Horse 932 - I Hate "You"

Let it be known that I hate "You". Not you as a person but the word "you".

You is the second person, singular or plural, nominative or objective. If you think that that sounds overly loaded as a word then you'd be correct. The OED notes that although archaic, the singular should be thou (which is pronounced exactly as written with the diphthong th not a y as in you). Likewise ye should be the collective plural. The problem with this is that because both thou and ye have fallen out of favour, English has had to invent collective plurals, resulting in you guys, y'all or possibly youse - all of which sound uncultured.

Because you should be a plural, the acceptable infinitives for existance become you were and you are. This is patently silly when applied to the singular, for it was and it is are quite logically the acceptable infinitives for existance in this case. But what happens to you in the singular? You was and you is again sound quite silly however, Dickens, Defoe, Shelley, and even Shakespeare seemed to have no trouble with it at all. Indeed up until the completion of OED 1 in 1933 it was perfectly acceptable. By the time of completion of OED 2 in 1997 it had entirely disappered. Certainly by the completion of OED 3 in 2037 (est.) it will be most frowned upon.

This all brings me to a rather moot question. Why does the English Language happen to settle on illogical things like this for? Why is the sentence "I'm hurrying, are I not?" appear so stupid and yet "I'm hurrying, aren't I?" be correct when apart from a wee reordering of words and the addition of a contraction, it's still pretty much exactly the same? The reason I suspect because English is such a stupid and barbarian language that steals from other languages, plays with virtually no rules, and then tries to hopelessly fit into Latin (which itself has been dead as a spoken language for well over 1400 years), is the rather arbitrary reason that someone didn't like it. That in itself is really quite pathetic, but when you consider that style manuals and even the OED itself are written by grammar nazis who themselves are only acting on they previously have been taught because other people didn't like it, then it explains but doesn't excuse it.

You is understand why I hate you now? I mean if scholars don't like something and get it changed then why can't I? You is stupid.