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In Defense of Y'All

texasmonthly.com

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Re: In Defense of Y'All

#251

Post by tuveson »

_yb2s wrote: post #107
mystified5016 wrote: post #100

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.

Maybe surprising to hear white people saying it, but most black people (or people who grew up in predominantly black neighborhoods) throughout the US have been using it for a long time. I would assume that's a byproduct of The Great Migration.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#252

Post by 1-more »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #161
wepple wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your word for it?

In Spanish it would be "Ustedes".

Spanish is a fun example of the euphemistic treadmill applying to pronouns. Usted comes from "vuestra merced" meanining "your (plural) mercy" but refers to a singular person. We can take that to mean that the second person plural "vosotros" already was a plural-meaning-formal-for-singular thing and then that wasn't enough and we got another word based on it. Fascinating!

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#253

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#254

Post by 1-more »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #203

Big fan of y'all and it's variations. Primarily for it's ability to compress words with no ambiguity. For example: you + all = y'all are + not = aren't y'all + aren't = y'aint Now that's a beautiful thing.

y'all'd've

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#255

Post by kibwen »

throw18376 wrote: post #138
mystified5016 wrote: post #100

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.

in northeast urban areas, if someone uses y’all it means they are probably a left-wing/social justice oriented person. use is correlated with “folks”/“folx”. no idea why, maybe to replace gendered “you guys”. weird but true.

Except that northeast urban areas are famously rife with transplants from all over the country, including me, who uses "y'all" because y'all don't know what "yinz" means.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#256

Post by cmrdporcupine »

zdragnar wrote: post #207
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also have that in some parts of Canada, rural & northern Ontario especially.

Rural Wisconsin too, though mostly the older generations.

It's very much perceived as a vaguely "redneck" or "hoser" way of speaking here.

Another similar dialect isogloss-ish that often goes with that is dropping the past-tense "I saw" and replacing it with the past-participle "I seen". Or, alternatively, another way of putting it is that it's dropping the "have" in "I've seen"

Middle class parents and teachers definitely scolded kids for speaking this way when I was growing up. Was seen as lower class.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#257

Post by bitwize »

zdragnar wrote: post #235
richardfontana wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone use "youse guys", but "youse" without "guys" is indeed a now-archaic New Yorkism. However, it doesn't have any particular connection to Italian-American New York other than the fact that "youse" was a native New York dialect formulation that US-born children of Italian immigrants, along with many other ethnic groups, adopted naturally. I understand that "youse" is prevalent in a nu…

"yous" (slightly different s sound) is also common among the rural older generations in German and Dutch immigrant areas. My grandma used it all the time, though not with the double plural "youse guys", just "yous"

My grandmother fit that ethnic profile, and used "yous" as well.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#259

Post by bitwize »

Fuck the y'all haters, I used it even when in the northeast; now that I live in the south (not Texas) with my very southern wife, there's no chance of extirpating it from my vocabulary.

You can even get stickers from Dirty Coast that say "He/Him/She/Her/They/Them/Y'All/Cher". It's part of the vernacular here.

When British people start using "y'all" casually, as I suspect may start happening soon if it hasn't already happened, it's time to accept it as a part of the living English language.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#260

Post by shemtay »

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…

Thou and Thee are nominative and objective cases. Same for You and Ye.

The formality/informality distinction is between You/Ye and Thou/Thee.

Plural 2nd person used to formally address a single individual came to English from French, thanks to the Norman Conquest.

French, I think, inherited it from Latin, and the custom of addressing the emperor with the plural.

After a while it became rude to address people with the informal 2nd person singular.

By the time of the King James Bible, iirc, English had already switched to universal "you", and "thou" was brought back in order to indicate where the source text had used a singular versus a plural.

"What is thy bidding, my master" is therefore foreshadowing of later insubordination.

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