Reading a list of things which irritate English speakers about language usage recently, I was surprised to read the use of terms such as "youse", "y'all" or "yous'ns" to emphasise plural. While these are all deemed non-standard, they are quite widespread ("yous" is almost universal, even in fairly formal contexts, where I live in Northern Ireland) and quite sensible - few other major languages do not distinguish between you-singular and you-plural.
What is happens peculiarly often, however, is the movement of the plural form to take over from the singular. Even within Western European languages alone, there are several unlinked examples.
English
Until the beginning of what we tend to regard as the "Modern English" period (around the invention of the printing press and into the time of Shakespeare, so roughly 450-550 years ago), English retained the relatively "normal" division of thou/thee (singular; subject/object) and ye/you (plural; subject/object). In most varieties, however, these shifted so that, in the standard language, you came to stand for all of them - singular and plural, subject and object. Its verb forms also took over: thou singest became you sing (originally in totality a plural form).
Thou/thee are retained in very formal or archaic contexts (we will hear them in a few Christmas Carols in coming weeks) and perhaps even still by some older speakers in some dialects, such as in the north of England. Ye is retained specifically as a plural form (both subject and object) in some other dialects, notably in parts of the south and west of Ireland. Otherwise, however, English speakers have had to "re-form" a plural.
The most famous example of this, perhaps, is "y'all", common in the American South. In some parts of the northern UK, Ireland and Australia the second most common form, essentially a regular plural "yous(e)", is widespread. In some parts of Northern Ireland and Scotland there is also a re-emphasised version of this, "yous'ns" (with "'ns" deriving from "ones" or Scots anes, typically pronounced "yins" - this also applies to a commonly used word for "children", weans, derived from "wee"+"yins"). Some speakers in some contexts even double up with "yous all".
As it happens, the standard language maintains "you" in all contexts; nevertheless, the point here is that several varieties have found different ways of re-forming a plural form (while maintaining the original plural form to indicate the singular).
Spanish
As noted before on these pages, the originally plural vos has become widespread across many parts of Latin America, either used alongside or (more commonly) replacing the original tú (cf. related "thou") as the singular subject form; notably, it does not replace the non-pronominal object form te. In European Spanish, vos is retained only in an emphasised form adding otros 'others', thus vosotros (similarly to the universal Spanish nosotros 'we'; there is a parallel here with French, particularly in the New World, where nous autres and vous autres may be used for emphasis).
In "Rioplatense" Spanish, most obviously associated with Buenos Aires but covering much of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, not only has the original plural pronoun replaced the singular form, but so (as in English) have the associated verb form, albeit now slightly abbreviated. Thus, original and still European Spanish tú cantas ('you sing'; singular) and vosotros cantaís (plural) become respectively vos cantás and (from an originally polite form using a third person rather than second person verb form) ustedes cantan; likewise, tú eres and vosotros sois become vos sos and ustedes son 'you are'.
In this case, vos became singular and the reformation of the plural form did not derive from it, but rather from another available pronoun already being used for the purpose. Fundamentally, however, the shift from plural to singular and then to replacement plural has occurred in Rioplatense Spanish, just as it has in many non-standard varieties of English.
Dutch
In the Dutch of Shakespeare's time (i.e. the West Germanic language of the Low Countries), the singular 'you' was du, just as it is in modern German and in the Scandinavian languages, and cognate with English 'thou' (and for that matter Spanish tú). However, just as in Standard English and Rioplatense Spanish, this was replaced by the plural form, jij in the standard language (and gij in some southern dialects, including in modern-day Belgium).
Dutch then came up with a similar solution to some varieties of English, though not quite the same one. It took the word for 'people', luiden (cf. German Leute), and then attached it to the singular form to form, effectively, jij lui(den), which was shortened over time and is now written as a single word jullie.
In fact, this process was repeated in some dialects for the third person, with zij (which remains Standard) restricted to the third person singular feminine (English 'she') and replaced by the masculine hij plus lui(den) to form ultimately hullie. While this is non-standard in Dutch, it has been retained in Afrikaans (which, for second and third person plural pronouns in all uses, has julle and hulle).
Not so strange
Therefore, it is not so strange that English lost its second person singular pronouns; nor should it be regarded as odd that many of its speakers would seek to compensate for the resultant deficiency by creating another plural form. This story has been repeated as far away as Belgium and Buenos Aires, and from Rotterdam to the Rand; and indeed even from Paraguay to Paris - of course, even in French, plural vous (alongside the relevant verb forms) has been adopted as a singular polite form.
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