12 ms·

In Defense of Y'All

169 points by scour 2y ago

savanaly 2y ago
Proudly use "y'all" frequently in my everyday conversation, despite having zero other attributes characteristically Southern about me. As the article says it's flexible, is impossible to offend anyone with as far as I can tell, and just sounds good.
- marssaxman 2y ago
  I was a West Coast kid with absolutely no connection to the South when I added "y'all" to my idiolect as a teenager: I thought it just made more sense.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  DC metro native here. I picked it up during college (UVA, in central VA, fair number of southerners on campus). Use it pretty regularly, mostly as part of a group greeting "how are y'all?"
mandibles 2y ago
Only a true Texan can tell you the difference between "y'all" and "all y'all".
- hotsauceror 2y ago
  "y'all'd've"
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    <insert scream GIF here> still, brilliant nonetheless.
  - AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
    om'n'a go to the store soon!
    - hotsauceror 2y ago
      I think it would be, fixin' to go to the store.
      - rufus_foreman 2y ago
        There is no x in "fi'n to".
  - 4star3star 2y ago
    "y'all'dn't've"
- thirdtruck 2y ago
  Or a Georgian.
  - desert_rue 2y ago
    I believe the Georgian version is different. “Y’all” is singular while “all y’all” is plural.
    - zikduruqe 2y ago
      From North Carolina originally. "Y'all" is singular, "all y'all" is plural, and "all y'all MF'ers" is when you are angry and it could be singular or plural depending on the connotation.
      - sidibe 2y ago
        You must have moved before you started speaking. But nice to see people in the thread recognizing it's not just Texas Y'all is plural. All y'all is short for all of y'all.
    - paulmooreparks 2y ago
      Georgian here. No. "Y'all" has never been singular.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Some sets have a canonical partition. If you're referring to a set of birds or a set of fish, then the correct usage is y'all because those sets canonically partition into themselves. But if you're referring to a set of birds and fish together, then the usage is "all y'all" because the canonical partition yields more than one subset (one containing birds, and one containing fish). The distinction helps differentiate between whether you mean the superset or one of those subsets. It works with any other partition which might be obvious (not just birds and fish). If you have two families together, you might avoid "see y'all later" because it could be interpreted that you only expect to see one family later. "see all y'all later", by contrast is unabiguous--you mean both families. --- Did I get it right? Am I a true Texan?
  - 4star3star 2y ago
    Having never given much thought to it, your analysis rings true to my native Texan ears. There's another usage that comes to mind, though. One might argue that "y'all" borders on a second person plural inclusive of the speaker whereas "all y'all" marks a distinction between the speaker and the others. For instance, a peeved person would be more likely to say, "All y'all can kiss my ass," as opposed to, "Y'all can kiss my ass." "Y'all" by itself is more friendly and self-inclusive than "all y'all", which carries an inherent otherness to it.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      Hmm, interesting. I'm not from Texas but I have family who is. I'll listen for this one also. I'm under the impression that the double negative is a relatively modern thing (early 1800's). Previously, repetition of the negative just reinforced it, like: > I ain't never put syrup on my bacon on purpose ...just double-enphasized the negative, rather than letting the second negative negate the first. This feels similar except instead of stacking negations you're stacking separations.
    - jsnell 2y ago
      > One might argue that "y'all" borders on a second person plural inclusive of the speaker So a first person plural?
- o11c 2y ago
  "all y'all" is an abomination.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    Using numbers to ab6te words is an abomination. All y'all is fine.
    - mrbadguy 2y ago
      I’m not American and I totally agree. Y’all and all y’all are brilliant!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- giardini 2y ago
  "All y'all" is improper Texan primarily used in as a public declaration to convince those present who are NOT Texan, to use the proper expression "y'all" (rather than, say, "all of you", "everyone" or "you" (plural)).
- nosrepa 2y ago
  Or Dr. Dre.
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  As a non-Texan, I can usually tell the difference, since "all y'all" is generally followed by "muthafuckers".
  - rufus_foreman 2y ago
    Or preceded by the word "fuck".
- Finnucane 2y ago
  I think that usage is common outside of Texas. A friend from Memphis uses it.
delichon 2y ago
Cowabunga rolls more naturally off of my Southern California lips but I've been appropriating y'all in emails, etc. for years, and nobody has complained yet. But I still feel strangely compelled to write "Dear Sirs" at the top of letters to strangers, as there's no formal form of y'all. I usually settle for "Hello".
- JadeNB 2y ago
  > But I still feel strangely compelled to write "Dear Sirs" at the top of letters to strangers, as there's no formal form of y'all. Be the change you want to see, and start with "Dear Y'all."
bwanab 2y ago
As a child of Appalachia, I suggest that we all compromise on you'ens, or as it's commonly pronounced yinz.
- nativeit 2y ago
  +1
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- was8309 2y ago
  sometimes a T is included - yintz
- summermusic 2y ago
  Half my family says yinz, half my family says you’uns. They’re both correct as far as I’m concerned.
- banannaise 2y ago
  Since it's short for "you ones", I suppose it would technically be "you'nes", which of course looks insane and nobody would ever write it that way. I've also seen it written with an apostrophe ("y'inz") which is funny to me - it acknowledges the contraction, but with everything completely misplaced. (and yes, I am from western PA)
martythemaniak 2y ago
I've long used "y'all" as a gender-neutral way of addressing a group, but now that's gone all mainstream I've been considering switching to "yinz".
shtack 2y ago
Canadian here using y'all every day. Might as well make it the formal English plural.
- XorNot 2y ago
  Australian: I've used it in every social context at least once by now and I'd say it's distinctly stayed in the rotation.
- cpursley 2y ago
  Funny, the only time I ever got made fun of as a southern kid using y'all was when visiting Toronto suburbs (back in the 1990s).
gregw2 2y ago
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) and Ye (second person plural) to just "You", but Texans rightly have solved the problem and kept the clarity. (The more-modern "Yo" is delightfully brief but as ambiguous as "you".) Now... if you want to tease a Texan back about all this, you can ask them whether that implies the proper phrase for when you enter Texas then should be "Abandon hope all y'all (was: ye) who enter here!"
- forgotusername6 2y ago
  People in some parts of the UK say "yous" for second person plural. So it isn't quite gone.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    We also have that in some parts of Canada, rural & northern Ontario especially.
    - zdragnar 2y ago
      Rural Wisconsin too, though mostly the older generations.
      - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
        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.
adolph 2y ago
See also: Y’all, You’uns, Yinz, Youse: How Regional Dialects Are Fixing Standard English [0] 0. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/yall-youuns-yinz-youse-how-regional-dialects-are-fixing-standard-english https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/yall-youuns-yinz-youse...
lemmsjid 2y ago
As an ex new englander I approve of y’all over youse because it’s hard to use “youse” efficiently without saying “youse guys”.
- AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
  What about "youse mugs"?
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  Yep, just "youse" by itself feels like an intentional regional quirk. "What do youse want to do?" <= you're from the NY/Phila/I-95 axis "What do youse guys want to do?" <= you've some exposure to American dialects "What do y'all want to do?" <= you're an American or playing one in a movie
ppierald 2y ago
I like "Hi Team". I do use that in certain social circles, but I do get the point of the article. Survivor, the US TV show, used to say "Come on in guys" until recently where they made a point to discuss the topic on camera with the contestants. There was a variety of opinions, but they ultimately settled on "Come on in." which conveys the point in a neutral tone.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  "Team" makes sense when addressing... well, your team, like if you're in a huddle of basketball players. But there are many contexts where it doesn't make sense as a general purpose second person plural.
mauvehaus 2y ago
Counter-proposal: Bring back "thou" as the second person singular pronoun and restore "you" to its rightful place as the second person plural pronoun. As with so many of English's warts we can blame the French for the situation we're in. Vous in French is used when addressing a single person formally and conveys respect for the addressee. When class and station were more important following the Norman conquest of England, English speakers adopted the use of "you" to address a single person of higher status following the French custom. It's use became more widespread over time lest the speaker offend someone by using "thou" when the addressee thought that "you" was warranted. As a practical matter, I use y'all. I think thou is a lovely word in its own right and is deserving of consideration. N.b. IANALinguist, and IANAHistorian either. TINLinguisticA.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  We thank thee, kindly.
- nyeah 2y ago
  Meh, might as well try to bring back the Segway. If it's not cool, it won't catch on.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago
  [dead]
- harimau777 2y ago
  I don't have enough linguistic background to understand the distinction, but I've also heard that using "will" for "intent to do something in the future" is somehow linguistically unusual because previously that job was used by "shall". Sorry I can't give more details, I forget what the actual distinction between the two is. I just recall that it apparently creates difficulty when English speakers learn Romance languages that still have their equivalent of "shall". Edit: Apparently, the distinction can either be a lot more relevant or a lot less relevant than I thought depending on the context (e.g. legal text vs. everyday speech). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shall_and_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shall_and_will It's interesting how much of language is invisible to a native speaker. If you had asked me, I would have said that most people never use "shall". However, now that the article points it out, I realize that native speakers use "Shall we <verb>" all the time.
arjie 2y ago
"Y'all" has been common for a while among Anglo-Indians in South India. I was quite surprised when I first went online among the predominantly American early-Internet community and discovered that y'all consider it a peculiarity of the American South. I've always liked it, though I don't use it anymore now that I live in the US (where it is a marker of the South).
eminence32 2y ago
As a New Englander, I am quite partial to "y'all" and "you all", mostly in written form. It is indeed a quite capable substitute to "you guys". But to my ear, "yall" is ever so slightly more informal than "you all", and so sometimes it doesn't feel exactly right.
xnx 2y ago
Previously "Y’all: the Most Inclusive of All Pronouns - The South’s default collective form of address is the best of the American vernacular." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/magazine/yall.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/magazine/yall.html
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
munificent 2y ago
The new second person plural is "chat". I can't decide if I'm making a joke or not by saying that.
- dmonitor 2y ago
  it's not second person. it's not addressing anyone directly. it's addressing the audience in a specific context.
  - riversflow 2y ago
    Maybe like 3 years ago, people I know will use it exactly like y'all. Just last night I was hanging out with some (late 20's, early 30's) friends and my buddy said, "Chat, what are we having for dinner" exactly how you would say "Hey y'all...". This has become really common amongst young millennials I know.
- gregorymichael 2y ago
  Love this.
- graypegg 2y ago
  Is it second person though? It feels like most of the times I've heard it in person, outside of a real livestream, it's sort of been for asking a question into the aether as emphasis. "Chat, are you seeing this?" to emphasize something stupid they're seeing. It's not really spoken TO the person doing the stupid thing, it's spoken to this imaginary crowd to emphasize that what the other person is doing is obviously stupid. I guess it sort of depends on who you imagine in the conversation. If it was actually directed at a real twitch stream chat, it would be second person. So not sure how to square that circle.
  - feoren 2y ago
    I could imagine saying "God, are you seeing this?" to playfully emphasize something sinful they're seeing. Or similarly "Hey FBI, did you know about this?" to playfully point out that something is (or seems) illegal. Or someone says "Mike Tyson isn't that great a fighter" and someone else pretends to look at someone behind them and go "Hey Mike, what do you think about that?". It's all kinda just pretending some other entity is watching these events for humor, and I think it's all just 2nd person. Or you could say something like "Chat likes it when I rap", but that's similar to "God likes it when I genuflect after making a touchdown" or something -- it's just standard 3rd person with a flair. People have a tendency to over-emphasize how unique new speech patterns are. This same thing happened with "literally" being English's first "auto-antonym" -- it wasn't really, it was just a slightly different form of sarcasm. "OMG I literally died! Like I'm genuinely dead now. None of you are hearing this because I'm totes a corpse. I'm completely serious you guys, I literally have no pulse anymore." -- I can imagine all of that being in the same vein, but it's hard to argue that that means "genuinely" and "totes" and "completely" are all auto-antonyms too. Or that "riiiiiight" is an auto-antonym because it actually means "wrong". Things just aren't that new in language.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
anotherevan 2y ago
Thanks all y’all for y’all. I’m taking y’all. I love y’all. Because “y’all” is the best, most inclusive second-person, plural pronoun in the English-speaking world. Thank you, the South. What an ally. — Hannah Gadsby, Douglas
TZubiri 2y ago
grammatical number, singular, plural 1st person, ME, US 2nd person, YOU, Y'ALL 3rd person, HE/SHE/THEY, THEY In spanish we have the distinction naturally: USTED, USTEDES Another example of genuine language tools dismissed as "Incorrect" is African American Vernacular English's "you be", "he be" tense. I don't know the exact distinction, Steven Pinker explains it well. On that note, "that there rooster" is perfecty valid English as well.
hprotagonist 2y ago
yinz needs worsh. it'll cool y'off.
Glyptodon 2y ago
[flagged]
- brickfaced 2y ago
  >Y'all is one of the only decent things to come out of Texas, This is bigoted anti-Texas slander.
greenavocado 2y ago
Y'all is the American informal second-person plural pronoun Spanish: "ustedes" (formal) and "vosotros" (informal in Spain) or "vos" in some regions French: "vous" is the standard, but informally there's "vous autres" in Quebec French Portuguese: "vocês" formally, but "cês" informally in Brazilian Portuguese German: While "ihr" is standard, some dialects use "ihr alle" or regional variants Italian: "voi" is standard, but some southern dialects use "vujatri" or similar variants Greek: "εσείς" (eseis) formally, but informally "εσείς όλοι" (eseis oli) Russian: "вы" (vy) is standard, but "вы все" (vy vse) is used for emphasis Arabic: "أنتم" (antum) is standard, with "إنتو" (intu) in dialects I am most fascinated by Y'alls', a double possessive or possessive plural contraction which is common in Southern American English and AAVE (African American Vernacular English) which would otherwise be constructed more awkwardly in common American English as "all of your" or "your all's."
- treetalker 2y ago
  In both the Midwest and the South, I often hear "you guys'" (pronounced "you guyses"). I'm enjoying you guyses thread.
  - eszed 2y ago
    Isn't that a possessive form? As in: Waiter: "Can I get you guys's orders?" Non-standard (as written: "you guys' "), but speakers notoriously add extraneous " 's"s. (Sidenote: when we were teenagers my sister and I referred to one pastor as "the polytheist", because he always said "in Jesus's name", which we chose to interpret as "in Jesuses' name". God, I'm a nerd.)
- graemep 2y ago
  Vous is also the polite singular second person pronoun in French so they are part way to losing the singular. I did not know the abbreviation "AAVE" but its always struck me as odd how much a shared language has split along racial lines. I wonder whether there are similar things elsewhere. Obviously where people speak English as a second language and speak different first language they might speak it a bit differently, as might (recent) immigrant communities, but those are both very different.
broof 2y ago
When I learned German, I started using “y’all” in English because I got used to using a plural you. I’ve never lived anywhere near the south, but once you start using it, it feels weird not to.
hoten 2y ago
I grew up in Texas and lived in Ohio for a year during middle school. So of course I said y'all. I'll tell you what - kids that age will laser in on anything to cast someone as an outsider, and for me that year it was that word. Soon after moving back to Texas I regained confidence in saying the word. I think these days the only people that draw any attention to the word are non americans, so maybe it's proliferated a bit more in the last 2 decades.
strifey 2y ago
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 second-person plural.
- hotsauceror 2y ago
  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.
  - strifey 2y ago
    That's so fascinating to me! "Howdy" definitely ranks higher on my hokey-ness scale than "y'all". Love a good "over yonder" though.
  - ksymph 2y ago
    I grew up mostly in the north and talk very northernly, but somehow the only exception is that 'howdy' became my standard greeting. 'yall' feels like too much, but 'howdy' just rolls off the tongue so smoothly. Other greetings always sound too terse (hi, hey), too formal (hello), or are questions (how's it going, what's up) which I just loathe. Though technically howdy is sort of a question too, coming from 'how do you do'. What's 'a piece'? Don't think I've heard that one.
    - hotsauceror 2y ago
      "A piece" is a measure of distance, longer than "over yonder", shorter than "a ways". "She lives up the road a piece."
  - Izkata 2y ago
    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".
taylodl 2y ago
Midwesterner here - I use y'all all the time and nobody says anything about it. I live in an area where "yunz" is more popular (not quite yins) and I just hate the sound of that word. So y'all it is!
- nickpeterson 2y ago
  I’m a Pittsburgher who moved to Indianapolis when I was 7. I remember encountering the word y’all and thinking, “oh they just mean yinz.” I wonder if someone came from an area where neither are common, if the first encounter is more jarring?
samier-trellis 2y ago
omae-tachi
finnthehuman 2y ago
> A New York Times columnist says it’s “much too slangy, regional or what you might even call ethnic to ever gain universal acceptance.” We couldn’t disagree more. NYT columnist is the definition of “yankee with a stick up their ass.” It’s possible to agree with them on politics and recognize they’re wet blankets.
timoth3y 2y ago
Let's not forget the second person negative and the wonderful contraction of "you all are not". y'aint.
scoofy 2y ago
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 familiar third-person plural, which is noticeably absent from Spanish as well: "vosotros" vs "ustedes." I suspect that the regionalness and third-person familiar pronouns might simply go hand in hand, as they are an in-group signaling mechanism, and it's a bit rare to have large groups who you are close with who aren't part of your region. I grew up in Austin. I use "y'all" and "howdy" regularly, even more so than when I was young. That said, I feel like Texas Monthly "defending" the use of y'all as a potential universal term is entirely unnecessary. Again, there really isn't a need for a third-person familiar pronoun that isn't a natural one to use, because the point of third person familiar is that everyone in the space is comfortable with each other. The only reason why a formal version of this would ever be necessary is to have some sort of formal version of an informality... which makes little to no sense at all. Embrace the informality of colloquial third-person familiar pronouns. Embrace "y'all," "yinz," "you guys," "youse guys," and all the rest, because whenever you're on the receiving end of the pronoun, it means you're with someone who is trying to be friendly.
- javier_e06 2y ago
  Can't agree more. I imagine the scenario of waiting for a table at a restaurant. After 10 minutes I peek at the list and someone scratched my name from it. I can say: "You removed from the list, yet here I am waiting" I bit curt. I can say: "Y'all removed from the list, yet here I am waiting" Friendly. Well said.
- parpfish 2y ago
  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
goles 2y ago
https://archive.is/88ING https://archive.is/88ING
cmrdporcupine 2y ago
In rural Ontario and some other regions there's also "y'ouse".
CarVac 2y ago
I use y'all exclusively online. It's a bit too jarring for conversation aloud here in the northeast.
hnpolicestate 2y ago
The resurgence of y'all as popular non-southern vernacular stems from White liberal terminally online users? Correct?
- brickfaced 2y ago
  Yes. A non-Southern speaker who uses "y'all," especially in the typed or written word, is a strong liberal/progressive shibboleth. That so few comments have remarked on this so far indicates the leanings of the HN comment section, a product of many years of flagging and downvoting other viewpoints.
laurentlb 2y ago
It's indeed useful to distinguish singular you from plural you, which is something that most other languages do. As a non native speaker, I'm sometimes confused and wish to see a distinction between between singular and plural they (they-all?)
- tmtvl 2y ago
  I thought 'they' is always plural? I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they.
  - modestygrime 2y ago
    They can refer to a single person.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - coldpie 2y ago
    > I thought 'they' is always plural? You see someone two blocks away doing something unusual and say, "what are they doing?"
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      Only if you can't determine gender. Otherwise, you'd be "what is she/he doing?" It's usually clear from context. How often do you look two blocks away and see a group of unrelated individuals doing different things to the point "what are they doing" is unclear? Can't say I've ever run into that in my 48 years.
      - coldpie 2y ago
        > Only if you can't determine gender Sure, that's why I said 2 blocks away. The point is "they" is not exclusively used for plural, which was the claim I was replying to.
skrebbel 2y ago
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! Hooray for Texas!
- BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
  To casually throw a wrench into your process, how do you deal with the fact that y'all is actually singular and all y'all is the plural form? I'm kidding. You're doing great.
- harimau777 2y ago
  I picked up "y'all" in English when I started studying Spanish. After using "plural you" constructions in Spanish I found myself wanting them when speaking English.
  - BitwiseFool 2y ago
    I hadn't considered y'all the English equivalent of vosotros, but this makes perfect sense.
- wepple 2y ago
  What’s your word for it?
  - harimau777 2y ago
    In Chinese it would be 你们. Pronounced "ni men". The first character means "you" while the second character means "the previous noun is plural".
  - Ajedi32 2y ago
    In Spanish it would be "Ustedes".
VoodooJuJu 2y ago
[flagged]
- treetalker 2y ago
  [flagged]
mosburger 2y ago
I live in Maine, one of the most northy north U.S. states, and I now use y'all all the time. It's totally fit for purpose. Edit: In fact I use it so often at work that my very prim-and-proper British colleague now uses it often and unironically, which is kinda hilarious.
- mjhoy 2y ago
  I’m from Maine and say it all the time as well :)
causi 2y ago
I still don't understand why some Hollywood writers are so out of touch with reality that they create characters with horrible fake Southern accents saying "y'all" as a singular pronoun. Nobody would actually do that unless they have brain damage.
- sidibe 2y ago
  The only place I see people saying y'all can be singular is nonsoutherners on the internet erroneously trying to explain why people say all y'all. I've never seen that in Hollywood even you got any examples?
- paulmooreparks 2y ago
  Yes! I commented elsewhere on the same thing. I would love to know how and where that started. It seems to be "one of those things that everybody knows" that has never actually been true.
Meph504 2y ago
As a southern from the New Orleans area, ya'll is as natural a part of everyday language as it comes, and generally when it is heard by people who aren't from the south it comes off as smug, or cringe. Generally because they put a strong emphasis on the world, when it is rarely warranted. It's like when people try to pronounce "New Orleans" as "nawlins" (to be clear, no one native says it this way, its tourist trap t-shirts that pronounce it this way), or some other such silly thing. Conversely there are many words that are said in unique ways in the region and part of being accepted as a transplant is people who learn to say those words with the regional dialect. It may come as a shock, but I doubt anyone in the south (outside of the irish channel) really gives the New York Times opinion on southern language much of a second thought.
- nathan_compton 2y ago
  "but I doubt anyone in the south (outside of the irish channel) really gives the New York Times opinion on southern language much of a second thought." Weird take. It's not like just because some portion of a Southern state is anti-elitist or whatever the state is devoid of New York Times readers. I grew up in a middle class setting in the South and every house I ever entered had a copy of The New Yorker. There are NPR stations all over the country. The South is not a mono-culture.
easeout 2y ago
Y'all has been here to stay in the mainstream for a good long while. It really needs no defending. Bless your heart
treetalker 2y ago
Anyone enjoying this thread might like the "A Way with Words" podcast. https://www.waywordradio.org/ https://www.waywordradio.org/
maxehmookau 2y ago
I'm a native British English speaker that works for an American company. I use y'all much to the dislike of my friends and family but it's friendly, and very inclusive. I quite like it.
AndrewStephens 2y ago
In New Zealand vernacular, "youse" (or "yous") is the more common variant, and like "y'all" it is looked down on as being regional or a signifier of lower class. I disagree, English really needs a second-person plural pronoun, and I spent some time deliberately using it in speaking and writing hoping it would catch on. There are dozens of us! Dozens!
seethishat 2y ago
Y'all is efficient. It is just one syllable. Asking the question, "Y'all eat?" Is twice as fast compared to, "Did you all eat?" Of course, I use it because I'm from the south eastern US, not because it's fast.
- globnomulous 2y ago
  And to me this just raises the question I often ask myself: whether I'm the only person born in the US in the past fifty years who continues to use the perfect tense and distinguish semantically between it and the simple past. I say "did you eat?" when I want to know whether you ate at a specific, single point in time in the past (and you and I both know which one I mean) -- and you no longer have the opportunity or that time has passed. I say "Have you eaten?" When I want to know whether you've eaten anything yet. You may still have the opportunity. I may even be suggesting that we eat together. My partner regularly asks me things like, "did we watch that movie?" and for a split second I will have no idea what the devil she's talking about. Am I supposed to know the exact point in time that she's referring to? Is there a reason why to opportunity to watch it has, implicitly, passed? No, we just don't speak the same language. "Did you do the laundry?" Had we scheduled it? Has the opportunity to do laundry passed? "Did you make coffee?" No, and rejoice, my love, as the time of making coffee is still upon us. "Did you eat lunch yet?" ...excuse me? Are you a five-dimensional being?
  - kayodelycaon 2y ago
    I don’t think anyone in the past used spoken language with the precision you’re describing. English isn’t a programming language. All of the questions you’re asked are abstractions of a different question or a series of questions. Many of them have multiple meanings and you pick the most likely set based on context.
    - globnomulous 2y ago
      I was being a bit tongue in cheek, and my partner does tell me she has never met anyone more literal or rigid. So I take your point -- and it's fair. That being said, many in the UK do use the simple past and perfect exactly as I've described. Using the simple past where the perfect is expected is, to their ears, unmistakably incorrect, whereas plenty of native speakers in the US draw no distinction whatsoever.
yCombLinks 2y ago
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"
- whycome 2y ago
  I believe for me that’s Y’all’da - you all woulda.
  - banannaise 2y ago
    "woulda" is just rewriting "would've" to match the speech pattern.
  - binarymax 2y ago
    Keep working on this we’re getting really close to an American yodel.
    - fat_cantor 2y ago
      The functional equivalent of yodeling is 'hollerin', which old timers in the mountains used to do every morning
- joshdavham 2y ago
  I use something similar with y’all’re (= you all are).
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  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.
  - schindlabua 2y ago
    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.
qntmfred 2y ago
I spent the first half of my childhood in Massachusetts and the second half in North Carolina. I say y'all all the time. Truly an excellent word.
irrational 2y ago
You can’t spell Y’all Qaeda without Y’all.
PopAlongKid 2y ago
Florence y'all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence%2C_Kentucky#Arts_and_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence%2C_Kentucky#Arts_and_...
- jihadjihad 2y ago
  Incredible. I've driven by it many times and have never learned the origin story: > Built in 1974, the tower originally advertised the up-and-coming Florence Mall, as part of an agreement with the mall developers who donated the land for the tower. But because the mall was not built yet, the tower violated highway regulations, and the city was forced to change it within a short deadline. Rather than repaint the entire tower, they simply painted over the two vertical lines of the "M" to create a "Y". The intent was to change it back when the mall was built, but the local residents liked the tower's new proclamation, so the city decided to leave it as it was. The water tower has its own Wikipedia page [0], which includes a photo of it before the "alteration" too. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Y%27all_Water_Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Y%27all_Water_Tower
jongjong 2y ago
The part about 'you guys' resonates. I teach an introductory coding class and found myself saying 'you guys' to a mixed-gender group and it didn't feel right. Especially given that there were a smaller number of women in the group. I was wondering to myself if such language might make women feel excluded or stigmatized somehow depending on the context.
narski 2y ago
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.
- selenography 2y ago
  I see this endlessly repeated across the Internet, but it doesn't work. -n't is not a general-purpose clitic the way -'d and -'ve are; it can't attach to arbitrary words. ("Well, Mary'd _said_ she was gonna, and the rest of 'em've all gone home.") 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.
ubermonkey 2y ago
Texas Monthly defending "y'all" is an absolute peak Texas Monthly moment.
ssimpson 2y ago
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.
- Beermotor 2y ago
  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.
  - yamazakiwi 2y ago
    Also saying things are a feature of Texas is a feature of Texas.
Cushman 2y ago
This is amusing. So… if one plans to publish their baroque opinions on English grammar… one should really know that conversational “y’all” is prescriptively a high status marker in the academy. I picked up the habit in Massachusetts, in the mid 2000s, from an Ivy League humanities professor who also expressed support for a student debt strike. He used it very deliberately, in an effort to un-train our public school–addled brains from the inanity that we were somehow smarter than others for having fewer words in hand. In my bones, the thought of not using it as appropriate feels uneducated. Using “y’all” in conversation shows incredible confidence, a way to flex command of formal language in an informal setting. It’s often used with emphasis. It leverages the listener’s discomfort, saying: I know precisely which register I’m speaking in. It’s an “elite” thing to do. What you’ll never hear is one of these people using “y’all” as a formal address— especially as a singular, as in the rote “Y’all been served?” for a dining party of any number. There are a number of reasons for that, but number one is simple: It’s a high status signal. Edit to add: Maybe importantly, this doesn’t extend to the casual use of “all y’all” . I think the colloquial academic equivalent would be “you [emphasized pause] all”. If you weren’t familiar you’d probably transcribe it as “you all”, but it’s closer to “you, all”. Looking at it now, I think that’s “intentional abuse” of the formal variant for intensifying, with just enough stress to make it visibly intentional? But I should be clear I haven’t studied this dialect at all, I just learned to speak it :)
joshdavham 2y ago
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.
- anon84873628 2y ago
  If I'm recalling The History of English podcast correctly, "you" was originally the plural/formal 2nd person pronoun, while "thou" was singular. Eventually language did its thing and the default shifted. Now we think of "thou" as old timey and formal!
  - joshdavham 2y ago
    We need to bring 'thou' back! Don't thou agree?
Slow_Hand 2y ago
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.
- 1-more 2y ago
  y'all'd've
forgetfreeman 2y ago
As a lifelong southerner I find it mildly irritating when folks appropriate y'all. Y'all ain't from around here.
- globnomulous 2y ago
  Imitation is the sincerest form of cultural appropriation.
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kerkeslager 2y ago
I have political/social beliefs I believe are ethically right. It's tempting for me to think that people who agree with me, agree with me because my beliefs are right. But ultimately I think peoples beliefs (including my own!) are often a result of social inertia--I believe what the people around me believe--than any sort of logical reasoning process. Case in point: the NYT and its NYC-based journalists often[1] share political views with me, because we're both from major Northeastern cities. It's tempting for me to assume that the NYT is thinking reasonably, but then stuff like this comes up and... "Y'all" is just clearly a simple, elegant solution to a linguistic problem. I don't have strong feelings against "yinz" or "youse" except to say that even though I'm from an area where people say "youse", I think both these are harder to say. But "y'all" is clearly better than "you guys". Dismissing a linguistic solution as "slangy", "regional", or "ethnic", is frankly, idiotic, and I think it comes from one of the uglier parts of Northeastern big city thinking (and yes, this applies to West coast big cities too). The places city folks dismiss as "flyover states" have a lot of smart people in them with good ideas. Yes, people in these places are often limited by a lack of education--a problem for which coastal cities are in part to blame. But a lot of good ideas don't require a lot of prerequisite education, and "y'all" is one of them. It's not "smart" or "educated" to dismiss "y'all", it's bigoted. I'm not from a place that says "y'all", and "y'all" is one of the first things I adopted when I moved to the south. John McWhorter should be embarrassed. [1] Less often in recent years.
paulmooreparks 2y ago
As a native Southerner, I was amused, and pleased, when I moved to Singapore and heard Singaporeans using "y'all" in everyday speech. :)
karaterobot 2y ago
It's hard for me to imagine not saying y'all because the NYT said to. It's a great word, get over it.
bitwize 2y ago
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.
brrrrrm 2y ago
"y'all" a particularly popular term in NYC (I use it frequently and have lived in NYC most of my life) - so it's kinda bizarre to see "texas monthly" responding to "new york times" as if there is any cultural conflict beyond some random linguist's op-ed. there was a heatmap published in the past (seemingly only saved by paywalled news organizations) that showed the prevalence of "y'all" in different areas.
Powdering7082 2y ago
I have noticed a large uptick in usage of y'all in the PNW in the last 7 years. I personally think at this point y'all doesn't need to be defended, it is on it's way to winning regardless of what NYT Opinion pieces think. Although reading the original NYT Opinion piece I do also agree with the premise that "you guys" has largely been drained of it's masculinity.
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kazinator 2y ago
"Y'all" is a highly intelligent contribution to the English language, which underscores the folly of having deprecated "thou". English has plurals engrained in its DNA; it resists changes that make it a plural-free language. Only a few words lack plural expression, like the words fish and sheep, or words that are inherently plural like pants, scissors or people. Since thou has become severely archaic, invoked only in religious contexts or ironic contexts parodying religious speech, you has become a plural-free word like fish. And that don't sit well with them Texans and other such folk.
kgeist 2y ago
On a related note, some languages distinguish between "we including you" and "we excluding you". I wonder why it's not a thing in European languages. Seems like a pretty important distinction in certain cases :)
TexanFeller 2y ago
I'm a little miffed that anyone would object to "y'all" or that anyone would take the objection seriously enough to feel the need to defend its use. Another Texanism comes to mind in response, the one that ends in "and the horse they rode in on".
ubertaco 2y ago
From the NYT article: >Some have even suggested “y’all,” a word that reads as much too slangy, regional or what you might even call ethnic to ever gain universal acceptance. Heaven forbid we embrace something that could be called "ethnic"! Something something must secure a future for our linguistic monoculture. I wonder if this writer would've written the same thing, but with "bruh" or "fam" swapped in: >Some have even suggested “bruh,” a word that reads as much too slangy, regional or what you might even call ethnic to ever gain universal acceptance. Probably not, as that would've been immediately recognized as racist (because "bruh" is ethnic, despite its recent widespread adoption, in the sense that its roots are in black-culture slang – just like how "y'all" is ethnic, despite its recent widespread adoption, in the sense that its roots are in southern-culture slang). I dunno why the NYT author feels the need to find ways to be linguistically xenophobic.

169 points by scour 2y ago

Proudly use "y'all" frequently in my everyday conversation, despite having zero other attributes characteristically Southern about me. As the article says it's flexible, is impossible to offend anyone with as far as I can tell, and just sounds good.

marssaxman 2y ago
I was a West Coast kid with absolutely no connection to the South when I added "y'all" to my idiolect as a teenager: I thought it just made more sense.
alistairSH 2y ago
DC metro native here. I picked it up during college (UVA, in central VA, fair number of southerners on campus). Use it pretty regularly, mostly as part of a group greeting "how are y'all?"

mandibles 2y ago

Only a true Texan can tell you the difference between "y'all" and "all y'all".

hotsauceror 2y ago
"y'all'd've"
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  <insert scream GIF here> still, brilliant nonetheless.
- AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
  om'n'a go to the store soon!
  - hotsauceror 2y ago
    I think it would be, fixin' to go to the store.
    - rufus_foreman 2y ago
      There is no x in "fi'n to".
- 4star3star 2y ago
  "y'all'dn't've"
thirdtruck 2y ago
Or a Georgian.
- desert_rue 2y ago
  I believe the Georgian version is different. “Y’all” is singular while “all y’all” is plural.
  - zikduruqe 2y ago
    From North Carolina originally. "Y'all" is singular, "all y'all" is plural, and "all y'all MF'ers" is when you are angry and it could be singular or plural depending on the connotation.
    - sidibe 2y ago
      You must have moved before you started speaking. But nice to see people in the thread recognizing it's not just Texas Y'all is plural. All y'all is short for all of y'all.
  - paulmooreparks 2y ago
    Georgian here. No. "Y'all" has never been singular.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Some sets have a canonical partition. If you're referring to a set of birds or a set of fish, then the correct usage is y'all because those sets canonically partition into themselves. But if you're referring to a set of birds and fish together, then the usage is "all y'all" because the canonical partition yields more than one subset (one containing birds, and one containing fish). The distinction helps differentiate between whether you mean the superset or one of those subsets. It works with any other partition which might be obvious (not just birds and fish). If you have two families together, you might avoid "see y'all later" because it could be interpreted that you only expect to see one family later. "see all y'all later", by contrast is unabiguous--you mean both families. --- Did I get it right? Am I a true Texan?
- 4star3star 2y ago
  Having never given much thought to it, your analysis rings true to my native Texan ears. There's another usage that comes to mind, though. One might argue that "y'all" borders on a second person plural inclusive of the speaker whereas "all y'all" marks a distinction between the speaker and the others. For instance, a peeved person would be more likely to say, "All y'all can kiss my ass," as opposed to, "Y'all can kiss my ass." "Y'all" by itself is more friendly and self-inclusive than "all y'all", which carries an inherent otherness to it.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    Hmm, interesting. I'm not from Texas but I have family who is. I'll listen for this one also. I'm under the impression that the double negative is a relatively modern thing (early 1800's). Previously, repetition of the negative just reinforced it, like: > I ain't never put syrup on my bacon on purpose ...just double-enphasized the negative, rather than letting the second negative negate the first. This feels similar except instead of stacking negations you're stacking separations.
  - jsnell 2y ago
    > One might argue that "y'all" borders on a second person plural inclusive of the speaker So a first person plural?
o11c 2y ago
"all y'all" is an abomination.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Using numbers to ab6te words is an abomination. All y'all is fine.
  - mrbadguy 2y ago
    I’m not American and I totally agree. Y’all and all y’all are brilliant!
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giardini 2y ago
"All y'all" is improper Texan primarily used in as a public declaration to convince those present who are NOT Texan, to use the proper expression "y'all" (rather than, say, "all of you", "everyone" or "you" (plural)).
nosrepa 2y ago
Or Dr. Dre.
stronglikedan 2y ago
As a non-Texan, I can usually tell the difference, since "all y'all" is generally followed by "muthafuckers".
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  Or preceded by the word "fuck".
Finnucane 2y ago
I think that usage is common outside of Texas. A friend from Memphis uses it.

delichon 2y ago

Cowabunga rolls more naturally off of my Southern California lips but I've been appropriating y'all in emails, etc. for years, and nobody has complained yet. But I still feel strangely compelled to write "Dear Sirs" at the top of letters to strangers, as there's no formal form of y'all. I usually settle for "Hello".

JadeNB 2y ago
> But I still feel strangely compelled to write "Dear Sirs" at the top of letters to strangers, as there's no formal form of y'all. Be the change you want to see, and start with "Dear Y'all."

bwanab 2y ago

As a child of Appalachia, I suggest that we all compromise on you'ens, or as it's commonly pronounced yinz.

nativeit 2y ago
+1
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was8309 2y ago
sometimes a T is included - yintz
summermusic 2y ago
Half my family says yinz, half my family says you’uns. They’re both correct as far as I’m concerned.
banannaise 2y ago
Since it's short for "you ones", I suppose it would technically be "you'nes", which of course looks insane and nobody would ever write it that way. I've also seen it written with an apostrophe ("y'inz") which is funny to me - it acknowledges the contraction, but with everything completely misplaced. (and yes, I am from western PA)

martythemaniak 2y ago

I've long used "y'all" as a gender-neutral way of addressing a group, but now that's gone all mainstream I've been considering switching to "yinz".

shtack 2y ago

Canadian here using y'all every day. Might as well make it the formal English plural.

XorNot 2y ago
Australian: I've used it in every social context at least once by now and I'd say it's distinctly stayed in the rotation.
cpursley 2y ago
Funny, the only time I ever got made fun of as a southern kid using y'all was when visiting Toronto suburbs (back in the 1990s).

gregw2 2y ago

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) and Ye (second person plural) to just "You", but Texans rightly have solved the problem and kept the clarity. (The more-modern "Yo" is delightfully brief but as ambiguous as "you".) Now... if you want to tease a Texan back about all this, you can ask them whether that implies the proper phrase for when you enter Texas then should be "Abandon hope all y'all (was: ye) who enter here!"

forgotusername6 2y ago
People in some parts of the UK say "yous" for second person plural. So it isn't quite gone.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  We also have that in some parts of Canada, rural & northern Ontario especially.
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    Rural Wisconsin too, though mostly the older generations.
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      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.

adolph 2y ago

See also: Y’all, You’uns, Yinz, Youse: How Regional Dialects Are Fixing Standard English [0] 0. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/yall-youuns-yinz-youse-how-regional-dialects-are-fixing-standard-english https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/yall-youuns-yinz-youse...

lemmsjid 2y ago

As an ex new englander I approve of y’all over youse because it’s hard to use “youse” efficiently without saying “youse guys”.

AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
What about "youse mugs"?
PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
Yep, just "youse" by itself feels like an intentional regional quirk. "What do youse want to do?" <= you're from the NY/Phila/I-95 axis "What do youse guys want to do?" <= you've some exposure to American dialects "What do y'all want to do?" <= you're an American or playing one in a movie

ppierald 2y ago

I like "Hi Team". I do use that in certain social circles, but I do get the point of the article. Survivor, the US TV show, used to say "Come on in guys" until recently where they made a point to discuss the topic on camera with the contestants. There was a variety of opinions, but they ultimately settled on "Come on in." which conveys the point in a neutral tone.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
"Team" makes sense when addressing... well, your team, like if you're in a huddle of basketball players. But there are many contexts where it doesn't make sense as a general purpose second person plural.

mauvehaus 2y ago

Counter-proposal: Bring back "thou" as the second person singular pronoun and restore "you" to its rightful place as the second person plural pronoun. As with so many of English's warts we can blame the French for the situation we're in. Vous in French is used when addressing a single person formally and conveys respect for the addressee. When class and station were more important following the Norman conquest of England, English speakers adopted the use of "you" to address a single person of higher status following the French custom. It's use became more widespread over time lest the speaker offend someone by using "thou" when the addressee thought that "you" was warranted. As a practical matter, I use y'all. I think thou is a lovely word in its own right and is deserving of consideration. N.b. IANALinguist, and IANAHistorian either. TINLinguisticA.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
We thank thee, kindly.
nyeah 2y ago
Meh, might as well try to bring back the Segway. If it's not cool, it won't catch on.
oldpersonintx 2y ago
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harimau777 2y ago
I don't have enough linguistic background to understand the distinction, but I've also heard that using "will" for "intent to do something in the future" is somehow linguistically unusual because previously that job was used by "shall". Sorry I can't give more details, I forget what the actual distinction between the two is. I just recall that it apparently creates difficulty when English speakers learn Romance languages that still have their equivalent of "shall". Edit: Apparently, the distinction can either be a lot more relevant or a lot less relevant than I thought depending on the context (e.g. legal text vs. everyday speech). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shall_and_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shall_and_will It's interesting how much of language is invisible to a native speaker. If you had asked me, I would have said that most people never use "shall". However, now that the article points it out, I realize that native speakers use "Shall we <verb>" all the time.

arjie 2y ago

"Y'all" has been common for a while among Anglo-Indians in South India. I was quite surprised when I first went online among the predominantly American early-Internet community and discovered that y'all consider it a peculiarity of the American South. I've always liked it, though I don't use it anymore now that I live in the US (where it is a marker of the South).

eminence32 2y ago

As a New Englander, I am quite partial to "y'all" and "you all", mostly in written form. It is indeed a quite capable substitute to "you guys". But to my ear, "yall" is ever so slightly more informal than "you all", and so sometimes it doesn't feel exactly right.

xnx 2y ago

Previously "Y’all: the Most Inclusive of All Pronouns - The South’s default collective form of address is the best of the American vernacular." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/magazine/yall.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/magazine/yall.html

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munificent 2y ago

The new second person plural is "chat". I can't decide if I'm making a joke or not by saying that.

dmonitor 2y ago
it's not second person. it's not addressing anyone directly. it's addressing the audience in a specific context.
- riversflow 2y ago
  Maybe like 3 years ago, people I know will use it exactly like y'all. Just last night I was hanging out with some (late 20's, early 30's) friends and my buddy said, "Chat, what are we having for dinner" exactly how you would say "Hey y'all...". This has become really common amongst young millennials I know.
gregorymichael 2y ago
Love this.
graypegg 2y ago
Is it second person though? It feels like most of the times I've heard it in person, outside of a real livestream, it's sort of been for asking a question into the aether as emphasis. "Chat, are you seeing this?" to emphasize something stupid they're seeing. It's not really spoken TO the person doing the stupid thing, it's spoken to this imaginary crowd to emphasize that what the other person is doing is obviously stupid. I guess it sort of depends on who you imagine in the conversation. If it was actually directed at a real twitch stream chat, it would be second person. So not sure how to square that circle.
- feoren 2y ago
  I could imagine saying "God, are you seeing this?" to playfully emphasize something sinful they're seeing. Or similarly "Hey FBI, did you know about this?" to playfully point out that something is (or seems) illegal. Or someone says "Mike Tyson isn't that great a fighter" and someone else pretends to look at someone behind them and go "Hey Mike, what do you think about that?". It's all kinda just pretending some other entity is watching these events for humor, and I think it's all just 2nd person. Or you could say something like "Chat likes it when I rap", but that's similar to "God likes it when I genuflect after making a touchdown" or something -- it's just standard 3rd person with a flair. People have a tendency to over-emphasize how unique new speech patterns are. This same thing happened with "literally" being English's first "auto-antonym" -- it wasn't really, it was just a slightly different form of sarcasm. "OMG I literally died! Like I'm genuinely dead now. None of you are hearing this because I'm totes a corpse. I'm completely serious you guys, I literally have no pulse anymore." -- I can imagine all of that being in the same vein, but it's hard to argue that that means "genuinely" and "totes" and "completely" are all auto-antonyms too. Or that "riiiiiight" is an auto-antonym because it actually means "wrong". Things just aren't that new in language.

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anotherevan 2y ago

Thanks all y’all for y’all. I’m taking y’all. I love y’all. Because “y’all” is the best, most inclusive second-person, plural pronoun in the English-speaking world. Thank you, the South. What an ally. — Hannah Gadsby, Douglas

TZubiri 2y ago

grammatical number, singular, plural 1st person, ME, US 2nd person, YOU, Y'ALL 3rd person, HE/SHE/THEY, THEY In spanish we have the distinction naturally: USTED, USTEDES Another example of genuine language tools dismissed as "Incorrect" is African American Vernacular English's "you be", "he be" tense. I don't know the exact distinction, Steven Pinker explains it well. On that note, "that there rooster" is perfecty valid English as well.

hprotagonist 2y ago

yinz needs worsh. it'll cool y'off.

Glyptodon 2y ago

[flagged]

brickfaced 2y ago
>Y'all is one of the only decent things to come out of Texas, This is bigoted anti-Texas slander.

greenavocado 2y ago

Y'all is the American informal second-person plural pronoun Spanish: "ustedes" (formal) and "vosotros" (informal in Spain) or "vos" in some regions French: "vous" is the standard, but informally there's "vous autres" in Quebec French Portuguese: "vocês" formally, but "cês" informally in Brazilian Portuguese German: While "ihr" is standard, some dialects use "ihr alle" or regional variants Italian: "voi" is standard, but some southern dialects use "vujatri" or similar variants Greek: "εσείς" (eseis) formally, but informally "εσείς όλοι" (eseis oli) Russian: "вы" (vy) is standard, but "вы все" (vy vse) is used for emphasis Arabic: "أنتم" (antum) is standard, with "إنتو" (intu) in dialects I am most fascinated by Y'alls', a double possessive or possessive plural contraction which is common in Southern American English and AAVE (African American Vernacular English) which would otherwise be constructed more awkwardly in common American English as "all of your" or "your all's."

treetalker 2y ago
In both the Midwest and the South, I often hear "you guys'" (pronounced "you guyses"). I'm enjoying you guyses thread.
- eszed 2y ago
  Isn't that a possessive form? As in: Waiter: "Can I get you guys's orders?" Non-standard (as written: "you guys' "), but speakers notoriously add extraneous " 's"s. (Sidenote: when we were teenagers my sister and I referred to one pastor as "the polytheist", because he always said "in Jesus's name", which we chose to interpret as "in Jesuses' name". God, I'm a nerd.)
graemep 2y ago
Vous is also the polite singular second person pronoun in French so they are part way to losing the singular. I did not know the abbreviation "AAVE" but its always struck me as odd how much a shared language has split along racial lines. I wonder whether there are similar things elsewhere. Obviously where people speak English as a second language and speak different first language they might speak it a bit differently, as might (recent) immigrant communities, but those are both very different.

broof 2y ago

When I learned German, I started using “y’all” in English because I got used to using a plural you. I’ve never lived anywhere near the south, but once you start using it, it feels weird not to.

hoten 2y ago

I grew up in Texas and lived in Ohio for a year during middle school. So of course I said y'all. I'll tell you what - kids that age will laser in on anything to cast someone as an outsider, and for me that year it was that word. Soon after moving back to Texas I regained confidence in saying the word. I think these days the only people that draw any attention to the word are non americans, so maybe it's proliferated a bit more in the last 2 decades.

strifey 2y ago

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 second-person plural.

hotsauceror 2y ago
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.
- strifey 2y ago
  That's so fascinating to me! "Howdy" definitely ranks higher on my hokey-ness scale than "y'all". Love a good "over yonder" though.
- ksymph 2y ago
  I grew up mostly in the north and talk very northernly, but somehow the only exception is that 'howdy' became my standard greeting. 'yall' feels like too much, but 'howdy' just rolls off the tongue so smoothly. Other greetings always sound too terse (hi, hey), too formal (hello), or are questions (how's it going, what's up) which I just loathe. Though technically howdy is sort of a question too, coming from 'how do you do'. What's 'a piece'? Don't think I've heard that one.
  - hotsauceror 2y ago
    "A piece" is a measure of distance, longer than "over yonder", shorter than "a ways". "She lives up the road a piece."
- Izkata 2y ago
  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".

taylodl 2y ago

Midwesterner here - I use y'all all the time and nobody says anything about it. I live in an area where "yunz" is more popular (not quite yins) and I just hate the sound of that word. So y'all it is!

nickpeterson 2y ago
I’m a Pittsburgher who moved to Indianapolis when I was 7. I remember encountering the word y’all and thinking, “oh they just mean yinz.” I wonder if someone came from an area where neither are common, if the first encounter is more jarring?

samier-trellis 2y ago

omae-tachi

finnthehuman 2y ago

> A New York Times columnist says it’s “much too slangy, regional or what you might even call ethnic to ever gain universal acceptance.” We couldn’t disagree more. NYT columnist is the definition of “yankee with a stick up their ass.” It’s possible to agree with them on politics and recognize they’re wet blankets.

timoth3y 2y ago

Let's not forget the second person negative and the wonderful contraction of "you all are not". y'aint.

scoofy 2y ago

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 familiar third-person plural, which is noticeably absent from Spanish as well: "vosotros" vs "ustedes." I suspect that the regionalness and third-person familiar pronouns might simply go hand in hand, as they are an in-group signaling mechanism, and it's a bit rare to have large groups who you are close with who aren't part of your region. I grew up in Austin. I use "y'all" and "howdy" regularly, even more so than when I was young. That said, I feel like Texas Monthly "defending" the use of y'all as a potential universal term is entirely unnecessary. Again, there really isn't a need for a third-person familiar pronoun that isn't a natural one to use, because the point of third person familiar is that everyone in the space is comfortable with each other. The only reason why a formal version of this would ever be necessary is to have some sort of formal version of an informality... which makes little to no sense at all. Embrace the informality of colloquial third-person familiar pronouns. Embrace "y'all," "yinz," "you guys," "youse guys," and all the rest, because whenever you're on the receiving end of the pronoun, it means you're with someone who is trying to be friendly.

javier_e06 2y ago
Can't agree more. I imagine the scenario of waiting for a table at a restaurant. After 10 minutes I peek at the list and someone scratched my name from it. I can say: "You removed from the list, yet here I am waiting" I bit curt. I can say: "Y'all removed from the list, yet here I am waiting" Friendly. Well said.
parpfish 2y ago
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

goles 2y ago

https://archive.is/88ING https://archive.is/88ING

cmrdporcupine 2y ago

In rural Ontario and some other regions there's also "y'ouse".

CarVac 2y ago

I use y'all exclusively online. It's a bit too jarring for conversation aloud here in the northeast.

hnpolicestate 2y ago

The resurgence of y'all as popular non-southern vernacular stems from White liberal terminally online users? Correct?

brickfaced 2y ago
Yes. A non-Southern speaker who uses "y'all," especially in the typed or written word, is a strong liberal/progressive shibboleth. That so few comments have remarked on this so far indicates the leanings of the HN comment section, a product of many years of flagging and downvoting other viewpoints.

laurentlb 2y ago

It's indeed useful to distinguish singular you from plural you, which is something that most other languages do. As a non native speaker, I'm sometimes confused and wish to see a distinction between between singular and plural they (they-all?)

tmtvl 2y ago
I thought 'they' is always plural? I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they.
- modestygrime 2y ago
  They can refer to a single person.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- coldpie 2y ago
  > I thought 'they' is always plural? You see someone two blocks away doing something unusual and say, "what are they doing?"
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    Only if you can't determine gender. Otherwise, you'd be "what is she/he doing?" It's usually clear from context. How often do you look two blocks away and see a group of unrelated individuals doing different things to the point "what are they doing" is unclear? Can't say I've ever run into that in my 48 years.
    - coldpie 2y ago
      > Only if you can't determine gender Sure, that's why I said 2 blocks away. The point is "they" is not exclusively used for plural, which was the claim I was replying to.

skrebbel 2y ago

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! Hooray for Texas!

BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
To casually throw a wrench into your process, how do you deal with the fact that y'all is actually singular and all y'all is the plural form? I'm kidding. You're doing great.
harimau777 2y ago
I picked up "y'all" in English when I started studying Spanish. After using "plural you" constructions in Spanish I found myself wanting them when speaking English.
- BitwiseFool 2y ago
  I hadn't considered y'all the English equivalent of vosotros, but this makes perfect sense.
wepple 2y ago
What’s your word for it?
- harimau777 2y ago
  In Chinese it would be 你们. Pronounced "ni men". The first character means "you" while the second character means "the previous noun is plural".
- Ajedi32 2y ago
  In Spanish it would be "Ustedes".

VoodooJuJu 2y ago

[flagged]

treetalker 2y ago
[flagged]

mosburger 2y ago

I live in Maine, one of the most northy north U.S. states, and I now use y'all all the time. It's totally fit for purpose. Edit: In fact I use it so often at work that my very prim-and-proper British colleague now uses it often and unironically, which is kinda hilarious.

mjhoy 2y ago
I’m from Maine and say it all the time as well :)

causi 2y ago

I still don't understand why some Hollywood writers are so out of touch with reality that they create characters with horrible fake Southern accents saying "y'all" as a singular pronoun. Nobody would actually do that unless they have brain damage.

sidibe 2y ago
The only place I see people saying y'all can be singular is nonsoutherners on the internet erroneously trying to explain why people say all y'all. I've never seen that in Hollywood even you got any examples?
paulmooreparks 2y ago
Yes! I commented elsewhere on the same thing. I would love to know how and where that started. It seems to be "one of those things that everybody knows" that has never actually been true.

Meph504 2y ago

As a southern from the New Orleans area, ya'll is as natural a part of everyday language as it comes, and generally when it is heard by people who aren't from the south it comes off as smug, or cringe. Generally because they put a strong emphasis on the world, when it is rarely warranted. It's like when people try to pronounce "New Orleans" as "nawlins" (to be clear, no one native says it this way, its tourist trap t-shirts that pronounce it this way), or some other such silly thing. Conversely there are many words that are said in unique ways in the region and part of being accepted as a transplant is people who learn to say those words with the regional dialect. It may come as a shock, but I doubt anyone in the south (outside of the irish channel) really gives the New York Times opinion on southern language much of a second thought.

nathan_compton 2y ago
"but I doubt anyone in the south (outside of the irish channel) really gives the New York Times opinion on southern language much of a second thought." Weird take. It's not like just because some portion of a Southern state is anti-elitist or whatever the state is devoid of New York Times readers. I grew up in a middle class setting in the South and every house I ever entered had a copy of The New Yorker. There are NPR stations all over the country. The South is not a mono-culture.

easeout 2y ago

Y'all has been here to stay in the mainstream for a good long while. It really needs no defending. Bless your heart

treetalker 2y ago

Anyone enjoying this thread might like the "A Way with Words" podcast. https://www.waywordradio.org/ https://www.waywordradio.org/

maxehmookau 2y ago

I'm a native British English speaker that works for an American company. I use y'all much to the dislike of my friends and family but it's friendly, and very inclusive. I quite like it.

AndrewStephens 2y ago

In New Zealand vernacular, "youse" (or "yous") is the more common variant, and like "y'all" it is looked down on as being regional or a signifier of lower class. I disagree, English really needs a second-person plural pronoun, and I spent some time deliberately using it in speaking and writing hoping it would catch on. There are dozens of us! Dozens!

seethishat 2y ago

Y'all is efficient. It is just one syllable. Asking the question, "Y'all eat?" Is twice as fast compared to, "Did you all eat?" Of course, I use it because I'm from the south eastern US, not because it's fast.

globnomulous 2y ago
And to me this just raises the question I often ask myself: whether I'm the only person born in the US in the past fifty years who continues to use the perfect tense and distinguish semantically between it and the simple past. I say "did you eat?" when I want to know whether you ate at a specific, single point in time in the past (and you and I both know which one I mean) -- and you no longer have the opportunity or that time has passed. I say "Have you eaten?" When I want to know whether you've eaten anything yet. You may still have the opportunity. I may even be suggesting that we eat together. My partner regularly asks me things like, "did we watch that movie?" and for a split second I will have no idea what the devil she's talking about. Am I supposed to know the exact point in time that she's referring to? Is there a reason why to opportunity to watch it has, implicitly, passed? No, we just don't speak the same language. "Did you do the laundry?" Had we scheduled it? Has the opportunity to do laundry passed? "Did you make coffee?" No, and rejoice, my love, as the time of making coffee is still upon us. "Did you eat lunch yet?" ...excuse me? Are you a five-dimensional being?
- kayodelycaon 2y ago
  I don’t think anyone in the past used spoken language with the precision you’re describing. English isn’t a programming language. All of the questions you’re asked are abstractions of a different question or a series of questions. Many of them have multiple meanings and you pick the most likely set based on context.
  - globnomulous 2y ago
    I was being a bit tongue in cheek, and my partner does tell me she has never met anyone more literal or rigid. So I take your point -- and it's fair. That being said, many in the UK do use the simple past and perfect exactly as I've described. Using the simple past where the perfect is expected is, to their ears, unmistakably incorrect, whereas plenty of native speakers in the US draw no distinction whatsoever.

yCombLinks 2y ago

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"

whycome 2y ago
I believe for me that’s Y’all’da - you all woulda.
- banannaise 2y ago
  "woulda" is just rewriting "would've" to match the speech pattern.
- binarymax 2y ago
  Keep working on this we’re getting really close to an American yodel.
  - fat_cantor 2y ago
    The functional equivalent of yodeling is 'hollerin', which old timers in the mountains used to do every morning
joshdavham 2y ago
I use something similar with y’all’re (= you all are).
pavel_lishin 2y ago
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.
- schindlabua 2y ago
  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.

qntmfred 2y ago

I spent the first half of my childhood in Massachusetts and the second half in North Carolina. I say y'all all the time. Truly an excellent word.

irrational 2y ago

You can’t spell Y’all Qaeda without Y’all.

PopAlongKid 2y ago

Florence y'all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence%2C_Kentucky#Arts_and_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence%2C_Kentucky#Arts_and_...

jihadjihad 2y ago
Incredible. I've driven by it many times and have never learned the origin story: > Built in 1974, the tower originally advertised the up-and-coming Florence Mall, as part of an agreement with the mall developers who donated the land for the tower. But because the mall was not built yet, the tower violated highway regulations, and the city was forced to change it within a short deadline. Rather than repaint the entire tower, they simply painted over the two vertical lines of the "M" to create a "Y". The intent was to change it back when the mall was built, but the local residents liked the tower's new proclamation, so the city decided to leave it as it was. The water tower has its own Wikipedia page [0], which includes a photo of it before the "alteration" too. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Y%27all_Water_Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Y%27all_Water_Tower

jongjong 2y ago

The part about 'you guys' resonates. I teach an introductory coding class and found myself saying 'you guys' to a mixed-gender group and it didn't feel right. Especially given that there were a smaller number of women in the group. I was wondering to myself if such language might make women feel excluded or stigmatized somehow depending on the context.

narski 2y ago

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.

selenography 2y ago
I see this endlessly repeated across the Internet, but it doesn't work. -n't is not a general-purpose clitic the way -'d and -'ve are; it can't attach to arbitrary words. ("Well, Mary'd _said_ she was gonna, and the rest of 'em've all gone home.") 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.

ubermonkey 2y ago

Texas Monthly defending "y'all" is an absolute peak Texas Monthly moment.

ssimpson 2y ago

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.

Beermotor 2y ago
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.
- yamazakiwi 2y ago
  Also saying things are a feature of Texas is a feature of Texas.

Cushman 2y ago

This is amusing. So… if one plans to publish their baroque opinions on English grammar… one should really know that conversational “y’all” is prescriptively a high status marker in the academy. I picked up the habit in Massachusetts, in the mid 2000s, from an Ivy League humanities professor who also expressed support for a student debt strike. He used it very deliberately, in an effort to un-train our public school–addled brains from the inanity that we were somehow smarter than others for having fewer words in hand. In my bones, the thought of not using it as appropriate feels uneducated. Using “y’all” in conversation shows incredible confidence, a way to flex command of formal language in an informal setting. It’s often used with emphasis. It leverages the listener’s discomfort, saying: I know precisely which register I’m speaking in. It’s an “elite” thing to do. What you’ll never hear is one of these people using “y’all” as a formal address— especially as a singular, as in the rote “Y’all been served?” for a dining party of any number. There are a number of reasons for that, but number one is simple: It’s a high status signal. Edit to add: Maybe importantly, this doesn’t extend to the casual use of “all y’all” . I think the colloquial academic equivalent would be “you [emphasized pause] all”. If you weren’t familiar you’d probably transcribe it as “you all”, but it’s closer to “you, all”. Looking at it now, I think that’s “intentional abuse” of the formal variant for intensifying, with just enough stress to make it visibly intentional? But I should be clear I haven’t studied this dialect at all, I just learned to speak it :)

joshdavham 2y ago

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.

anon84873628 2y ago
If I'm recalling The History of English podcast correctly, "you" was originally the plural/formal 2nd person pronoun, while "thou" was singular. Eventually language did its thing and the default shifted. Now we think of "thou" as old timey and formal!
- joshdavham 2y ago
  We need to bring 'thou' back! Don't thou agree?

Slow_Hand 2y ago

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.

1-more 2y ago
y'all'd've

forgetfreeman 2y ago

As a lifelong southerner I find it mildly irritating when folks appropriate y'all. Y'all ain't from around here.

globnomulous 2y ago
Imitation is the sincerest form of cultural appropriation.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

kerkeslager 2y ago

I have political/social beliefs I believe are ethically right. It's tempting for me to think that people who agree with me, agree with me because my beliefs are right. But ultimately I think peoples beliefs (including my own!) are often a result of social inertia--I believe what the people around me believe--than any sort of logical reasoning process. Case in point: the NYT and its NYC-based journalists often[1] share political views with me, because we're both from major Northeastern cities. It's tempting for me to assume that the NYT is thinking reasonably, but then stuff like this comes up and... "Y'all" is just clearly a simple, elegant solution to a linguistic problem. I don't have strong feelings against "yinz" or "youse" except to say that even though I'm from an area where people say "youse", I think both these are harder to say. But "y'all" is clearly better than "you guys". Dismissing a linguistic solution as "slangy", "regional", or "ethnic", is frankly, idiotic, and I think it comes from one of the uglier parts of Northeastern big city thinking (and yes, this applies to West coast big cities too). The places city folks dismiss as "flyover states" have a lot of smart people in them with good ideas. Yes, people in these places are often limited by a lack of education--a problem for which coastal cities are in part to blame. But a lot of good ideas don't require a lot of prerequisite education, and "y'all" is one of them. It's not "smart" or "educated" to dismiss "y'all", it's bigoted. I'm not from a place that says "y'all", and "y'all" is one of the first things I adopted when I moved to the south. John McWhorter should be embarrassed. [1] Less often in recent years.

paulmooreparks 2y ago

As a native Southerner, I was amused, and pleased, when I moved to Singapore and heard Singaporeans using "y'all" in everyday speech. :)

karaterobot 2y ago

It's hard for me to imagine not saying y'all because the NYT said to. It's a great word, get over it.

bitwize 2y ago

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.

brrrrrm 2y ago

"y'all" a particularly popular term in NYC (I use it frequently and have lived in NYC most of my life) - so it's kinda bizarre to see "texas monthly" responding to "new york times" as if there is any cultural conflict beyond some random linguist's op-ed. there was a heatmap published in the past (seemingly only saved by paywalled news organizations) that showed the prevalence of "y'all" in different areas.

Powdering7082 2y ago

I have noticed a large uptick in usage of y'all in the PNW in the last 7 years. I personally think at this point y'all doesn't need to be defended, it is on it's way to winning regardless of what NYT Opinion pieces think. Although reading the original NYT Opinion piece I do also agree with the premise that "you guys" has largely been drained of it's masculinity.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

kazinator 2y ago

"Y'all" is a highly intelligent contribution to the English language, which underscores the folly of having deprecated "thou". English has plurals engrained in its DNA; it resists changes that make it a plural-free language. Only a few words lack plural expression, like the words fish and sheep, or words that are inherently plural like pants, scissors or people. Since thou has become severely archaic, invoked only in religious contexts or ironic contexts parodying religious speech, you has become a plural-free word like fish. And that don't sit well with them Texans and other such folk.

kgeist 2y ago

On a related note, some languages distinguish between "we including you" and "we excluding you". I wonder why it's not a thing in European languages. Seems like a pretty important distinction in certain cases :)

TexanFeller 2y ago

I'm a little miffed that anyone would object to "y'all" or that anyone would take the objection seriously enough to feel the need to defend its use. Another Texanism comes to mind in response, the one that ends in "and the horse they rode in on".

ubertaco 2y ago

From the NYT article: >Some have even suggested “y’all,” a word that reads as much too slangy, regional or what you might even call ethnic to ever gain universal acceptance. Heaven forbid we embrace something that could be called "ethnic"! Something something must secure a future for our linguistic monoculture. I wonder if this writer would've written the same thing, but with "bruh" or "fam" swapped in: >Some have even suggested “bruh,” a word that reads as much too slangy, regional or what you might even call ethnic to ever gain universal acceptance. Probably not, as that would've been immediately recognized as racist (because "bruh" is ethnic, despite its recent widespread adoption, in the sense that its roots are in black-culture slang – just like how "y'all" is ethnic, despite its recent widespread adoption, in the sense that its roots are in southern-culture slang). I dunno why the NYT author feels the need to find ways to be linguistically xenophobic.