How to say "you" in Arabic part one
The Arab world is defined by its famous diglossia - there is an international "standard" language which is nearly identical to the classical Arabic of the Qu'ran and the Hadith, but updated in order to describe the modern world, as well as various local, national and regional dialects which perhaps differ as much as the Romance languages, such as French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, do from each other. English is unusual in that in its modern standardised incarnation, it only has one word for you. Granted, in the Midlands people say " youse " and in the American South, there is the famous " y'all ", but outside of rural Yorkshire, the only people who use "thou", "thee" and "thy" are committed thespians, regular churchgoers and diehard romantics. Before we get into the nitty gritty of number (singular, plural and dual) and gender (masculine and feminine) it's worth remembering that the common denominator fo