When it comes to forms of address, Swedish takes a special place among languages. It has dispensed with ‘you’.

Swedish has two words for ‘you’: du and ni – one familiar and one polite form. There is nothing unusual about that: countless other tongues make the same distinction, such as French (tu and vous), German (du and Sie), Spanish (tú and usted), Russian (ty and vy), and even Chinese (nè and nín).

One thing separates Swedish from all these languages: often, Swedes prefer not to say ‘you’ at all.

It is not unusual for certain words and phrases in any language to fall out of favour (‘negro’), to change meaning (‘gay’), to become obsolete (‘telegraph’), or to disappear from the vocabulary for some other reason (‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’).

But it is uncommon for this to happen to such a basic word as ‘you’.

THERE'S A REASON FOR EVERYTHING

Historically, du was the familiar form of ‘you’ in Swedish, and ni was its polite counterpart. These two words were used exactly like the tu and vous in French and many other languages: the familiar du was used to address your siblings, close relatives, schoolmates and so on. The polite ni was used for people you didn't know, someone older than you, your superiors, your teacher, doctor, boss and others. Often you would even use the polite form to address your grandparents, your in-laws, and perhaps aunts and uncles. As still is the case in many other languages, it was not rare even to hear children calling their parents ni.