Thanks to Silverfox for articulating what appears to me to be a widespread perplexity concerning the proper use of the words 'one' and 'you'.

This perplexity exists in almost everyone speaking English today. To gain clarity in this issue TTers may recall that, in a few exchanges with DWA not very long ago, I used the word "thou" to distinguish DWA from every other TTer. I imagine most TTers would have regarded that verbal distinction as quaint because the word 'thou' is virtually only used today in a Church to refer to God. (Let us leave aside here, folks, the rationality issue of whether God exists, please. We can always address that issue in another thread!). But at one time English speakers used the words 'thou' and 'ye' to distinguish between a single interlocutor and many. (At that time, God was considered a single person, and so was always addressed as 'thou').

But for some reason not yet entirely clear to me, "thou" and "ye" gradually elided into "you". During the course of this (simplicity craving?) elision, a perplexity must have entered the language of English-speaking writers, who now have no "non-quaint" means to distinguish in writing whether our intended references are to all readers or to just one. The context usually makes plain, of course, which of the two alternative references is intended, but, on some occasions -- such as the ones in which I wanted to distinguish DWA from all TTers -- the context will NOT make plain a writer's intention concerning either singular or plural reference.

(In regard to this I yesterday had a conversation with a Chinese-born immigrant (and owner of a "Coffee Time" franchise) from the countryside near Beijing. He assured me that in his family's language the equivalent of the English pronouns "thou" and "ye" are very much still in currency and that his parents, who farm, are invariably very clear in their use of these Mandarin equivalents. By contrast, in a conversation I had a few months ago with a Chinese project manager who had been born in Shanghai, I learned that there is much perplexity and confusion on this subject in Cantonese).

The point here is that in the last few centuries language use amongst English-speaking people has lost substantial clarity concerning the specific human agency or agencies to which writers and speakers are referring with the word "you".

But there is more complexity yet in this matter! In addition to the question of specific human agency clarity the factor of courtesy enters the minds of people referring to their interlocutors. In French, to "tutoyer" a person is to presume a high degree of intimacy with that person; lacking that presumption, French speakers use the word "vous", which, when the matter of courtesy is of considarable concern in the reference chosen, otherwise always refers to many interlocutors not just one. I believe that use of the word "vous" as a more courteous term than "tu" comes from the peasants' sense that socially more prestigious people appear to them as having more personalities than just one! (diagnoses of schizophrenia?). English had, of course, to have a corresponding differentiation between intimacy and the honouring of unequal social standings.

Into this multi-valent situation, the word "one" gained a currency that today is still "struggling for breath" in its birth amongst the population at large. I must confess that, although what I have written so far, will be confirmed by acknowledged linguistic and etymological experts, what I will next write is perhaps only the claim of a very inexpert and solitary etymo-rational explorer; and here any who earnestly want to gain a clarity of relevance to the very severe entanglements in the Eastern Mediterranean will first have to study, as DWA has with a degree of appreciation that he has made clear in a very recent TT post, the table of distinctions below:

A fuller context for the "penso-evolution" (thinking evolution) of this table is set out at:

http://www.authentixcoaches.com/ACReadingMaterial3.html