Talk:Generic you

"a person"

Instead of the "generic you" or "one," some people use "a person," as in "A person might get into movies by working in television." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.163.0.43 (talk) 16:11, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Paragraph about singular they

I removed the last paragraph, on the singular they. I wouldn't mind if someone were to add it back in the course of saying more about the generic you, but as it is, an entry in the See Also: list seemed enough. - 67.164.12.169 09:17, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Russian ты

Would it be appropriate for me to mention the corresponding phenomenon in Russian, which uses the second-person plural ты (equivalent to French or Spanish tu) in the same way as the generic you in English? For example, the famous proverb "За двумя зайцами погонишься, ни одного не поймаешь" (Za dvumya zaitsami pogonish'sya, ni odnogo ne poimayesh' -- "If you chase two rabbits, you won't catch either") can be translated literally into English, and the generic ты becomes the generic you. (The word ты happens not to appear in this passage, but the verbs are conjugated to agree with it.)

The article claims that the phrase "generic you" only applies to English, but I can't think of any reason that must be true. Tesseran 22:09, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the article should definitely be primarily about the use of you (the English pronoun) as a generic pronoun, but I don't see why we can't mention other languages.

That said, one characteristic of English you is that it can be used in circumstances where it can't possibly be interpreted with a second-person sense; for example, you could tell a man, "when you're pregnant, hormones have a lot of influence over your emotions," or you could say "in ancient Rome, you couldn't go twenty feet without seeing a man in a toga." Is this true of Russian as well?

Ruakh 22:19, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, you can use ты, which as I mentioned is the familiar pronoun, in this way even if you're speaking to someone with whom you would use вы, the formal pronoun. So even if you're talking to your boss, or the president -- people with whom it would be incredibly rude to use ты -- you can give examples like the above without giving offense. I don't know whether it can be used in impossible hypotheticals like "when you're pregnant"; I'll try to find out.

I guess I unconsciously used the generic 'you' here; since it seems that you (Ruakh) don't speak Russian, assumedly it's inaccurate to say that you can use ты with anyone. =) Tesseran 07:28, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Formal English problem

I find it hilarious that the article on "generic you" does not follow the formal English standard of not using the generic you. Bayerischermann 21:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

The article states that one "is infrequently used outside the most formal styles", and I don't think anyone thinks Wikipedia should be in the most formal style (for example, it shouldn't be written nearly as formally as a business letter to someone one hasn't met), so I don't think it's all that unreasonable for it to use the generic you. Further, I think your generic one looks very out of place where you put it. Fixed. Ruakh 03:33, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for making it sound better for a general audience. But please remember that the generic you does not belong on Wikipedia, as expressed in this template message:

Bayerischermann 21:12, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

First of all, the template speaks of excessive or inappropriate use of the first and second persons; it does not say anything to suggest that use of generic you is inappropriate, and in this article it clearly was not excessive. Second of all, even if the template explicitly addressed generic you, the existence of a template really doesn't say very much; I could just as easily create a template that read:

If you want to convince me, you'll have to give actual evidence, such as a link to an established policy or guideline that supports your view.

Ruakh 12:06, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

It's in WP:MOS. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Avoid the second person. ⇒Bayerischermann ^- 03:47, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Cool, thanks for the link. Still, I think it's better to rephrase a sentence to avoid a generic pronoun than to simply replace generic you with generic one. (At least, provided it's possible to rephrase things without producing a ridiculous sentence.) Ruakh 11:59, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Would be nice to include a source for the formal/informal English distinction. Nemo 17:13, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Should article be moved?

I think maybe we should move this article, seeing as it's as much about generic one as about generic you. How about English generic pronouns or English generic personal pronouns or Generic you and one? —Ruakh_TALK 02:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I'd vote with the first naming option. Storeye 11:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Bias

I personally use "one" intead of "you" all the time and don't consider it formal or stuffy etc. This article seems to me to be very biased towards the use of "you". Am I just weird? Storeye 13:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• I agree - this article is very loaded. It should be about the 'generic you', but spends half the time lambasting 'one.' Stuffy? Formal? I use 'one' in all contexts - and I am not stuffy or posh, but working class. I consider 'you' to be both rather vulgar and confusing - but I would not deign to hijack the article on 'one' to promote my own linguistic bias. This article is odd indeed. --It's-is-not-a-genitive (talk) 14:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

• • Odd indeed. Yes the first part is basically someone's personal opinion/essay. I redacted some of it, but it needs more work. Why is "one" mentioned except in passing, it has it's own article. Herostratus (talk) 05:31, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I use the generic you when speaking all the time and no one, except my German wife who had Victorian style grammar drilled into her in the Fatherland, has ever had a problem with it. However, I shy away from it in written English because it can be confusing without the contextual indicators that live speech provides. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.176.76.189 (talk) 19:47, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Removed unreferenced tag

I removed the "unreferenced" tag. I see several sources cited in-text, and one reference cited for the article generally, so this seemed inappropriate. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Is the Scott quote proper in this situation?

One third down the page, there is a quote:

   … in a nasty Scottish jail, where one cannot even get the dirt brushed off their clothes. — Sir Walter Scott

This is called out as an indication that Scott was confused about plurality in his speech. However, it looks much more like a case of using singular they, as noted in that article, and hence not clearly a grammatical error (although perhaps a structure which could be called contentious). Any thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.34.10.102 (talk) 06:53, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, the Walter Scott sentence is perfectly grammatical. Good thing the text saying the contrary has been removed. Nemo 17:32, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Non-standard

The phenomenon of generic you, though decried in the works of some still-read prescriptivist grammarians, is so widespread that it is nearly standard usage.

This is the only reference to Standard English that I can find in the article. So is generic you non-standard? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.170.4.71 (talk) 05:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Major removal

The first part of the article had been marked as needing to have its neutrality checked. I concur with some of the editors above, who, over the last several years, have noted that this section was not only biased, but it spoke mainly about a totally different topic ("one"). As the bulk of that was uncited, was filled with several clearly NPOV statements, and was furthermore difficult to follow, I have excised the whole lot of it. Obviously, something substantial should go in it's place, but I don't have access to sources or time right now to do it. Still, I'd rather have the article say almost nothing than say a bunch of non-neutral, OR things which aren't even related to the topic. I'm actually tempted to nominate this for merging, although I'm going to have to search later to see where that should be. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:07, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, your redaction was probably for the best. One hatesYou hate to lose this much data, but it wasn't sourced and didn't belong. The article is better now, and thank you. Herostratus (talk) 06:52, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Who Disputes the Generic You?

The article on Disputed English Usage says the generic you is disputed by grammarians. I think that this article should at least give a citation to a grammarian who actually disputes the use of the generic you (although I realise that finding prescriptive grammarians with any academic clought is a hard thing these days) - By this I don't mean a reference to a blog from a (usually non-native speaking) pedant but a reference to a published grammar book that says that 'you' is wrong in its generic form. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.186.171.227 (talk • contribs)

You're absolutely right. This is one of the unusual cases where I'm on the side of the "Of course it's true, I know it's true", but I accept that we need verification. That is, I am one of those grammarians who argue against the use of generic you, at least in formal writing, but I don't have any evidence to back up my position as being one held by a wide variety of people. As such, I'm going to tag the relevant sentence as needing citation, and if no one produces one in a week or two, feel free to delete it from the article. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:49, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Removing Template:Off topic

The section of this article discussing Generic you in languages other than English has had, as of now, a off topic notice for nearly 2 years. I do not see what about this section is "off topic", and there seems to be no explanation on the talk page of why this is added. So I am going to remove it. And if anyone holds the opinion that it is off topic then it would be great if we could start a discussion about this. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 10:32, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Generic you in German

According to a German person, “du” is never used to replace the word “man”. I think either, a citation should be found that supports the claim made in the section, or the section should be deleted. 92.184.96.111 (talk) 10:32, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Let a native speaker tell you: It depends on the meaning. "Man glaubt, dass die römische Verfassung schrittweise entstand." or "Man hat mich bedroht." cannot be expressed with "du" or any other personal pronoun, while "In so einer Situation muss man wissen, was man tut", "In so einer Situation musst du wissen, was du tust ", "In so einer Situation müssen Sie wissen, was Sie tun" and "In so einer Situation muss ich wissen, was ich tue" may all have the same meaning, depending on context. 2A0A:A541:5A30:0:B097:9819:83CC:DC5A (talk) 22:18, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

As another native speaker, your example uses of "du" and "Sie" are not the generic you as in english but includes the one spoken to, i.e. is pretty normal use of "du/Sie". The generic you, on the other hand, does not directly include the recipient, so I think the cases are not comparable, and unless examples are found for generic you in german, it should be removed.

Concretely, the sentences "In so einer Situation muss man wissen, was man tut" und "In so einer Situation müssen Sie wissen, was Sie tun" are not at all equivalent - the first gives a general guideline, while the second addresses a specific person or group, and is not a generic you. But this really requires a linguistic reference. If none can be produced, it should not be claimed. 78.43.34.241 (talk) 04:15, 21 August 2024 (UTC)