou, and ye were all gradually replaced by you. Ye was the first word to be replaced. As early as the 1300s, authors were writing you in place of ye as a means of adding emphasis and variation to their work. As time passed, more and more authors and speakers substituted you for ye until by 1600, ye was essentially obsolete outside of the most formal and poetic writings.

The demise of thee and thou happened somewhat later, largely because of a concept borrowed from French. As I mentioned earlier, the French word vous is generally used to address a group of two or more, but it can also be used to address one person in a way that is especially respectful. During the 1400s, this idea was increasingly adopted into English as well. The word you, previously only used as a plural form to address groups of two or more, could now also be used in the singular just like vous in order to address one person with extra respect. Over the course of time, speakers began to use you in the singular more and more, apparently eager to show respect or just politeness to everyone with whom they spoke. As you became more frequent, however, the formality that it conveyed diminished—just as that which is more common is generally less valuable than that which is rare.

By the time of Shakespeare's plays in the 16th and early 17th centuries, the word you was essentially interchangeable with thou and thee in most everyday speech and much popular writing. More formal writings continued to employ all of the distinct forms until sometime later, though. That's why first edition of the King James Bible is another excellent example of the distinctions between thou, thee, ye, and you, even though these forms had already become interchangeable or completely obsolete for most speakers by the time the King James Bible was published in 1611. The editors of this Bible worked to make it sound somehow holier and more authoritative than ordinary texts, and they achieved this by essentially remixing antiquated words and grammatical structures from various times in the past into an artful and somewhat original version of the English language that worked well for their purposes.

For ordinary speakers, however, the word you was simply used with increasing frequency until it became so expected as a term of address that to be called thou or thee would have seemed at best overly-familiar, and at worst, contemptuously rude. Therefore, thou and thee became more and more uncommon outside of formal and poetic writing until they faded completely from most English dialects by the early 18th century.

The only second-person personal pronoun that has lasted to be used by most Modern English speakers today is you. It is a well-weathered word that has stood the test of time and adapted to work in a multitude of grammatical contexts. The fact that there are no alternatives to you, however, is not without its problems.

One of the most acknowledged difficulties with you is that its capability to be both singular and plural sometimes makes it difficult to determine how many people someone is addressing. In order to avoid confusion, extra words have to pegged on to the pronoun, resulting in phrases like "all of you," "both of you," "you guys," and "y'all," to indicate plurality. These phrases take up extra time and space, and would be completely unnecessary if only there were separate singular and plural second-person pronouns in the English language.

Another quirk of the word you is that since it was originally a plural pronoun, it always works with plural verbs. This seems somewhat odd today when you is used to address just one person. For example, if I were to tell someone named Charlie that he is a good musician, I would say, "Charlie, you are a good musician," even though are is a plural form of the verb be, which can be demonstrated by the familiarity of combinations like "we are", "they are", "these are," and "trees are," but not "I are", "she are," "it are," or "tree are." Nevertheless, you continues to require the use of plural verbs even on occasions when the word you is being used as a singular pronoun.

One last aspect of the word you that might be considered a drawback is its peculiar spelling: the first two letters in you are unnecessary from a phonetic standpoint, and they make the word three times longer than it need be. A simple u would be sufficient. Perhaps this seems trifling, but you is one of the most frequently written words in the English language, and those two superfluous letters add up to consume a lot of ink, paper, and time. If the first-person personal pronoun in English can be spelled I, then why can't second-person personal pronoun be spelled u? Frankly, the O in you only makes the spelling less phonetic, because the digraph ou has a multitude of other common pronunciations (consider words like out, could, young, and dough). This means that the spelling of you is not only redundantly long, but phonetically ambiguous as well.

Despite these imperfections, you remains an incredibly interesting word. In fact, the more peculiar aspects of you only add to its character. Each quirk not only gives new insight on the word's fascinating history, but together these quirks also create room for debate over the way language ought to be used today. This means that you isn't just rich in tradition; it's somewhat controversial as well. Both the controversy and the tradition are packed into a compact word that people utter constantly without a second thought. You is incredibly full of meaning! I doubt that it is alone in this respect. Every word, and indeed, every small and overlooked part of life, has its stories to tell. We need only take time to listen.