A Moth Who Turned Goth

s-cornelius:

shevathegun:
spidergvven:
tumblr linguists pls explain why ‘you’ sometimes needs to be ‘u’ and ‘u’ needs to be ‘you’ and how come i will mix and match my u’s and you’s within the same post or even the same sentence
the difference between “u” and “you” is really interesting to me too, and while there haven’t been a lot of plausible conclusions drawn about variable usage of the two, i’ve observed a few things about it.
one: tumblr has, effectively, its own dialect. in fact, different part of tumblr have different variants of this dialect. usage of “you” vs “u” is a part of this dialect.
(here’s a great video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDPasRas5u0)
two: a key feature of the “tumblr dialect” is fluidity — tumblr posts generally maintain a very specific cadence. variable usage of “u”/”you” occurs most frequently in order to increase fluidity of speech. the pattern is generally “you” at the beginning of a statement and “u”s in the body thereof. (this pattern is relatively consistent even if there is no beginning “you”.)
three: another factor seems to be emphasis, and authorial intent. “you” is used more frequently when the subject matter is serious, or, as one person already pointed out, if the statement is intended to be forceful. alternatively, “u” has an intrinsic flippancy that speakers frequently use in conjunction with humor, irony, or sarcasm.
four: authors will vary usage of “you”/”u” in instances of repetition, in part because the “tumblr dialect” involves a minimalistic approach to punctuation. (example: “omg i was so worried about u you know”)
five: users often use “u” instead of “you” to address people they know well or feel close to, almost as a form of endearment. (example: “i love u”, “are u ok”, etc.) because “you” carries with it a forcefulness or seriousness, “u” is used more frequently in casual, affectionate exchanges between friends.
six: users use “u” more often if they use other such abbreviations in the same post.
the key difference seems to be that “u” — as a single letter — feels diminutive, casual, and cute, in comparison to the full word “you”, which feels more serious, more professional, or more severe. though the have the same meaning on tumblr, their different connotations can be chalked up to their different visual presentations.
somebody who’s a more skilled linguist than i am should pick this up tbh, would love to hear about any conclusions that have been drawn about this
HELLO LINGUIST HERE TO TALK ABOUT PHONOLOGY AND PROSODY AND PRAGMATICS.
First of all, many of these observations fall in line with sort of general American English trends, and those are the ones I’m going to talk about the most.
The lexical item you generally has the phonological representation [ju͡w] (some kind of diphthong-y offglide on the vowel) or ‘yoo’ for most American English speakers. However, when sounds come into contact with other sounds, or appear in certain contexts, the full form ‘yoo’ can become [jə] or ‘ya.’ The sound in the reduced form [ə] or schwa is a very intriguing sound in English, such that it only appears in unstressed syllables.
In tumblr speech, we can think of you as the full ‘yoo’ form, and u as the phonologically reduced form, and the patterns line up pretty well.
You, unlike other pronouns of English, can function as a clitic, i.e. glom onto another word. For instance, when you say “I’ll …”, the ‘ll part is a clitic: a phonologically reduced form of “will” that is not stressed and cannot stand on its own in an utterance. “You” can do this too in phrases like dontcha (don’t you), getcha (get you), and y’okay? (you okay?). This cliticization of you occurs almost only in fast, informal speech. Since the register of the tumblr dialect is generally informal, this lines up well with the first half two, namely, the specific cadence of tumblr speech.
SO, when “you” is ‘forceful’ or chosen due to subject matter (see three above), we can think of it as being in a stressed or emphasized position in the utterance. Native speakers of English will tell you that there is a difference in meaning between “Don’t you …” and “Dontcha …”, such that the emphasis placed on you in “Don’t you …” is specifically singling whoever this you is in the utterance (and looking to them to answer the question). While “Dontcha …” can be used in more neutral and general contexts. It would be hard to imagine a situation where a person would say “Don’t you think it’s a nice day?” and it not come off as confrontational.
The second half of two (the pattern is generally “you” at the beginning of a statement and “u”s in the body thereof) is consistent with how we treat given v. new information. For example, if I’m going to talk for a paragraph about Hayley Atwell, I might use her full name in the first mention, and then Hayley or she every other time I mention her in the paragraph. This is because the first time I mention Hayley Atwell, this is new information; I’m telling you who I’m going to be talking about. Every other time, you know that she or Hayley refers back to this topic, and until I mention another name (like Natalie Dormer), you know that all she’s in this paragraph are given information, i.e. talkin’ ‘bout Hayley. This can also be reconstructed from contextual information; if I reblog a picture of Hayley Atwell and put in the tags “#she is so preeeeeetty”, the interpretation of she is that it refers to Hayley Atwell, since this picture has already introduced her to the context of the discourse.
With you v. u, we can see something similar happening: the full form of you appears first and shortened, anaphoric or referential u’s appear every other time. Even if there is no you at the beginning, readers can reconstruct who the first u is referring to from the context that the post or whatever is on tumblr (perhaps this ironic u mentioned in three or affectionate u mentioned in five). I would be interested to see two things in the data:
When u appears in the discourse without a prior you, is the tone of the post light and/or affectionate and/or humorous, and referring to the OP’s followers or a specific fandom?
If another you appears in the body of the post, did the OP change who you was referring to?
If the answer to both of these is often yes, than it is likely you is used for new information, and u is used for given information.
Finally, as a text-based dialect, aesthetics are important, too! As shevathegun points out, there is a visual component and u does look cuter!
So, without really digging through a corpus of data, this is what I think is going on! Happy linguistic-ing on the internet!