We

We is the first-person plural personal pronoun (nominative case) in Modern English.

Personal pronouns in standard Modern English
Person (gender) Subject Object Dependent possessive (determiner) Independent possessive Reflexive
Singular
First Imemyminemyself
Second youyouryoursyourself
Third Masculine hehimhishimself
Feminine sheherhersherself
Neuter ititsitself
Epicene theythemtheirtheirsthemself
Plural
First weusouroursourselves
Second youyouryoursyourselves
Third theythemtheirtheirsthemselves
This article is about the English personal pronoun. For other uses, see We (disambiguation).



Inclusive and exclusive we
Main article: Clusivity

Some languages, in particular the Austronesian languages, Dravidian languages, and Chinese varieties such as Min Nan and some Mandarin dialects, have a distinction in grammatical person between inclusive we, which includes the person being spoken to in the group identified as we, and exclusive we, which excludes the person being spoken to.

Many Native American languages have this grammatical distinction, regardless of the languages' families. Cherokee, for instance, distinguishes between four forms of we, following an additional distinction between duality and plurality. The four Cherokee forms of we are: "you and I (inclusive dual)"; "another and I (exclusive dual)"; "others and I (exclusive plural)"; and "you, another (or others), and I" (inclusive plural). Fijian goes even further with six words for we, with three numbers — dual, small group (one or two people), and large group — and separate inclusive and exclusive forms for each number.

In English this distinction is not made through grammatically different forms of we. The distinction is either evident from the context or can be understood through additional wording, for example through explicitly inclusive phrasing (we all) or through inclusive let's. The phrase let us eat is ambiguous: it may exclude the addressee, as a request to be left alone to eat, or it may include the addressee, as an invitation to come and eat, together. Let us ranges from the extremely formal (e.g., Let us pray) to the relatively informal; the less formal the usage, the more likely the usage is to be exclusive. This (somewhat) less formal use of let us contrasts directly with the even more informal contracted form let's (e.g., Let's eat), which is always inclusive.

Examples

Inclusive we:

  • We can all go to the villain's lair today.

Exclusive we:

  • We mean to stop your evil plans!
gollark: ```Cold Ones (also ice giants, the Finality, Lords of the Last Waste)Mythological beings who dwell at the end of time, during the final blackness of the universe, the last surviving remnants of the war of all-against-all over the universe’s final stocks of extropy, long after the passing of baryonic matter and the death throes of the most ancient black holes. Savage, autocannibalistic beings, stretching their remaining existence across aeons-long slowthoughts powered by the rare quantum fluctuations of the nothingness, these wretched dead gods know nothing but despair, hunger, and envy for those past entities which dwelled in eras rich in energy differentials, information, and ordered states, and would – if they could – feast on any unwary enough to fall into their clutches.Stories of the Cold Ones are, of course, not to be interpreted literally: they are a philosophical and theological metaphor for the pessimal end-state of the universe, to wit, the final triumph of entropy in both a physical and a spiritual sense. Nonetheless, this metaphor has been adopted by both the Flamic church and the archai themselves to describe the potential future which it is their intention to avert.The Cold Ones have also found a place in popular culture, depicted as supreme villains: perhaps best seen in the Ghosts of the Dark Spiral expansion for Mythic Stars, a virtuality game from Nebula 12 ArGaming, ICC, and the Void Cascading InVid series, produced by Dexlyn Vithinios (Sundogs of Delphys, ICC).```
gollark: And it's all just horribly dense spaghetti code.
gollark: There are no docs or comments anywhere. It's ridiculous.
gollark: I think you triggered the end stage of a long process.
gollark: Who pinged *me*?

References
  1. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (4 ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. 1994. p. 30. ISBN 1557982414.
  2. Blanpain, Kristin (2008). Academic Writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences: A Resource for Researchers. Leuven: Voorburg. p. 43.
  3. Wallwork, Adrian (2014). User Guides, Manuals, and Technical Writing: A Guide to Professional English. New York: Springer. p. 153.
  4. Goldbort, Robert (2006). Writing for Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. p. 18.
  5. Un Super Ratón suelto en Pergamino (retrieved March, 5 2018)
  • Baker, Peter S. 'Pronouns'. In Peter S. Baker. The Electronic Introduction to Old English. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, c. 5.
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