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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
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In my native Czech we use plural when addressing strangers or people with a higher standing. Singular pronouns are a lot more informal, used betwen friends and family. French and German have something similar.
Actually, English does the same, except the uncouth singular has been dropped and now the formal address is the only choice. The informal, singular version of "you" is "thou".
You can read more about it here
May or may not be related, but English used to make use of the thorn character for many instances of "th" in modern times, but it wasn't available on german printing presses so "y" was often used instead, which i think was a contributing factor to "thou" going out of favor since itd always be "you" when printed.
"Y'all" has become more popular over the last decade in english for sure, somewhat reinstating an informal option for plural. It very much used to be a southern US thing, but its increasingly being adopted as a way to replace gendered english words when addressing a group directly. The article you liked mentions that a bit, tho i don't know if anyone has done the work to determine how much that adoption has increased.