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In Defense of Y'All

texasmonthly.com

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Re: In Defense of Y'All

#311

Post by yamazakiwi »

Beermotor wrote: post #213
ssimpson wrote: post #189

Y'all is Texas' gift to inclusivity. When I joined a dev team that wasn't just guys, I worked hard to get away from saying "you guys", not because someone said I needed to, but because I felt that I needed to. Y'all worked because I came from Texas and its inclusive of everyone on the team. It has been my personal policy to use that in leu of "you guys" in all situations since then.

Y'all is a feature of general Southern vernacular and has nothing to do with Texas other than most of the settlers of Tejas were from the South.

Also saying things are a feature of Texas is a feature of Texas.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#312

Post by romanows »

JasserInicide wrote: post #231
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”).

It's a sentiment that's only come up in the past 15 years. Same with the "Latinx" bullshit (that white people came up with)

Douglas Hofstadter rails against "you guys" in his 1997 "Le Ton beau de Marot", and I'm sure he wasn't the first.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#313

Post by robocat »

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…

Maybe use yous/youse in other English speaking countries (England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa): https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/yous (informal situations)

If you have a strong US accent or a drawl then perhaps stick with y'all.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#314

Post by dml2135 »

JasserInicide wrote: post #231
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”).

It's a sentiment that's only come up in the past 15 years. Same with the "Latinx" bullshit (that white people came up with)

Evidence that white people came up with Latinx? My sense was always that Hispanic leftists came up with it, and it was then amplified by their white leftist friends.

Which is maybe a distinction without a difference, and I realize that you were probably just making a pithy statement. But I think its important if we want to examine how something like that actually came to be.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#315

Post by m3047 »

troyvit wrote: post #266
cpburns2009 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people outside the midwest understand just how ubiquitous "you guys" is here. After a previous time this discussion occurred on HN, I had to chuckle to myself when I heard my sister address a group of little girls as "you guys". It's our version of "y'all".

Even as far west as Colorado we used it the same way when I was young. Then I got a job at an NYC company and the gendered-ness of it was frowned upon. I actually switched to "ya'll" and it worked great. All the New Yorkers just thought that's how Coloradoans talk. So, thanks Texas. Totally unrelated but this Blaze Foley song talks specifically about getting back to a place "where the people say ya'll." It's beautifu…

> All the New Yorkers just thought that's how Coloradoans talk.

I love it. I blame France, specifically Remulac.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#316

Post by Izkata »

hotsauceror wrote: post #76
strifey wrote: post #68

Y'all forever. One of the few southern mannerisms I intentionally don't drop as a lapsed southerner in California. As an aside, I find it strange how many aspects of "the south" are labeled as "Texan" outside the south. I lived and visited all over the Deep South and y'all was standard vernacular pretty much everywhere. I'm not saying Texans don't say y'all, but they definitely don't have any unique claim to using it…

As a native Texan myself, "y'all" is one I've always hated, from my earliest youth. It just seemed excessively hokey and hayseed. I unapologetically, unironically use "howdy", "a piece", "a ways", "over yonder", "get to goin'", and "fixin' to". But "y'all" is a bridge too far.

In the midwest (originally from Chicago suburbs), I have the same sense from "y'all". I use "you all" often enough, but never shorten it to "y'all".

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#317

Post by Minor49er »

parpfish wrote: post #148
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…

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”).

"Guys" means "people". I have grown up in the Midwest as well where it's common to hear girls and women use it to address all-female groups. It's basically like how "mankind" or "man" is short for "humankind" or "human" and not for "male". These are also backed up in dictionaries that are more than a few years old

One of my former employers only a few years ago announced that they would ban the term "guys" because some people thought it was sexist. The ban was droppped because many people openly objected to the needless censorship while others simply saw no problem with the word and naturally just kept on using it. It was around the same time when coders and real estate agents were working to ban the term "master" from everything

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#318

Post by parpfish »

scoofy wrote: post #94

I think the general theme here misses the mark. McWhorter obviously wants to talk about the interestingness of genderless, though seemingly gendered, pronouns in his essay. So much so that his dismissiveness of "y'all" seems too curt, and I think it's a mistake because the regionalness of "y'all" over "you guys" reinforces his narrative. I also always raise an eyebrow when a linguist is pining for a universal familia…

re: aging into using y'all:

when you're young, you have a stronger need to impress people at work or personal life or wherever. and often that means shedding regionalisms or any little quirks that might give anybody an opportunity to judge as less-than in any way.

once you're older and more established you've built up enough social capital that you can "afford" to express yourself in whichever way you want.

in some situations, those little affectation that may have been judged negatively when you were young can actually become boons if you're seen as playing 'against the type' for whichever stereotype it is

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#319

Post by EvanAnderson »

DowsingSpoon wrote: post #98
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…

No love for “yinz?” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinz

I hadn't heard that one. My ex-father-in-law (from an Appalachian upbringing) was big on "you 'uns". "Yinz" reminds me of that.

Re: In Defense of Y'All

#320

Post by schindlabua »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #201
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"

Some people complain about the weird contractions that English can construct, but at some point, you just have to accept that that's the kind of language it's.

It's basically what agglutinative languages do, no?

y'all'd've: y=second person, all=plural, d=subjunctive, ve=posessive

Fun to see stuff like this pop up where it usually doesn't.

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