Ya'll better watch out now y'hear? We don take kindly to that kind'a hate speech 'round these parts. Equal weight beans and beef, you skimp out either and yain't fixin' chili; you might'ina even be inclined to leave for everyone's sake.
I refuse to accept Texas' claim on y'all. Its a word collectively owned by everyone south of the mason-dixon line and I will fight to the death over this.
…Am I not allowed to use "y'all", north of the 49th parallel? Do we have to bring back "thou" so "you" can be plural again? Or is this part of the Quebecois plot to force everyone to parler en français donc nous pouvons utiliser "vous"? C'est bien, anyway, j'suppose.
The "th" sound used to have its own character in written English called the thorn. When typefaces came along, it was excluded and sometimes replaced with a "y."
Everyone gets y'all. It fills the dumb gap in English where the plural of you is you. Now if we could only get a singular neutral 3rd for people that isn't also the plural.
E: Or we could start pronouncing They singular like latchkey, for a thee sound. So we can get fun words like they's (thees). It will also make English even more confusing for newbies. What's not to love?
It's also second person plural (or singular), second person is always ungendered.
First and second person, plural and singular are never gendered: I, you, we, you / y'all / all y'all. The only pronouns that are gendered are the third person singular: he / she / it. Third person plural (they) is also ungendered.
The most common form (at least where I'm from) of second person plural behind "you all (y'all)" is gendered: "you guys". It's used in an ungendered way increasingly commonly, but "guy" is still gendered to plenty of English speakers.
As someone who grew up in North Carolina, I agree. Texas might be the first thing some people think of when it comes to "southern" states, but it doesn't get exclusive claim to the quirks of the whole region
I have never thought of Texas as southern (yes, I know they're the south-most state). Western movies were in Texas, so Texas is western (don't judge my very clearly faulty logic). South Carolina is south for sure. Georgia. Mississippi and Alabama are no brainers. But Texas? That's where western cowboys live... sorry.... cowyalls.
“You” is also ungendered. There seems to be a common idea that English is missing a second person plural. We have one, it’s “you”. We just stopped using the second person singular. That’s what all those variations of “thee, thou, thy” etc were.
“Y’all” would be a superpluralization. If that’s still not enough we also have the ultraplural form of, “all y’all”
Yeah. We mostly think of grammatical number as a simple choice of singular vs plural but that's not what we do in real life.
We generally have multiple labels that describe the concept of progressively expanding circles of what's included when we think of ourselves.
There's the very narrow sense of I/me/myself. We have various expansions around us/all'y'all. Jamaicans have the phrase "I and I" which focuses on the individual but explicitly calls out the connection with others.
We also have "Ya'" where we elide the entire ending and you need to determine plural vs singular from context. For example, "Ya' can't get thea, les' ya been there befoa."
Depends. Texas exists as a state in part because southern US farmers ran out of land to grow cotton in. A good chunk of Texas is just an extension of the south. Then again, a good chunk is an extension of Mexico. Tejanos don't get the credit they are due for the formation of the Republic.
You mean it has a several well developed left wing voting cities between the huge stretches of backwater redneck hellscapes? I'd love to know what makes Texas not southern....
Y'all was created to serve a completely artificial problem.
English has second person singular pronouns, but for some dumbfuck reason we've deprecated them. It's still maintained in the standard for compatibility with legacy literature but not recommended for new works. If thou talk'st this way, thy speech comes off as archaic/shakesperian/biblical. So we use the second person plural for everything. But this removes the ability to encode context on how many thou art addressing. "You! Go put that fire out." Are you talking to an individual in a group or the whole group?
So the American south turned "you" into the singular form and invented "you all" contracted to "y'all" for the plural form.
Now we just need to fix the first person plural problem, ie "We've just won the lottery!" Does "we" include the listener, or not? English doesn't encode that information; "we" don't have different words for "myself the speaker and the listener(s) and perhaps others" and "Myself the speaker, others, but not the listener."
I started using y'all years ago due to its ungenderedness, in part from being in queer spaces. Walking into a room of trans women and enbies and saying "you guys" felt weird.
If y'all spent as much time and energy on useless pronouns as y'all spent on advocating for universal healthcare, y'all could have gotten that last doctor visit paid for by y'alls gob'ment and not having to dip into y'alls savings.
Problem here is the thread is focusing on a Texas y'all but then you throw a gob'ment in which is much more Georgia southern and it ruins the whole vibe right at the end. The voice in my head broke accent.
I actually have been using y'all in this manner for about a decade. I found some women didn't appreciate being called "you guys" when I addressed a group of people.
I'm trying to be more conscious of it because i noticed my friends who are trans make a point to avoid "You guys". I'm resistant to y'all though, so instead of biting the bullet and adopting the local dialect, I'll say "you all" or "You two". Don't do what i do, y'all is kinda useful.
Right?? I kept asking friends and family if that's too rude, and they assured me that it wasn't, so I kept using it. I guess it might be on tone of voice, too.
I'm Texan. I say y'all quite often. Subconsciously. But when I think about it, it always seems weird. Like if I TRY to use it then it always seems wrong.
Tbh, I've heard more y'alls in the San Francisco Bay Area than in Texas (I've live din both). Granted I lived in an immigrant-heavy place in Texas that I didn't even live in for that long.
People should leave "y'all" alone. It doesn't belong to anyone. It is a natural contraction of "you" and "all" that several cultures have independently produced as part of their vernacular.
I don't think conservatism is about being rational it's about maintaining tradition or maybe morality, however it was defined by the previous generation.
Don't be afraid to show the world that not all southerners are right wing. I am prideful of my southern heritage while at the same time embracing others and celebrating theirs. I'll never be ashamed of my drawl/accent and if other people choose to look down on me, well, that sounds like their loss.
I'm a Southern transplant living in New England for the last couple decades and I've never thought of "y'all" as being indicative of right-wingedness. I use it all the time and it doesn't feel like anyone thinks anything of it.
Its not woke. If its been around for awhile, its not woke. Woke words are new made up words or words used in a context to prove a progressive point.
"Trigger" is a woke word when you say "Im so triggered by that". However in this context "Johnny, do not pull down that lever, it will trigger the breaker box" is not woke.