4 ms·
I once had a foreign friend comment on the unfortunate lack of a plural form for "you" in English. We Southerners tried to solve that problem ages ago with "y'
by Zikes 12y ago
I once had a foreign friend comment on the unfortunate lack of a plural form for "you" in English.
We Southerners tried to solve that problem ages ago with "y'all" but the rest of the country apparently doesn't care for it.
- bshimmin 12y agoWell, going back a few centuries further, we used to have thou/thee (nominative/objective singular) and ye/you (nominative/objective plural). For some reason we ended up with the plurals being used as the singulars and no proper plurals at all.
- colomon 12y agoAround here we use "you guys" for the second person plural, with the exact same amount of inherent gender reference as "y'all" has. (My wife's all-female college friends routinely refer to themselves as a group as "you guys", for instance.) Frankly, I sometimes use "y'all" in print, but as a non-Southerner feel like a poser saying it out loud.