Please be intuitive. Leave aside school answers or what you think is might be ‘correct’.
Yes.
Unable to put my knowlege aside - I’ve worked Renaissance Faire too long to not know the answer.
In present-day English, it’s both formal and informal. That should have been a choice in the poll.
Exactly. It’s like asking us to choose whether you refers to a man or a woman. It’s a pronoun that covers both.
I voted ‘informal’ because I have no idea what you are talking about and my intuition is very informal.
Or perhaps neither, like “the” or “bicycle.”
If I say “You are the President of the United States, you don’t have to ride the subway,” I don’t think “You” is being using formally or informally. But I never studied grammar, so I could be missing something important.
I see to recall (but could very well be wrong) that “you” was the formal term, and “thou” was the informal term. For some reason, “you” became the one-size fits all, and “thou”, all but forgotten, became the formal, but very, very limited term.
In contemporary English the pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, they) are used both formally and informally.
I don’t “think” that might be correct, I know that’s correct.
There are formal and informal pronouns in English. “Youse” and “you all” are informal; “whom” is formal. However, the most common pronouns are both.
I always grin when Darth Vader bends his knee to the Emperor…and then speaks to him in the familiar.
Could be worse. There was a comic book that had the line, “Canst it be? A demon trys to rescueth me!” Sic sic sic sicko!
There is precedent, though:
O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.
Well, that link was supposed to be to Psalm 6:1, darn it.
Thing is, in the KJV, they are speaking to God in the familiar. Yes, they do say “Lord,” but they are using the language of close friends, family members, or lovers. (Or even the language used with social inferiors.)
Darth Vader wasn’t!
I read, some years ago, motorists in Germany could be fined for addressing a police officer in the familiar. Don’t go all “du” on me, fellow! But Americans have a distant, austere, formal way of thinking about God, and this has led many to imagine that the “thee and thou” of the KJV is the formal, hyper-respectful language that a servant would use to his master. T’aint so!
(I think you know this; I’m just a-preachin’ to the choir!)
The court of Denethor in Minas Tirith was amused by Pippin’s use of the familiar thou to the steward. Maybe they took the hobbit for a court jester there for a job interview, since court jesters are the only ones allowed to smartmouth off to the ruler’s face (except for his mom). If so, they quickly had another think coming as Peregrin son of Paladin quickly turned into a soldier swearing allegiance to Gondor.*
But then there seems to have been a general overall feeling during and after the War of the Ring that the old ways were all worn out and the world needed to change, so what the heck.
*and that song he sang to Denethor in the movie? Never happened in the book; it was actually a Rohanian poem recited by Aragorn in a completely different chapter set in Rohan.
We’ve assumed OP means how “you” maps to the distinction in other languages (tu/vous, du/Sie, etc.)
If the question is about using “you” as an opening form of address (as in “Oi, you! Yes, you there!”, then it can be very informal!
I knew the “correct” answer because of studying about the KJV of the Bible, but the question really doesn’t make sense in the same way that other languages actually have formal and informal ways of saying “you” where modern English has lost the distinction.
If it’s informal, then what’s more formal than it? If it’s informal, what’s less?
“One”
Oi short arse
One what?