[HN Gopher] In Defense of Y'All
___________________________________________________________________
In Defense of Y'All
Author : scour
Score : 152 points
Date : 2024-12-17 20:12 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.texasmonthly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.texasmonthly.com)
| savanaly wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Only a true Texan can tell you the difference between "y'all" and
| "all y'all".
| hotsauceror wrote:
| "y'all'd've"
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| _< insert scream GIF here>_
|
| still, brilliant nonetheless.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| om'n'a go to the store soon!
| hotsauceror wrote:
| I think it would be, fixin' to go to the store.
| 4star3star wrote:
| "y'all'dn't've"
| thirdtruck wrote:
| Or a Georgian.
| desert_rue wrote:
| I believe the Georgian version is different. "Y'all" is
| singular while "all y'all" is plural.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Georgian here. No. "Y'all" has never been singular.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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__ wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > One might argue that "y'all" borders on a second person
| plural inclusive of the speaker
|
| So a first person plural?
| 4star3star wrote:
| I knew I explained that poorly. What I mean is that, in
| comparing "y'all" to "all y'all", a simple "y'all" is
| "you guys (and maybe me)" while "all y'all" is "you guys
| and not me".
|
| Grammatical constructs can have a lot of variation
| between languages, and there are certainly nuances that
| can't be expressed in English the same way that it can be
| in other languages. One thing we lack is a nuanced sense
| of past, while other languages have baked in ways to
| express recent past or distant past (e.g. Bantu
| languages).
|
| My proposed interpretation regarding "all y'all" is not
| academic, just a native feel, and I'm sure other native
| speakers could disagree.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| It means everyone with no exceptions.
|
| _Y'all can kiss my ass; ladies and polite company excluded
| of course._
|
| _All y'all can kiss my ass._
| rawgabbit wrote:
| It means "everyone with no exceptions".
|
| _All y 'all need to come to my BBQ tomorrow. I can't eat 50
| pounds of brisket by myself._
| mandibles wrote:
| This is the correct interpretation.
| o11c wrote:
| "all y'all" is an abomination.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Using numbers to ab6te words is an abomination. All y'all is
| fine.
| mrbadguy wrote:
| I'm not American and I totally agree. Y'all and all y'all
| are brilliant!
| giardini wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| Or Dr. Dre.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| As a non-Texan, I can usually tell the difference, since "all
| y'all" is generally followed by "muthafuckers".
| Finnucane wrote:
| I think that usage is common outside of Texas. A friend from
| Memphis uses it.
| delichon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| As a child of Appalachia, I suggest that we all compromise on
| you'ens, or as it's commonly pronounced yinz.
| nativeit wrote:
| +1
| was8309 wrote:
| sometimes a T is included - yintz
| summermusic wrote:
| Half my family says yinz, half my family says you'uns. They're
| both correct as far as I'm concerned.
| banannaise wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Canadian here using y'all every day. Might as well make it the
| formal English plural.
| XorNot wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!"
| Handprint4469 wrote:
| > "you guys" is sexist
|
| is it though?
| hatthew wrote:
| > to some ears
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| OP added that after the reply.
| xnx wrote:
| Though often used in a gender neutral way, "guys" is
| definitely more male than "y'all".
| fragmede wrote:
| but the question was about "you guys" which is a distinct
| phrase that happens to share a word.
| tylerflick wrote:
| IIRC guy part is actually descended from Guy Faux, which in
| itself is cool.
|
| (edit: fix grammar)
| aeonik wrote:
| Which 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 wrote:
| Fun litmus test, if the person challenging this assertion
| happens to be a straight male: "how many guys have you
| slept with?"
| NobodyNada wrote:
| I'd guess this depends on region/demographic, but at
| least in my circles on the west coast, "guys" is gendered
| when it's used to describe or identify people in the
| third person, but it's gender-neutral when used to
| address a group of people in the second person.
|
| So "the guys" or "how many guys" always refers to men,
| but "you guys" carries no implication of gender at all. I
| often hear people address groups consisting entirely of
| women as "guys", and nobody bats an eye.
| gregorymichael wrote:
| Yes agreed. In most regions/groups in America, "you guys"
| does not carry the same meaning as "a group of guys"
| Izkata wrote:
| Also for reference, these are "compound nouns" - a single
| noun composed of multiple words. No one has these issues
| with "ice cream", for example, but "you guys" really is
| just another one of these.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| I think it makes sense to say "you guys" is a compound
| noun, but the word "guys" can be used in this gender-
| neutral addressing-a-group sense outside of the phrase
| "you guys". For example: "Hey guys!", or "Guys, what
| should I eat for lunch?"
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It's not sexist at all, and anyone who objects to it on those
| grounds is flat out looking for excuses to be offended.
| kedean wrote:
| So you're willing to just brush off a large groups
| complaints with a phrase entirely meant to address groups?
| aeonik wrote:
| In communication there are senders and receivers.
|
| You can receive something a certain way that was not
| intended by a sender.
|
| It's important to try to understand the intent of the
| sender. In this case, many cultures sending the message
| "you guys" don't internally view this as relating to
| gender.
|
| You could try to change their culture because many people
| receive it wrong, or you could learn about the culture
| and try to change the receivers culture.
|
| Sometimes you can't accept the differences because it's
| perpetuates too much harm.
|
| Where to draw the line is an ongoing and difficult
| question.
| repeekad wrote:
| This reminds me of when they tried to de-gender Spanish and
| the vast majority of native Latinos hated it, Google still
| refuses to back down on "Latinx"
| gregorymichael wrote:
| "Sexist" does feel like too strong a word. "Gendered" perhaps
| more appropriate.
|
| "Guys" is certainly gendered, so I understand folks feeling
| like "you guys" is as well.
| slyall wrote:
| It depends. Are you attracted to guys?
| fragmede wrote:
| Depends. Is there a difference between the phrase
| "Handprint4469 like fucking guys", and "Handprint4469 likes
| fucking you guys", pointing over to your mom and your
| sister?
| queuep wrote:
| Maybe OP meant gendered?
|
| As 'guy' is normally a male.
|
| But sexist would imply that it degrades either women or men,
| which I don't think it does in this case?
| circlefavshape wrote:
| We still use "ye" for 2nd person plural in (much of) Ireland
| biorach wrote:
| Except of course working-class Dublin, where its "yous" or
| "yis"
|
| And I've heard "yousuns" in the North
| cjs_ac wrote:
| In Early Modern English, _you_ is inherently plural; the
| singular form is _thou_.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
| hprotagonist wrote:
| thou 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!)
| angrygoat wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I don't know for "you", but the French << vous >> (or e.g.
| vy, vie, etc.) are only formal in the singular form,
| otherwise they're just bog standard 2pp.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| We have an English equivalent for "todos vosotros" as well!
| dunham wrote:
| Old English had dual pronouns too:
| https://oldenglish.info/pro3.html
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| People in some parts of the UK say "yous" for second person
| plural. So it isn't quite gone.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| We also have that in some parts of Canada, rural & northern
| Ontario especially.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Rural Wisconsin too, though mostly the older generations.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| 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.
| shagie wrote:
| The Dictionary of American Regional English (I first
| heard about it in A Way With Words -
| https://waywordradio.org/johnny-on-the-spot/ )
|
| 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 wrote:
| We do on the West Coast of Scotland at least.
| axpvms wrote:
| We 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.
| ryandvm wrote:
| I did not know "ye" was second person plural. I'm bringing it
| back. Ye can thank me later.
| dartos wrote:
| Yeah "ye" as in "avast ye scallywags"
| DowsingSpoon wrote:
| No love for "yinz?"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinz
| alistairSH wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Yinz is literally the only evidence available that that part
| of PA isn't actually West Virginia.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Except that, in at least some circles, "y'all" can be used to
| refer to one person.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| When 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 wrote:
| There'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 wrote:
| Because Coke is Soda?
| hibikir wrote:
| In 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| This 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.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| On the west coast or northeast it would be very surprising to
| hear someone say it.
| mosburger wrote:
| I'm in Maine and say it all the time, but I'm _definitely_
| unusual in that regard.
| dingnuts wrote:
| an 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
| technothrasher wrote:
| Here in Massachusetts, I don't hear it often, but when I
| use it nobody even blinks an eye at it. It's well
| understood.
| tuveson wrote:
| Maybe surprising to hear white people saying it, but most
| black people (or people who grew up in predominantly black
| neighborhoods) throughout the US have been using it for a
| long time. I would assume that's a byproduct of The Great
| Migration.
| coldpie wrote:
| > Do many people actually see this as a novel word?
|
| Where I live, yeah. I live in Minnesota and I intentionally
| use "y'all" here because I think it neatly fills the need and
| I want it to catch on, but it definitely feels like an
| affectation. It's not something you hear unless someone is
| from out of town or going out of their way to use it
| intentionally (like me).
| throw18376 wrote:
| in northeast urban areas, if someone uses y'all it means they
| are probably a left-wing/social justice oriented person. use
| is correlated with "folks"/"folx". no idea why, maybe to
| replace gendered "you guys". weird but true.
| Spivak wrote:
| Yep, it also replaces "ladies and gentlemen" and is a more
| informal "people."
|
| I've heard of the the mythical gender neutral guys but
| having spent my life in classes and a career field where
| being the only woman is the standard, the amount of times
| folks are like "good morning guys... and girl" or "good
| morning fellas... and lady" is just comical at this point.
| Clearly speakers aren't imaging a mixed group when they say
| it.
|
| It's been the same for me in the midwest and northeast.
| axpvms wrote:
| Maybe it's that they were intending to address a group,
| but then realised that what they said might cause offence
| so they corrected themselves.
|
| I think it's not so much they imagined what they were
| saying before they said it, it's that they reached for
| the handy phrase for addressing a group without thinking,
| and then only afterwards realised it. At least that's
| what I would do.
|
| I wonder what it would feel like if I joined a majority
| female class and was addressed as "good morning ladies,
| and man". I've never been in the situation unfortunately.
|
| Another phrase would be good. I vote for youse all.
| kibwen wrote:
| Except that northeast urban areas are famously rife with
| transplants from all over the country, including me, who
| uses "y'all" because y'all don't know what "yinz" means.
| acureau wrote:
| Checking in from Louisiana, can confirm I hear and say
| "y'all" on a near daily basis.
| excalibur wrote:
| Yeah there are three types of Americans: those who say y'all,
| those who don't use it personally but are quite familiar with
| it, and no hablo ingles.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You can always find the imposter when you see ya'll written.
| Some people just don't understand contractions.
| ryoshu wrote:
| I'm from the midwest with family from the deep south. I've
| ported y'all to NYC, but it took some convincing to get folks
| to be comfortable with using it.
| jeffwask wrote:
| After moving to Texas, I adopted it for this reason. It's easy
| to slide in an no one will be offended.
| dylan604 wrote:
| After 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 wrote:
| I say Bolth instead of Both but never noticed until
| recently
| richardfontana wrote:
| I'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)
| 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 wrote:
| My native dialect is Italian-American South Philly, and
| "youse" occurs there too, although it may have literally died
| out by now.
| zdragnar wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| My grandmother fit that ethnic profile, and used "yous" as
| well.
| shagie wrote:
| Linked in another comment... The Dictionary of Regional
| American English
| https://www.daredictionary.com/search?q=yous&searchBtn=
| parpfish wrote:
| As 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 wrote:
| This would be plausible if I had ever heard a straight man
| talk about the guys he had dated.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Right, 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 wrote:
| Ok 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.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| There are plenty of other situations in English where the
| masculine plural is gender inclusive (probably because so
| much of English is borrowed from romance languages). For
| example, "actors" can refer to both male and female
| actors, "actresses" cannot.
|
| Identity politics has resulted in certain groups making
| concerted efforts to try to eliminate such usages, but
| it's still an ingrained part of our language.
| parpfish wrote:
| Singular example:
|
| If you call a plumber and they say "I'll send a guy
| over", there's no implication that it's male. Singular
| and genderless.
| zer8k wrote:
| Context changed the use of language. If you know any
| foreign languages you know two words that are more or
| less the same carry a different meaning in context.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Because it's for group greetings and not addressing
| individuals. e.g. My female friend from Long Island uses it
| to address her friends in group settings but never has
| referred to her wife as "guy" and neither has anyone I ever
| knew growing up in NY.
| cpburns2009 wrote:
| I don't think people outside the midwest understand just how
| ubiquitous "you guys" is here. After a previous time this
| discussion occurred on HN, I had to chuckle to myself when I
| heard my sister address a group of little girls as "you
| guys". It's our version of "y'all".
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Midwest? I thought it was just a West Coast thing! (Also
| extremely ubiquitous in SoCal.)
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| It's both
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/9cw3gb/you_guys
| _v_...
| Aloha wrote:
| SoCal it can also be replaced with dude/dudes
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| This is true. Sometimes I'll even address my wife as
| "dude"...
| troyvit wrote:
| Even as far west as Colorado we used it the same way when I
| was young. Then I got a job at an NYC company and the
| gendered-ness of it was frowned upon. I actually switched
| to "ya'll" and it worked great. All the New Yorkers just
| thought that's how Coloradoans talk. So, thanks Texas.
|
| Totally unrelated but this Blaze Foley song talks
| specifically about getting back to a place "where the
| people say ya'll." It's beautiful:
|
| https://blazefoley.bandcamp.com/track/clay-pigeons
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I am another Midwesterner who has largely switched from
| "you guys" to "y'all" (nit: ya'll is not considered
| correct spelling) after some lengthy and heated Slack
| discussions between Midwesterners and West Coast at
| $previousJob.
|
| P.S. Michael Cera does a nice cover of that song.
| troyvit wrote:
| Dude nice thanks!
| tayo42 wrote:
| That's just corporate culture, not NY
|
| I grew up using guys just to refer to group of people
| m3047 wrote:
| > All the New Yorkers just thought that's how Coloradoans
| talk.
|
| I love it. I blame France, specifically Remulac.
| Onawa wrote:
| My first job was as a host at Red Lobster. I was
| reprimanded for saying "How are you guys doing today?" as I
| was seating a group of ladies. 16-year old me was trying my
| best to be polite, but language changes over time and that
| was one of my first introductions to code switching.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > language changes over time
|
| But this language has not been changing over time. This
| was a dictate from HR departments, made up from whole
| cloth. If anything has changed over time, it's that
| "gals" has been an anachronism for a long while, outside
| of a few isolated corners of the Southern and Western US
| where it can still manage to sound cute in some contexts.
| We don't really need a special diminutive for groups of
| women.
|
| That being said, it's not formal language, it's chummy.
| If you're a 16 year old host at a restaurant speaking to
| a group of women older than you, you probably shouldn't
| be chummy.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I'd hardly call Red Lobster formal. "Red Lobster
| Hospitality, LLC is an American casual dining restaurant
| chain," according to Wikipedia.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Any interaction a 16 year old employee has with a group
| of strange women who are customers and are older than him
| should be respectful.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I maintain that the sentence shows no disrespect to my
| Midwestern sensibilities. It's considered common courtesy
| to ask someone how their day is going, and I don't
| consider "you guys" to be a sign of disrespect. In fact,
| it seems quite clear to me that the parent was attempting
| to be warm and welcoming.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Warm and welcoming sure but too casual, you guys IMO
| implies familiarity, I wouldn't use it with strangers,
| could be regional or generational but that's my rural
| Illinoian take. Y'all is more flexible.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Fascinating - I'm from Michigan, and I would say "y'all"
| sounds more casual to my ears than "you guys." Formal
| speaking (in contrast to casual speaking) often eschews
| contractions.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I agree with the other poster. Missourian and "y'all" is
| ridiculously less formal than "you guys". To me, "y'all"
| is specifically informal and is used in exactly that
| manner, even in corporate emails. It denotes a more
| conversational tone that's open to feedback. "You guys"
| does not exist within formal/informal for me, it's
| either, neither, or both, just depending on what you say
| around it.
|
| "How are you guys doing today" spoken at a red lobster is
| absolutely fine, completely normal language, whether
| spoken by the president or by a child. It's the single
| most ubiquitous and wholly normal greeting that i know.
| Corporate really over does it sometimes
| neom wrote:
| That manner of social formality set sail a good 25 years
| ago my friend. On one hand I find it a shame, it was
| useful, on the other, it was also often misused (still
| exists in Korea where I now live, and it's abused like
| crazy here).
| speakspokespok wrote:
| You spend too much time on a computer. Please stay out of
| the Midwest. Thank you.
| justin66 wrote:
| > I was reprimanded for saying "How are you guys doing
| today?" as I was seating a group of ladies.
|
| By one of the ladies, or by a manager who overheard you?
| ddingus wrote:
| Yep. When I first encountered it years ago, that was my
| take. You'll for Midwesterners. Cool.
|
| Well, I mooched it, and have seen it propagate here in the
| Northwest. Will not be long before it takes more general
| hold as we exchange people.
|
| I seem to be bumping into it here (PDX) area more these
| days.
|
| My favorite bit in all this is:
|
| "All Y'all" which is simply plural for "Y'all", plus a
| subtle bit of familiarity state info.
|
| If everyone is close, in agreement, likely to act as one,
| then "y'all" works for single as well as multiple people.
|
| All y'all gets invoked when the group has differences.
| Maybe a few couples, or some people are new, or may be
| disagreeable in some way.
|
| English is a lot of fun, because it allows for a very
| robust ad-hoc communication. Over time, the lexicon is
| never dull!
| JasserInicide wrote:
| It's a sentiment that's only come up in the past 15 years.
| Same with the "Latinx" bullshit (that white people came up
| with)
| parpfish wrote:
| latinx is nothing compared to "folx"
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Isn't "folx" lingo or jargon? Like, let me explain a
| bit...
|
| Just like "shade", "tea", and other queer lingo that was
| predominantly used within the queer community, "folx" was
| originally (in recent usage) a term that was used by some
| queer folk as a signal to indicate safety and
| inclusiveness.
|
| But like "shade", some outsiders heard that jargon and
| started using it in communities where it wasn't common,
| and didn't carry the original intent, and so it looked
| confusing or annoying.
|
| I think it's fine for communities to have vernacular
| words that are understood within their community, I
| suspect the real "villains" here to you are the folk who
| pull that jargon out and try to make it widespread.
| zahlman wrote:
| People absolutely say "folks" in person nowadays (of
| course you wouldn't be able to hear a distinction between
| "ks" and "x"). It's common (although, yes, mediated by
| subculture) around where I live.
|
| I grew up in a culture where nobody had a problem with
| "you guys". I am really not that old, and I still live in
| the same city.
|
| As for "not carrying the original intent" - I don't see
| how there's any meaningful difference in intent.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Folx is exclusively a written construct. It's not the
| same as folks. They do sound the same though.
|
| > I grew up in a culture where nobody had a problem with
| "you guys".
|
| Did no one have a problem? Or did no one voice a problem?
| I'd believe the latter, but I don't know how it would be
| possible to know the former.
| pessimizer wrote:
| These are all black American words, not "queer lingo."
| Other than "folks" which is Southern, but comes to upper-
| middle class white people through Obama's act of
| pretending he had ever met black Americans before college
| at UCLA.
|
| They come from the long tradition of gay men copying
| black American female mannerisms, not anything "queer."
|
| > I suspect the real "villains" here to you are the folk
| who pull that jargon out and try to make it widespread.
|
| Gay men have contributed a lot to world culture, they're
| not villains.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Go watch Paris is Burning. They absolutely are Black
| queer lingo for decades prior to them becoming known
| outside Black communities. Which then became queer lingo.
| Which then became popular lingo.
|
| > Gay men have contributed a lot to world culture,
| they're not villains
|
| Absolutely, I never insinuated otherwise. I also don't
| believe it's villainous to share one's culture and lingo.
| But the op who objected to folx appears to think that it
| is bad. Take it up with them!
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Since when is "folks" limited to black Americans? It was
| being heard in households across America for 50 years
| from Loony Tunes and the news.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| They are referring to "shade" and "tea". Eg in "That's
| the tea. All tea, no shade."
|
| Meaning "that's the truth, the straight truth, no
| disrespect intended".
|
| These terms rose in popularity in the ballroom scene in
| New York. (Note: not ballroom dancing, but rather "drag
| ball" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_culture). The
| culture of that scene was predominantly Black and Latino.
| justin66 wrote:
| Latinx is a thing that's at least debated, if not widely
| used.
|
| I've never seen "folx."
| romanows wrote:
| Douglas Hofstadter rails against "you guys" in his 1997 "Le
| Ton beau de Marot", and I'm sure he wasn't the first.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Evidence that white people came up with Latinx? My sense
| was always that Hispanic leftists came up with it, and it
| was then amplified by their white leftist friends.
|
| Which is maybe a distinction without a difference, and I
| realize that you were probably just making a pithy
| statement. But I think its important if we want to examine
| how something like that actually came to be.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| It's true! But it's also imprecise because of that ambiguity.
| Take the following construction, "Now, all you guys are going
| to step off the dance floor."
|
| Which could mean everyone clear out, or just the fellahs.
|
| I don't get worried about people preferring a term that isn't
| "you guys", because it's probably an improvement to the
| language over all, even if it's some friction to change.
| cmurdock wrote:
| I don't think anyone would use that construction though in
| the midwest if they only meant the men. If they wanted all
| the guys to get off the dance floor they would say "Now,
| all the guys are going to step off the dance floor." "The
| guys" is much different than "you guys", at least where I
| live.
|
| Granted, it is murky so I also don't really care about
| switching to y'all. The only problem I have with "y'all" is
| that it is such a southern thing that using it to me with
| my midwest accent sounds forced and awkward (At least to my
| ears).
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| This doesn't seem ambiguous. "All you guys are" seems to be
| narrowing the focus of the sentence, because otherwise it
| would be more fluidly spoken as "all of you are", and it
| sounds unnatural to add to the sentence for no other
| purpose. (It sounds somewhat unnatural under either
| interpretation, though). If it had been "you guys are all",
| perhaps that would be ambiguous, but only with a strong
| emphasis on the word 'guys', which is not how the phrase is
| normally spoken. Either way I'd expect the dance teacher to
| be using hand gestures at the same time to indicate which
| people they're giving directions to.
| kube-system wrote:
| Right, the problem isn't that this usage is invalid, it's
| that it's highly dependent on a specific context.
| Minor49er wrote:
| "Guys" means "people". I have grown up in the Midwest as well
| where it's common to hear girls and women use it to address
| all-female groups. It's basically like how "mankind" or "man"
| is short for "humankind" or "human" and not for "male". These
| are also backed up in dictionaries that are more than a few
| years old
|
| One of my former employers only a few years ago announced
| that they would ban the term "guys" because some people
| thought it was sexist. The ban was droppped because many
| people openly objected to the needless censorship while
| others simply saw no problem with the word and naturally just
| kept on using it. It was around the same time when coders and
| real estate agents were working to ban the term "master" from
| everything
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I've said "you guys" all my life (grew up in the northeast)
| but I'm a professor and teach mixed-gender classes from all
| over the world. Plenty of people are completely fine with
| "guys" as a gender neutral term and express bafflement that
| there would be a problem. However: a non-trivial percentage
| find it weird, not necessarily because HR told them to, but
| because it really sounds odd to them. One person asked me
| if it would sound normal to ask "how many guys have you
| dated recently" and I took their point that this would
| indeed sound very gendered.
|
| The lesson is: things that sounded normal to you and your
| peer group growing up might not work in the larger and more
| culturally diverse world you encounter professionally. So
| why insist on them? I've switched to "you folks" which
| makes me sound like I'm about to lead a square dance, but
| people seem to find it disarming.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| (Non native English speaker) I find adressing a mixed group
| of people as 'you guys' has coolness to it. "You guys get the
| freakin' job done"
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Where I come from, everyone is "a guy".
|
| Gen Alpha (and younger Zoomers) are working hard to make
| "bro", "bruh" and "dude" gender-neutral[1] _everywhere_ - and
| they are succeeding. In decade, those complaining about "you
| guys" will seem quaint.
|
| 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/teenagers/comments/184ni9j/does_a
| ny...
| alberto_ol wrote:
| I 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
|
| 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
| stavros wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| In 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 the, where th is thorn,
| which wasn't available when the printing press came to
| England.)
| stavros wrote:
| Yep, exactly!
| scarmig wrote:
| Misread your comment as saying that thee wasn't informal
| =)
| stavros wrote:
| No, I edited it to clarify, I meant "it is informal, but
| that's not the distinction".
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| My 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 wrote:
| "Ya'll" is the spelling used by carpetbagger poseurs.
| gregw2 wrote:
| Fair point. I could/should have been clearer on that.
| shemtay wrote:
| Thou 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 wrote:
| In response, Prof. John Dyer recently created the "Y'all"
| version of the Bible: https://yallversion.com/
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| > "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 wrote:
| So, 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| In 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 wrote:
| > "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 wrote:
| Y'inz folks from Texas forgot about Pixburgh, n'at. We can
| second-person pluralize all day!
| jhbadger wrote:
| There'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
| adolph wrote:
| 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...
| lemmsjid wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| What about "youse mugs"?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| We thank thee, kindly.
| nyeah wrote:
| Meh, might as well try to bring back the Segway. If it's not
| cool, it won't catch on.
| harimau777 wrote:
| 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
|
| 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.
| kmm wrote:
| "will" used to mean "to want", like its cognates in Dutch or
| German still do. However, it's not really unusual, it's quite
| common for desiderative forms of verbs to evolve into
| expressing a future tense, something similar happened
| independently in a few Indo-European language families, like
| Greek, Albanian, Celtic etc...
| arjie wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| munificent wrote:
| The new second person plural is "chat".
|
| I can't decide if I'm making a joke or not by saying that.
| dmonitor wrote:
| it's not second person. it's not addressing anyone directly.
| it's addressing the audience in a specific context.
| riversflow wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Love this.
| graypegg wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| graypegg wrote:
| Ahhhh yeah I see what you mean. I'm probably thinking a bit
| too literally about 2nd person vs 3rd person. My example is
| an imaginary side conversation, where "you" = "Chat", so
| it's 2nd person, but the intent to me "feels" third person
| when spoken, as chat/God/Mike etc would never refer to
| someone in the room. (not that it matters in the context of
| labeling something 1st/2nd/3rd person in this case though)
| That's what's messing me up I think. Sorry about that.
|
| And your God example, yeah maybe this is not a new
| linguistic phenomenon haha. I can very much imagine some
| middle age priests taking a jab at one another with "God,
| are you seeing this?" as father Percival takes another swig
| from the hip flask.
| munificent wrote:
| It is definitely second person plural. I have heard my
| daughter use it (deliberately ironically) many times not in
| the form of questions, like "Chat, today we're going to be
| making toast."
|
| I admit that I have never heard it used in anyway except as a
| noun of direct address, so it may not be a full-featured
| second person plural pronoun.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I've heard it referred to as a "fourth person pronoun" in
| that it also breaks the "fourth wall", and the excitement
| that English is the first language to invent a fourth person
| pronoun.
|
| Though, I've also found Shakespearean scholars want to argue
| that while English did invent the fourth person pronoun,
| Shakespeare did it first with "Gentles" in several plays,
| most notably Puck's fourth wall break speech in Midsummer
| Night's Dream. (It is fun to give that speech with "Gentles"
| replaced as "Chat". To keep the rhythm you use the two
| syllable callout form of "Chat", which does exist in plenty
| of Twitch examples.)
| lilyball wrote:
| "chat" is a fourth person pronoun, it's a hivemind pronoun.
| Izkata wrote:
| ...which works both as an extension of first/second/third
| person pronouns, and "breaking the fourth wall".
| anotherevan wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| yinz needs worsh. it'll cool y'off.
| greenavocado wrote:
| 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: "voces" formally, but "ces" 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: "eseis" (eseis) formally, but informally "eseis oloi"
| (eseis oli)
|
| Russian: "vy" (vy) is standard, but "vy vse" (vy vse) is used for
| emphasis
|
| Arabic: "'ntm" (antum) is standard, with "ntw" (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 wrote:
| In both the Midwest and the South, I often hear "you guys'"
| (pronounced "you guyses").
|
| I'm enjoying you guyses thread.
| graemep wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Izkata wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| omae-tachi
| finnthehuman wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Let's not forget the second person negative and the wonderful
| contraction of "you all are not".
|
| y'aint.
| scoofy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| https://archive.is/88ING
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| In rural Ontario and some other regions there's also "y'ouse".
| CarVac wrote:
| I use y'all exclusively online.
|
| It's a bit too jarring for conversation aloud here in the
| northeast.
| laurentlb wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I thought 'they' is always plural? I, you, he, she, it, we,
| you, they.
| modestygrime wrote:
| They can refer to a single person.
| coldpie wrote:
| > I thought 'they' is always plural?
|
| You see someone two blocks away doing something unusual and
| say, "what are they doing?"
| alistairSH wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| jadyoyster wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
|
| You might just not notice it.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Oh, I know singular they is used/exists. I'm only
| pointing out that there is more precise language
| available most of the time, should it be needed - either
| she/he or adding details elsewhere in the conversation.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| They also refers to the abstract "one."
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| The resurgence of y'all as popular non-southern vernacular stems
| from White liberal terminally online users? Correct?
| brickfaced wrote:
| 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.
| skrebbel wrote:
| 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!
| harimau777 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I hadn't considered y'all the English equivalent of vosotros,
| but this makes perfect sense.
| wepple wrote:
| What's your word for it?
| harimau777 wrote:
| In Chinese it would be Ni Men . Pronounced "ni men". The
| first character means "you" while the second character means
| "the previous noun is plural".
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| In Spanish it would be "Ustedes".
| 1-more wrote:
| Spanish is a fun example of the euphemistic treadmill
| applying to pronouns. Usted comes from "vuestra merced"
| meanining "your (plural) mercy" but refers to a singular
| person. We can take that to mean that the second person
| plural "vosotros" already was a plural-meaning-formal-for-
| singular thing and then that wasn't enough and we got
| another word based on it. Fascinating!
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Hooray for Texas!_
|
| "Y'all" didn't originate in Texas. Or, rather, nobody's really
| sure where it started, but it definitely isn't unique to Texas
| and more likely came from the Deep South.
| greentxt wrote:
| "Folks"
|
| "Do you folks need more time?"
|
| The problem with "people" is it sounds vaguely rude or hostile.
|
| "Do you people need more time?"
| dingnuts wrote:
| if y'all is too "ethnic" for John McWhorter (I find this
| characterization disappointing compared to some of his other
| work) certainly "folks" is even more cultural appropriation
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > The problem with "people" is it sounds vaguely rude or
| hostile.
|
| That seems like a projection. Most people I know would be
| fine with it.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| I don't know who you know, but most people I know would not
| be fine with it in every context. "You people" is widely
| considered pejorative, and any speaker who cares about
| communication should be aware of that.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/EnglishLearning/comments/w0zx8e/wh
| y...
| hx8 wrote:
| "You people" can have racists connotations inside the
| United States, so I wouldn't say that phrase casually when
| speaking to people in North America.
| banannaise wrote:
| That's "you folks" which I suppose would be "y'olks". I'll
| stick with "y'all", thanks.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| I also enjoy having a second-person plural in my lexicon. I
| took Latin in high school and often got a kick out of
| translating words in that case with a y'all.
|
| My Latin teacher was particularly great and enjoyed it too, in
| moderation. She liked when our translations had just a little
| bit of personal style to them, and it really helped me
| appreciate the craft that goes into a good translation. It
| takes a bit of artfulness to translate a 2000 year old
| sentence, using all the same words, conveying all the same
| meaning, but make it feel natural and readable too.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| 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.
| OJFord wrote:
| The direct translation is 'you', surely you're not similarly
| confused when translating say a gendered 'the' or something?
| It's a _lossy_ translation sure, but it is correct, you don 't
| need regional dialect to be able to do it; depending on
| audience 'you' is in fact a much _better_ translation.
| stavros wrote:
| "I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to you".
| robocat wrote:
| Maybe use yous/youse in other English speaking countries
| (England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South
| Africa): https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/yous (informal
| situations)
|
| If you have a strong US accent or a drawl then perhaps stick
| with y'all.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| I like _y 'all_ when it's used naturally by Texans and
| Southerners, but when it comes from the mouth of a r*dditor, it's
| cringe.
|
| I think the cringe comes from two things:
|
| 1. r*ddit types (liberal, "bugman", "soy boy", etc.) typically
| use it when they're trying to be smug, "Yall just gonna pretend
| like...?" is a common r*dditor quip.
|
| 2. The phrases that the r*dditor typically uses with _y 'all_ are
| distinctly black American English phrases (like the example
| phrase in my first point) and it just seems like they're trying
| to adopt that language as a a way to signal their identification
| with "the black community". Seems forced and virtue-signaly.
| treetalker wrote:
| Ye need Jesus.
| mosburger wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I'm from Maine and say it all the time as well :)
| causi wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| Y'all has been here to stay in the mainstream for a good long
| while. It really needs no defending. Bless your heart
| treetalker wrote:
| Anyone enjoying this thread might like the "A Way with Words"
| podcast.
|
| https://www.waywordradio.org/
| maxehmookau wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I believe for me that's Y'all'da - you all woulda.
| banannaise wrote:
| "woulda" is just rewriting "would've" to match the speech
| pattern.
| binarymax wrote:
| Keep working on this we're getting really close to an
| American yodel.
| fat_cantor wrote:
| The functional equivalent of yodeling is 'hollerin', which
| old timers in the mountains used to do every morning
| joshdavham wrote:
| I use something similar with y'all're (= you all are).
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| fat_cantor wrote:
| Never heard anyone pronounce the v in that one, it's always
| Y'all'd'a, as distinguished from y'all'odda (you all ought to).
| Similarly we have y'ontu? (do you want to?). Jeff Foxworthy has
| a bunch of these examples
| yCombLinks wrote:
| I'm a very formal hick
| seandoe wrote:
| Widjadidja?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Not to leave out Younta? (you want to?). I've never seen anyone
| try to punctuate that one though
| qntmfred wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| You can't spell Y'all Qaeda without Y'all.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| Florence y'all.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence%2C_Kentucky#Arts_and_...
| jihadjihad wrote:
| 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
| jongjong wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Texas Monthly defending "y'all" is an absolute peak Texas Monthly
| moment.
| ssimpson wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Also saying things are a feature of Texas is a feature of
| Texas.
| Cushman wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| y'all'd've
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| As a lifelong southerner I find it mildly irritating when folks
| appropriate y'all. Y'all ain't from around here.
| globnomulous wrote:
| Imitation is the sincerest form of cultural appropriation.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| As a native Southerner, I was amused, and pleased, when I moved
| to Singapore and heard Singaporeans using "y'all" in everyday
| speech. :)
| karaterobot wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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.
| kazinator wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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".
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