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In Defense of Y'All

texasmonthly.com

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Re: In Defense of Y'All

#171

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

skrebbel wrote: post #110

As a non-native English speaker, I love "y'all" because it lets me directly translate our word for, well, "y'all" to English. I seriously struggle to formulate sentences such that it's clear from context that I mean "plural you" in this here case. So what happens is, I start saying a sentence that has "you" in it, and at the "y" I notice that it'll be unclear, I quickly bend it to "y'all", and the day is saved! Hoora…

To casually throw a wrench into your process, how do you deal with the fact that y'all is actually singular and all y'all is the plural form? I'm kidding. You're doing great.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#173

Post by Ajedi32 »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #149
parpfish wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native midwesterner, I get more annoyed and defensive than I should when people complain that “you guys” isnt gender neutral. Where I come from, everyone is “a guy”. It can mean “male person”, but that’s only if you use it in specific contexts that brings up gender (like saying “guys and gals”).

This would be plausible if I had ever heard a straight man talk about the guys he had dated.

The context of dating makes it no longer gender neutral. ("Guys and gals")

But I've definitely heard people refer to groups composed entirely of women as "you guys".

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#174

Post by Izkata »

NobodyNada wrote: post #63
gregorymichael wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun litmus test, if the person challenging this assertion happens to be a straight male: "how many guys have you slept with?"

I'd guess this depends on region/demographic, but at least in my circles on the west coast, "guys" is gendered when it's used to describe or identify people in the third person, but it's gender-neutral when used to address a group of people in the second person. So "the guys" or "how many guys" always refers to men, but "you guys" carries no implication of gender at all. I often hear people address groups consisting…

Also for reference, these are "compound nouns" - a single noun composed of multiple words. No one has these issues with "ice cream", for example, but "you guys" really is just another one of these.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#175

Post by OJFord »

skrebbel wrote: post #110

As a non-native English speaker, I love "y'all" because it lets me directly translate our word for, well, "y'all" to English. I seriously struggle to formulate sentences such that it's clear from context that I mean "plural you" in this here case. So what happens is, I start saying a sentence that has "you" in it, and at the "y" I notice that it'll be unclear, I quickly bend it to "y'all", and the day is saved! Hoora…

The direct translation is 'you', surely you're not similarly confused when translating say a gendered 'the' or something? It's a lossy translation sure, but it is correct, you don't need regional dialect to be able to do it; depending on audience 'you' is in fact a much better translation.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#176

Post by globnomulous »

seethishat wrote: post #150

Y'all is efficient. It is just one syllable. Asking the question, "Y'all eat?" Is twice as fast compared to, "Did you all eat?" Of course, I use it because I'm from the south eastern US, not because it's fast.

And to me this just raises the question I often ask myself: whether I'm the only person born in the US in the past fifty years who continues to use the perfect tense and distinguish semantically between it and the simple past.

I say "did you eat?" when I want to know whether you ate at a specific, single point in time in the past (and you and I both know which one I mean) -- and you no longer have the opportunity or that time has passed.

I say "Have you eaten?" When I want to know whether you've eaten anything yet. You may still have the opportunity. I may even be suggesting that we eat together.

My partner regularly asks me things like, "did we watch that movie?" and for a split second I will have no idea what the devil she's talking about. Am I supposed to know the exact point in time that she's referring to? Is there a reason why to opportunity to watch it has, implicitly, passed?

No, we just don't speak the same language.

"Did you do the laundry?" Had we scheduled it? Has the opportunity to do laundry passed?

"Did you make coffee?" No, and rejoice, my love, as the time of making coffee is still upon us.

"Did you eat lunch yet?" ...excuse me? Are you a five-dimensional being?

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#177

Post by giraffe_lady »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #173
giraffe_lady wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be plausible if I had ever heard a straight man talk about the guys he had dated.

The context of dating makes it no longer gender neutral. ("Guys and gals") But I've definitely heard people refer to groups composed entirely of women as "you guys".

I've still never heard, for example "this guy" when referring to eg a specific female coworker. I live in the midwest. "You guys" is frequently used as a genderless plural sure I guess but "guy" is not gender neutral.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#178

Post by jihadjihad »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #158

Florence y'all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence%2C_Kentucky#Arts_and_...

Incredible. I've driven by it many times and have never learned the origin story:

> Built in 1974, the tower originally advertised the up-and-coming Florence Mall, as part of an agreement with the mall developers who donated the land for the tower. But because the mall was not built yet, the tower violated highway regulations, and the city was forced to change it within a short deadline. Rather than repaint the entire tower, they simply painted over the two vertical lines of the "M" to create a "Y". The intent was to change it back when the mall was built, but the local residents liked the tower's new proclamation, so the city decided to leave it as it was.

The water tower has its own Wikipedia page [0], which includes a photo of it before the "alteration" too.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Y%27all_Water_Tower

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#179

Post by whycome »

yCombLinks wrote: post #153

Y'all gives way to my favorite word, Y'all'd've (You all would have). It it fun to say and wraps up so many grammatical concepts into a neat package. Example usage "It's too bad Y'all didn't come to the party, Y'all'd've had fun"

I believe for me that’s Y’all’da - you all woulda.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#180

Post by excalibur »

mystified5016 wrote: post #100
gregw2 wrote: post #11

I tease non-Texans that Texan English is actually superior to normal American English because it supports second-person plural via "Y'all" exactly as mentioned in this article... "you guys" is, to some ears, sexist, and "youse guys" (a New York-ism) is a little too old-school Italian. English lost its second person plural when we switched from Thou (second person singular formal + Thee=second person singular informal…

This whole thread is extremely confusing to this Appalachian native. Y'all is used quite widely throughout the entire southeast. It's recognized, if not used, through the entire country. I've also seen its use increasing in the Midwest as it seeps out of the south. Do many people actually see this as a novel word? It's incredibly common from my perspective here in Ohio.

Yeah there are three types of Americans: those who say y'all, those who don't use it personally but are quite familiar with it, and no hablo ingles.
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