As a former Southerner, who grew up with "y'all", and a fan of Shakespearean English, I have to say that I've always been sorry that English lost its distinct second person singular pronouns. We've had to come up with all sorts of work-arounds as a result.
I always thought it odd that Esperanto adopted this "feature", presumably from English:
Singular Plural
first person mi (I) ni (we)
second person vi (you)
third person
masculine li (he) ili (they)
feminine ŝi (she)
epicene ĝi (it, s/he)
Not one of Zamenhof's better choices, in my opinion. There is an informal second person singular pronoun, ci (thou), but as I recall it was only used in certain circumstances. If any Esperantists reading this know why Zamenhof used vi for both singular and plural, I'd love to know.
I always thought it odd that Esperanto adopted this "feature", presumably from English:
Not one of Zamenhof's better choices, in my opinion. There is an informal second person singular pronoun, ci (thou), but as I recall it was only used in certain circumstances. If any Esperantists reading this know why Zamenhof used vi for both singular and plural, I'd love to know.