Jullie and Plural You

English has one word for "you" and leaves you to guess from context whether one person or twenty are meant — hence the dialect patches y'all, you guys, yous. Dutch has no such gap: it has a dedicated informal plural "you," jullie, and it pulls its weight as subject, object, and possessive all at once. This page covers jullie in full and slots it into the wider address system. For the singular polite u see The Formal U; for singular informal jij/je see Subject Pronouns and the Stressed/Unstressed Split.

The three-way "you" system

Before zooming in on jullie, it helps to see the whole grid, because the cleanest way to understand jullie is by what it is not. Dutch sorts "you" along two axes — number (one vs more than one) and register (informal vs formal):

Two features jump out. First, jullie is the one cell that is purely plural and purely informal — it has no overlap with anything else, which makes it the easy one. Second, u covers both numbers: when you address several people formally — a boardroom, a row of customers, an audience you're being deferential to — you do not reach for a special plural; you simply use u. There is no formal-plural word distinct from formal-singular. This surprises English speakers, who expect plurality to always change the word.

Jullie as subject and object

Like the polite u, jullie does not change shape between subject and object. The same word serves both roles — a welcome simplicity after the jij/jou and hij/hem alternations.

Jullie always takes a plural verb

Because jullie is genuinely plural, it always governs the plural verb form — which in the present tense is identical to the infinitive (the same form used with wij and with plural zij). This is the single most common mistake English speakers make with jullie: treating it as singular and giving it a singular verb.

The possessive: jullie or je

The possessive belonging to jullie is jullie itself — jullie huis (your house), jullie boeken (your books). But there is a useful shortcut: when the context already makes it clear you mean the group, the possessive often reduces to je, exactly as the subject and object can. So jullie auto and je auto can both mean "your (plural) car," and in casual speech je is extremely common once the plural reference is established.

The reason this works without confusion is that the surrounding plural verb and the social context already tell everyone you mean the group; the possessive doesn't have to carry that information by itself. In writing where you want to be explicit, keep jullie; in relaxed speech, je flows more naturally.

A note on register and warmth

Jullie is informal, but "informal" here means familiar, not disrespectful — it is the warm, inclusive plural you use with friends, family, classmates, teammates, and any group you're on jij-terms with individually. When you'd say jij to each person one-on-one, you say jullie to them as a group. The moment the relationship calls for u (strangers, formal service, deference), you switch the whole group to u, plural and all. So jullie and u-as-plural track exactly the same informal/formal line that jij and u track in the singular — see Register: U vs Jij for where that line falls.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• jullie is the informal plural "you," used unchanged as subject and object, and always taking a plural verb (jullie komen, jullie zijn).
• The possessive is jullie, but it commonly reduces to je once the plural is clear (jullie huis = je huis).
• There is no separate formal-plural word: addressing a group politely is simply u, the same as formal singular.
• The full system is a clean three-way grid — jij/je (informal singular), u (formal, both numbers), jullie (informal plural) — filling the gap that English's single flat "you" leaves open.