3 ms·

In my experience, "y'all" and "folks" outside the South had been used exclusively by liberals of any ancestry during 2010-2020. It's also only in writing, I hav

In my experience, "y'all" and "folks" outside the South had been used exclusively by liberals of any ancestry during 2010-2020. It's also only in writing, I have never heard it spoken. I figure it was perpetuated by Twitter because the usage has been on a quick decline since Twitter changed ownership.

alephnerd 3y ago
I went to elementary school before Twitter was a thing. Twitter is just reflecting a common linguistic pattern found in California that most East Coasters never realized. People who grew up west of Dallas tend to stay west of Dallas, and people who grew up east of Dallas tend to stay east of Dallas. Plenty of Westerners (like me) never traveled to the East until college or adulthood, and it's a similar story for East Coasters. Flight travel has historically been expensive due to the distances.
- pandaman 3y ago
  I lived in California (both SF and LA) for 20 years and haven't heard "y'all" once. I've started hearing "folks" rarely in 2010s when my liberal coworkers wanted to stress how are they compassionate with the "poor folks" only, i.e. nobody used it as a general collective noun (also heard it used to refer to relatives as "my folks" before that). Your experience in elementary school could be different, children generally don't speak the same way adults do.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > I lived in California (both SF and LA) for 20 years and haven’t heard “y’all” once. I’ve started hearing “folks” rarely in 2010s when my liberal coworkers wanted to stress how are they compassionate with the “poor folks” only, i.e. nobody used it as a general collective noun I’ve lived in California for more than 45 years (periods in each the central part of the Central Valley, LA basin, Bay Area, and Delta), I’ve heard “y’all” a fair amount throughout that time, particularly from Southern transplants and African-Americans, though increasingly common outside that; its common to both Southern dialect and AAVE, and from about the 1990s there’s been more migration from AAVE to more general use in California, not just for that term. “Folks” as a generic collective noun has been even more common.
    - 082349872349872 3y ago
      I lived in california from elementary school through uni, consistently used "you all", and was consistently understood. "All you all", however, was hit or miss. I avoided using double modals unless I knew my audience. (Having had yankee parents, I never had habitual or completed aspects in my idiolect. my best attempt: "I don't be using habitual aspect") The AAVE modals ("fixing to" et.al.) have definitely become less segregated in online discourse this century; are they also more common in oral use? (english lost its second person plural when "you" replaced the original second person singular. "You all" fits that spot perfectly, which would also explain why L2 english speakers also like to use it.) Two things I think english currently lacks: (a) a good way to distinguish "we" (including addressee) from "we" (excluding them), and (b) a gender-neutral word that could be the equivalent of australian "mate".

alephnerd 3y ago

I went to elementary school before Twitter was a thing. Twitter is just reflecting a common linguistic pattern found in California that most East Coasters never realized. People who grew up west of Dallas tend to stay west of Dallas, and people who grew up east of Dallas tend to stay east of Dallas. Plenty of Westerners (like me) never traveled to the East until college or adulthood, and it's a similar story for East Coasters. Flight travel has historically been expensive due to the distances.

pandaman 3y ago
I lived in California (both SF and LA) for 20 years and haven't heard "y'all" once. I've started hearing "folks" rarely in 2010s when my liberal coworkers wanted to stress how are they compassionate with the "poor folks" only, i.e. nobody used it as a general collective noun (also heard it used to refer to relatives as "my folks" before that). Your experience in elementary school could be different, children generally don't speak the same way adults do.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > I lived in California (both SF and LA) for 20 years and haven’t heard “y’all” once. I’ve started hearing “folks” rarely in 2010s when my liberal coworkers wanted to stress how are they compassionate with the “poor folks” only, i.e. nobody used it as a general collective noun I’ve lived in California for more than 45 years (periods in each the central part of the Central Valley, LA basin, Bay Area, and Delta), I’ve heard “y’all” a fair amount throughout that time, particularly from Southern transplants and African-Americans, though increasingly common outside that; its common to both Southern dialect and AAVE, and from about the 1990s there’s been more migration from AAVE to more general use in California, not just for that term. “Folks” as a generic collective noun has been even more common.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    I lived in california from elementary school through uni, consistently used "you all", and was consistently understood. "All you all", however, was hit or miss. I avoided using double modals unless I knew my audience. (Having had yankee parents, I never had habitual or completed aspects in my idiolect. my best attempt: "I don't be using habitual aspect") The AAVE modals ("fixing to" et.al.) have definitely become less segregated in online discourse this century; are they also more common in oral use? (english lost its second person plural when "you" replaced the original second person singular. "You all" fits that spot perfectly, which would also explain why L2 english speakers also like to use it.) Two things I think english currently lacks: (a) a good way to distinguish "we" (including addressee) from "we" (excluding them), and (b) a gender-neutral word that could be the equivalent of australian "mate".