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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.
I picked up the habit in Massachusetts, in the mid 2000s, from an Ivy League humanities professor who also expressed support for a student debt strike. He used it very deliberately, in an effort to un-train our public school–addled brains from the inanity that we were somehow smarter than others for having fewer words in hand. In my bones, the thought of not using it as appropriate feels uneducated.
Using “y’all” in conversation shows incredible confidence, a way to flex command of formal language in an informal setting. It’s often used with emphasis. It leverages the listener’s discomfort, saying: I know precisely which register I’m speaking in. It’s an “elite” thing to do.
What you’ll never hear is one of these people using “y’all” as a formal address— especially as a singular, as in the rote “Y’all been served?” for a dining party of any number. There are a number of reasons for that, but number one is simple: It’s a high status signal.
Edit to add: Maybe importantly, this doesn’t extend to the casual use of “all y’all” . I think the colloquial academic equivalent would be “you [emphasized pause] all”. If you weren’t familiar you’d probably transcribe it as “you all”, but it’s closer to “you, all”. Looking at it now, I think that’s “intentional abuse” of the formal variant for intensifying, with just enough stress to make it visibly intentional?
But I should be clear I haven’t studied this dialect at all, I just learned to speak it :)
As a child of Appalachia, I suggest that we all compromise on you'ens, or as it's commonly pronounced yinz.
(and yes, I am from western PA)
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…
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"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, it's only the plural that's gender neutral. Kinda like how in Spanish "abeula" means "grandma", "abuelas" means "grandmas", and "abuelo" means "grandpa", but "abuelos" means "grandparents", not "grandpas". The masculine plural is gender inclusive in most contexts.
Ok but that's a different claim than the one I was originally replying to. And anyway the masculine plural being genderless is a convention of romance languages, which english is not. It is not useful or consistent to describe expectations for english usage in terms of the features of other languages. Negative concord and invariant be are common language features globally but you don't hear white americans scrambling…
Identity politics has resulted in certain groups making concerted efforts to try to eliminate such usages, but it's still an ingrained part of our language.
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.
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…
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”).
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…
"Thee" isn't the informal form of "thou", it's the oblique form, ie "the bell tolls for thee", you'd never say "the bell tolls for thou", no matter how formal or informal.
(Aside: In Middle English, ye was strictly plural, but ye became acceptable as formal singular as well, again paralleling vous. And as an additional aside, in the "ye olde English" phrase, the ye is actually þe, where þ is thorn, which wasn't available when the printing press came to England.)