“One does not…” and “No one can [does]…” are pretty much the same sentence construction, both using a form of “one”.
“You” is the person or people who are being addressed.
If I suggested that someone who was not me go to Mordor, and was told “You cannot simply walk into Mordor”, I would be confused by this response, since I was not planning on going to Mordor myself in the first place.
“One” is general and can (but is not obligated to) include the listener, the speaker, and those absent. “Everyone”, “No one” and “Nobody” are all the same concept.
You are correct, there are plenty of good pronouns that could be used in such a situation, but “you” is not one of them.
I’m always amused when people pretend they don’t understand a perfectly common English expression with a long history of use by all manner of people.
It’s fine to say “I don’t like it,” but “I don’t understand it” is something else again.
If you REALLY would be confused by “you cannot simply walk into Mordor,” and I doubt that you would be, then something was lacking in your education. I am sorry.
That’s because Cecil is a smartass. He often wants to come off like a pompous know-it-all. The fact that he doesn’t do it consistently is a pretty good indication that it’s not the way he normally speaks. Plus that was from at least 24 years ago.
I wish I lived in a world where the simple act of straightening one’s bow tie sent lesser beings scurrying for their rocks. As it is, even the mighty monocle has lost its power to impress.
I exaggerate a bit; I’d quickly realize they meant “one” when they said “you”, but it would give me momentary pause while I interpreted the message that the speaker was actually trying to convey. This is doubly true when reading some people’s writing.
One thing I find frustrating is when people learn of their own grammatical errors, malapropisms, etc., many tend to react with what boils down to essentially, “Fuck you, I know what I meant.” This is a completely foreign attitude to me, and whenever I learn that I’ve been making an error, I am glad to correct it and thank the person that pointed it out to me.
It’s a little off-putting to find more of the former attitude than the latter on a website devoted to fighting ignorance.
