funny, that's the way i learned it when i was a kid...My son emailed me a list of the changes to the traditional Catholic Mass/Prayers. I just don’t like them, maybe I’m an oldtimer (47 yo) but they sound a bit politically correct. That was my impression.
And the other, other reason is that the Church has been saying this as far back as we can remember.
funny, that's the way i learned it when i was a kid...I’m fine with St. John Chrysostom’s explanation of “and with your spirit”, but even if the phrase is just “Semitic parallelism” as some maintain and is just a fancy Hebraic way of saying “and also with you”, we should still say “and with your spirit” for that very reason. If it is Semitic parallelism, then it is a link to the most ancient form of the liturgy, i.e., when it was still organically connected with Jewish practices of the time of Jesus and the apostles.