Another linguistic tidbit

[robinturner]

Here's another one from the election campaign coverage, this time from Sky News:

"Sixty-eight percent of you says 'yes'."

Which recalcitrant parts of my mind are saying "no", I wonder?

Comments

Weird! I was just thinking about this this morning!

[ex-fauxpas266.livejournal.com]

This is precisely why y'all needs to be conventionalized in Standard English!

Re: Weird! I was just thinking about this this morning!

[solri.livejournal.com]

I agree - "y'all" or "youse" would do fine. Of course, English did used to have singular and plural 2nd person pronouns, but like most Euro-languages the plural was used as the polite form, and then, unlike other Euro-languages, we lost the familiar form, because we English are so awfully polite.

Lojban, of course, has a host of pronouns to avoid having to bother with silly stuff like subject-verb agreement. However, Lojban doesn't bother with the singular/plural distinction either, so not only is do "you" in both singular and plural senses, but mi can mean "I" or "we", but only when the "we" does not include the person or people addressed (i.e. it's "we" as opposed to "you" - for "we" including "you", there is mi'o). "Y'all" would be expressed as rodo - "all-you".