201–210 of 381 posts
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.
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.
On the west coast or northeast it would be very surprising to hear someone say it.
For example:
you + all = y'all
are + not = aren't
y'all + aren't = y'aint
Now that's a beautiful thing.
I like seeing how far I can stack contractions, a purpose for which y'all is well suited. Eg "You all would not have" becomes y'all'dn't've.
Yes, there are portions of the internet which gleefully misuse it on everything, and sometimes I am part of those portions; but even there, a) it's marked speech, and b) you wouldn't say *Y'all'dn't've gone, you'd say ?Y'all'd've gonen't, and only partially because it's funnier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
There are plenty of other situations in English where the masculine plural is gender inclusive (probably because so much of English is borrowed from romance languages). For example, "actors" can refer to both male and female actors, "actresses" cannot. 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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
In early modern English, thou and thee were both the informal 2pp, with thou being the subject pronoun and thee being the object pronoun. Thou/you is similar to tu/vous. Eventually, thou became archaic, and we think of archaic words as being more formal. (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 "y…
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 actually started using the term y’all after I learned French. One you’re introduced to the concept of ‘vous’ you realize how weird it is that English doesn’t have a standard equivalent.
Eventually language did its thing and the default shifted. Now we think of "thou" as old timey and formal!