Isegoria

I was recently reading The Civilising Mission, and I couldn’t help but notice that its header includes a line from Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”:

The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard

I suppose most modern English speakers vaguely recognize ye as an archaic form of you:

You is the second-person personal pronoun in Modern English. Ye was the original nominative form; the oblique/objective form is you (functioning originally as both accusative and dative), and the possessive is your or yours.

I know you. Ye know me.

Ye is not the only archaic form of you we’ve got, as thou already knowest:

In standard English, you is both singular and plural; it always takes a verb form that originally marked the word as plural, such as you are. This was not always so. Early Modern English distinguished between the plural you and the singular thou.

This distinction was lost in modern English due to the importation from France of a Romance linguistic feature which is commonly called the T-V distinction. This distinction 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 standard English, although this did not happen in other languages such as French.

Because thou is now seen primarily in literary sources such as the King James Bible (often directed to God, who is traditionally addressed in the familiar) or Shakespeare (often in dramatic dialogs, e.g. “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”), many modern anglophones erroneously perceive it as more formal, rather than familiar (case in point: in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader addresses the Emperor saying, “What is thy bidding, my master?”).

Naturally, once y’all use you for both singular and plural, y’all need a new plural:

Because you is both singular and plural, various English dialects have attempted to revive the distinction between a singular and plural you to avoid confusion between the two uses. This is typically done by adding a new plural form; examples of new plurals sometimes seen and heard are y’all, or you-all (primarily in the southern United States and African American Vernacular English), you guys (in the U.S., particularly in Midwest, Northeast, and West Coast, in Canada, and in Australia; regardless of the genders of those referred to), you lot (in the UK), youse (in Scotland), youse guys (in the U.S., particularly in New York City region, Philadelphia, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and rural Canada; also spelt without the E), and you-uns/yinz (Western Pennsylvania, The Appalachians).

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