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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
by 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 agoPeople in some parts of the UK say "yous" for second person plural. So it isn't quite gone.
- cmrdporcupine 2y agoWe also have that in some parts of Canada, rural & northern Ontario especially.
- zdragnar 2y agoRural Wisconsin too, though mostly the older generations.
- cmrdporcupine 2y agoIt'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.
- shagie 2y agoThe Dictionary of American Regional English (I first heard about it in A Way With Words - https://waywordradio.org/johnny-on-the-spot/ https://waywordradio.org/johnny-on-the-spot/ ) https://www.daredictionary.com/search?q=yous&searchBtn= https://www.daredictionary.com/search?q=yous&searchBtn= While I don't have a subscription to it (I haven't justified $50/year for that to myself) you will see that "youse" comes up with an "explore more" for Great Lakes, North Midland, and Northeast and "youse-all" shows up as Middle Atlantic.
- cameronh90 2y agoWe do on the West Coast of Scotland at least.
- axpvms 2y agoWe also say "youse" in Australia (or at least my region of Australia, it's definitely informal though) Since moving overseas and studying other languages (Slavic and Baltic languages) I think it's definitely something needed in English. I think I still use youse, I never note it. It's just something that's so naturally useful it wouldn't occur to me that I'm saying something weird or forced.
- circlefavshape 2y agoWe still use "ye" for 2nd person plural in (much of) Ireland
- biorach 2y agoExcept of course working-class Dublin, where its "yous" or "yis" And I've heard "yousuns" in the North
- Handprint4469 2y ago> "you guys" is sexist is it though?
- hatthew 2y ago> to some ears
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y agoOP added that after the reply.
- xnx 2y agoThough often used in a gender neutral way, "guys" is definitely more male than "y'all".
- fragmede 2y agobut the question was about "you guys" which is a distinct phrase that happens to share a word.
- tylerflick 2y agoIIRC guy part is actually descended from Guy Faux, which in itself is cool. (edit: fix grammar)
- aeonik 2y agoWhich itself seems to be related to the word "guy" as in "guy wire" also related to "guide", "guidance", or "guidelines". Meaning to lead, direct, or conduct. To show the way.
- gregorymichael 2y agoFun litmus test, if the person challenging this assertion happens to be a straight male: "how many guys have you slept with?"
- cjs_ac 2y agoIn Early Modern English, you is inherently plural; the singular form is thou. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
- hprotagonist 2y agothou is the singular intimate. (compare the tu- form, in french). You could be singular or plural, but it was always formal. (compare the vous- form, in french) Knowing this puts a whole new spin on things like the KJV, since as moderns we hear "thou" and think "fancy old timey speech! very formal!" and it is exactly the opposite. Quakers/Friends chose the thou- form as the preferred form to address everyone; this was part of their scandalous behavior at the time, because it was heard as being entirely improper. (For their part, Quakers figure we're all equal before God, so why pay too much attention to social status? -- and that's not a bad point, really!)
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- angrygoat 2y agoI was taught Biblical Hebrew by an Australian scholar who learned hers in the south of the US, and I picked up from her the habit of translating the second plural as "y'all" :-) You can of course do the same with Greek. For some reason I preferred "y'all" to the more Australian "youse."
- shakow 2y agoI don't know for “you”, but the French « vous » (or e.g. вы, вие, etc.) are only formal in the singular form, otherwise they're just bog standard 2pp.
- anonymoushn 2y agoWe have an English equivalent for "todos vosotros" as well!
- dunham 2y agoOld English had dual pronouns too: https://oldenglish.info/pro3.html https://oldenglish.info/pro3.html
- ryandvm 2y agoI did not know "ye" was second person plural. I'm bringing it back. Ye can thank me later.
- dartos 2y agoYeah “ye” as in “avast ye scallywags”
- DowsingSpoon 2y agoNo love for “yinz?” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinz
- alistairSH 2y agoI love "yin"! I have a few friends from western PA and love when they're around so I can use "yinz" freely. Neither of them really use it in day-to-day speech, it's more of a shibboleth of sorts (or whatever the term would be for "look at me, I'm from group X"). Whatever, it's a fun word.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoYinz is literally the only evidence available that that part of PA isn't actually West Virginia.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoI hadn't heard that one. My ex-father-in-law (from an Appalachian upbringing) was big on "you 'uns". "Yinz" reminds me of that.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoExcept that, in at least some circles, "y'all" can be used to refer to one person.
- madcaptenor 2y agoWhen this happens the other people are implicit: for example "have y'all got Coke?" to a waiter at a restaurant, where "y'all" refers to all the people involved in the restaurant. (The answer one does not want to hear, at least in Georgia, is "is Pepsi OK?")
- photonthug 2y agoThere’s a lesser known ironic variation where y’all is sort of the opposite of the “royal we”, aka the majestic plural. To take someone down a peg if they seem full of themselves, you can use the majestic singular satirically. As in: I just got a fancy new car! Gosh, did y’all get seat warmers with it too?
- actionfromafar 2y agoBecause Coke is Soda?
- hibikir 2y agoIn said circles you can use the bigger plural, "all y'all". And yes, this is a real expression that is used in parts of the US, not pure comedy.
- paulmooreparks 2y agoI grew up in the deepest of the deep South. Never did I ever hear "y'all" refer to a single person. I don't know where this trope originated. "Y'all" is definitely plural.
- ubertaco 2y agoSeconded. In my entire North Carolina + Georgia upbringing, with frequent visits to Tennessee and back to NC, and some visits to South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama...never once have I heard y'all referring to a single person. It's literally a contraction for "you all". That doesn't make sense for talking to one person.
- mystified5016 2y agoThis whole thread is extremely confusing to this Appalachian native. Y'all is used quite widely throughout the entire southeast. It's recognized, if not used, through the entire country. I've also seen its use increasing in the Midwest as it seeps out of the south. Do many people actually see this as a novel word? It's incredibly common from my perspective here in Ohio.
- _yb2s 2y agoOn the west coast or northeast it would be very surprising to hear someone say it.
- mosburger 2y agoI'm in Maine and say it all the time, but I'm definitely unusual in that regard.
- dingnuts 2y agoan aggressively progressive set of new yorkers practically bullied me into using it a decade ago over concerns of sexism so at least when talking about people in those places in tech I can't say I share your experience. lots of coastal progressives say y'all nowadays. it's "inclusive" I also hear people say "folks" when that is also borrowed from Southern US English I say y'all because it has one less syllable than the other options while retaining clarity
- mock-possum 2y agoYeah in the PNW, I commonly hear the progressive/inclusive “y’all,” the AAVE “y’all,” and the southern transplant “y’all” - but personally I never use it unless doing it satirically. I wasn’t raised to say it, and unfortunately I’ve got this lingering association with southern racist / ignorant hillbillies usage the term. “Y’all better get along now y’hear?” So it always feels weird coming out of my mouth.
- technothrasher 2y agoHere in Massachusetts, I don't hear it often, but when I use it nobody even blinks an eye at it. It's well understood.
- jeffwask 2y agoAfter moving to Texas, I adopted it for this reason. It's easy to slide in an no one will be offended.
- dylan604 2y agoAfter moving away from Texas, y'all was the one obvious thing that would give me up. I don't have a Texas drawl unless I'm really tired or putting on airs. Howdy was another one, but used much less frequently. Another word from Texas that drives me crazy is "heighth". I don't know why people add the h at the end when they say it, but nobody spells it that way.
- yamazakiwi 2y agoI say Bolth instead of Both but never noticed until recently
- richardfontana 2y agoI'm not sure I've ever heard anyone use "youse guys", but "youse" without "guys" is indeed a now-archaic New Yorkism. However, it doesn't have any particular connection to Italian-American New York other than the fact that "youse" was a native New York dialect formulation that US-born children of Italian immigrants, along with many other ethnic groups, adopted naturally. I understand that "youse" is prevalent in a number of dialects in Ireland and England and presumably spread to New York City through earlier waves of immigration from those places, assuming it wasn't independently re-invented. If I am remembering correctly, "youse" or "yiz" is used in dialogue in Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie:_A_Girl_of_the_Streets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie:_A_Girl_of_the_Streets) which depicts late-19th-century Irish-American New York characters. My sense (as a native New York person who grew up around an older generation many of whom naturally used "youse") is that use of "youse" may have been somewhat correlated with being a member of a European-descent pre-WW2-immigration-origin Catholic-identifying ethnic group (so, in particular, Irish, Italian, German), but I'm not even sure that's so. By the time I was growing up, "youse" was a class and (maybe secondarily) ethnic marker, largely rejected by the Baby Boomers and later generations in favor of the more nationally standard "you guys". If the seemingly redundant "youse guys" occurs at all it must be an odd conglomeration of the older and newer usage.
- madcaptenor 2y agoMy native dialect is Italian-American South Philly, and "youse" occurs there too, although it may have literally died out by now.
- zdragnar 2y ago"yous" (slightly different s sound) is also common among the rural older generations in German and Dutch immigrant areas. My grandma used it all the time, though not with the double plural "youse guys", just "yous"
- bitwize 2y agoMy grandmother fit that ethnic profile, and used "yous" as well.
- parpfish 2y agoAs a native midwesterner, I get more annoyed and defensive than I should when people complain that “you guys” isnt gender neutral. Where I come from, everyone is “a guy”. It can mean “male person”, but that’s only if you use it in specific contexts that brings up gender (like saying “guys and gals”).
- giraffe_lady 2y agoThis would be plausible if I had ever heard a straight man talk about the guys he had dated.
- Ajedi32 2y agoThe context of dating makes it no longer gender neutral. ("Guys and gals") But I've definitely heard people refer to groups composed entirely of women as "you guys".
- giraffe_lady 2y agoI've still never heard, for example "this guy" when referring to eg a specific female coworker. I live in the midwest. "You guys" is frequently used as a genderless plural sure I guess but "guy" is not gender neutral.
- Ajedi32 2y agoRight, it's only the plural that's gender neutral. Kinda like how in Spanish "abeula" means "grandma", "abuelas" means "grandmas", and "abuelo" means "grandpa", but "abuelos" means "grandparents", not "grandpas". The masculine plural is gender inclusive in most contexts.
- giraffe_lady 2y agoOk but that's a different claim than the one I was originally replying to. And anyway the masculine plural being genderless is a convention of romance languages, which english is not. It is not useful or consistent to describe expectations for english usage in terms of the features of other languages. Negative concord and invariant be are common language features globally but you don't hear white americans scrambling to include them in standard usage.
- alberto_ol 2y agoI thought that Thou was informal, froma wikipedia "For a long time, however, thou remained the most common form for addressing an inferior person" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou#History Also in etymonline "By c. 1450 the use of thou to address inferiors gave it a tinge of insult" https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=Thou https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=Thou
- stavros 2y ago"Thee" isn't the informal form of "thou", it's the oblique form, ie "the bell tolls for thee", you'd never say "the bell tolls for thou", no matter how formal or informal.
- scarmig 2y agoIn early modern English, thou and thee were both the informal 2pp, with thou being the subject pronoun and thee being the object pronoun. Thou/you is similar to tu/vous. Eventually, thou became archaic, and we think of archaic words as being more formal. (Aside: In Middle English, ye was strictly plural, but ye became acceptable as formal singular as well, again paralleling vous. And as an additional aside, in the "ye olde English" phrase, the ye is actually þe, where þ is thorn, which wasn't available when the printing press came to England.)
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- HelloMcFly 2y agoI think it's a bit of a stretch to say "y'all" somehow belongs to Texas, it's roots are almost certainly in other areas of the South and Appalachia where it is still used just as frequently as it is in modern-day Texas.
- troyvit 2y agoMy friend from North Carolina gave me a t-shirt that's just an outline of the state, and "Ya'll" on the front. So I think you're right.
- prepend 2y ago“Ya’ll” is the spelling used by carpetbagger poseurs.
- troyvit 2y agoWow. Way to pick a hill.
- HelloMcFly 2y agoIt's not worth a fight, but I can confirm I've only seen "ya'll" written by non-southern or Appalachian residents. I'm not saying it doesn't happen or shouldn't happen, but it would make me wonder about whether someone has adopted the word as a choice vs. it being just a word in their normal vocabulary.
- prepend 2y agoIt’s funny to think I’m picking a hill, just by pointing out an observation. It seems like hyperbole to say my comment was picking a hill to die on.
- gregw2 2y agoFair point. I could/should have been clearer on that.
- extra88 2y ago
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- shemtay 2y agoThou and Thee are nominative and objective cases. Same for You and Ye. The formality/informality distinction is between You/Ye and Thou/Thee. Plural 2nd person used to formally address a single individual came to English from French, thanks to the Norman Conquest. French, I think, inherited it from Latin, and the custom of addressing the emperor with the plural. After a while it became rude to address people with the informal 2nd person singular. By the time of the King James Bible, iirc, English had already switched to universal "you", and "thou" was brought back in order to indicate where the source text had used a singular versus a plural. "What is thy bidding, my master" is therefore foreshadowing of later insubordination.
- otterley 2y agoIn response, Prof. John Dyer recently created the "Y'all" version of the Bible: https://yallversion.com/ https://yallversion.com/
- Dracophoenix 2y ago> "What is thy bidding, my master" is therefore foreshadowing of later insubordination. It's more likely the usage of "thy" in this instance was meant to reflect the style and largely supplicatory diction of the Pater Noster (i.e. "thy Kingdom come\thy will be done...")
- amalcon 2y agoSo, by analogy that most english speakers will understand: Use "thou" where one would use "I" if discussing onesself. Use "thee" where one would use "me".
- zahlman 2y ago> because it supports second-person plural via "Y'all" exactly as mentioned in this article... "you guys" is, to some ears, sexist Many people nowadays are happy to use "singular they" to refer to specific, definite individuals whose gender is not in question, and seem not to worry at all about creating ambiguity with the ordinary plural use of "they" (despite frequently doing so). So why would they care about being able to distinguish singular from plural in the second person, either?
- biorach 2y agoIt's usually very clear from context whether singular-gender-neutral they or plural-they is on use. "you" is most frequently used in direct address, a context where it is frequently necessary to distinguish between addressing an individual in a group or the group as a whole
- jchw 2y agoIn Michigan, "you guys" is as gender neutral as a phrase can get. I think it's kind of funny, but it's completely true. (And frankly, I think most of the language policing stuff like this is just vastly overthinking things anyway, but that's just my opinion.) That said, I got into a habit of saying "y'all" in high school anyways, mainly because it's fun to say.
- jancsika 2y ago> "Abandon hope all y'all (was: ye) who enter here!" I'll be the HN troglodyte who loves to build from first principles: Why not just "Abandon hope all who enter here?" Does that leave humanity open to lawsuits from corvids or something?
- maztaim 2y agoY'inz folks from Texas forgot about Pixburgh, n'at. We can second-person pluralize all day!
- jhbadger 2y agoThere's also "Yinz", these days mostly used in Pittsburgh (and even then mostly by older people). It is unfairly dismissed as "regional" in the article, but so are the others, really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinz
- reaperman 2y agoI believe y'all is growing substantially in geographic prevalence over the past 10 years or so. Most people who are exposed to it for a little while tend to assimilate it into their own lexicon surprisingly quickly - the gap in English is really a vacuum that very much wants to be filled. Personally, I desperately want a socially-adoptable singular vs. plural differentiation for "them".
- castillar76 2y agoYep, it makes a perfect second-person plural —- my Latin teacher always made us conjugate verbs as “I, you, he/she/it, we, y’all, they”. And then constructions like “laudate, omnes” became “all y’all, SING!”