this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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I refuse to accept Texas' claim on y'all. Its a word collectively owned by everyone south of the mason-dixon line and I will fight to the death over this.
Signed, floridaman
…Am I not allowed to use "y'all", north of the 49th parallel? Do we have to bring back "thou" so "you" can be plural again? Or is this part of the Quebecois plot to force everyone to parler en français donc nous pouvons utiliser "vous"? C'est bien, anyway, j'suppose.
Fun fact:
"Thou" and "you" were the same word.
The "th" sound used to have its own character in written English called the thorn. When typefaces came along, it was excluded and sometimes replaced with a "y."
Also why "Ye" and "The" are the same.
Is it bad that I'm more bothered by "j'suppose" than the inclusion of "anyway"?
Well, I'm doing my best to import it into the New Zealand vernacular, we are South of the 49th.
So, uh, I dunno.
I hear it all the time. I use it sometimes
-just south of the 49*
It's not that it can't be used elsewhere. We just don't want Texas to take all the credit.
Take it from the south; it will kill them inside.
You can use yall but the "L"s are quieter the further north you go such that they're silent near the border
"How ya doin" is simply plural above the 49th
Everyone gets y'all. It fills the dumb gap in English where the plural of you is you. Now if we could only get a singular neutral 3rd for people that isn't also the plural.
E: Or we could start pronouncing They singular like latchkey, for a thee sound. So we can get fun words like they's (thees). It will also make English even more confusing for newbies. What's not to love?
If the plural of goose is geese, then the plural of moose is meese.
I approve of this message, are y'all with me?
So long as we can still claim "Y'all'd'nt've"
It's our greatest contribution to the lexicon and extremely efficient.
You can't, that's Appalachian territory.
It's also second person plural (or singular), second person is always ungendered.
First and second person, plural and singular are never gendered: I, you, we, you / y'all / all y'all. The only pronouns that are gendered are the third person singular: he / she / it. Third person plural (they) is also ungendered.
The most common form (at least where I'm from) of second person plural behind "you all (y'all)" is gendered: "you guys". It's used in an ungendered way increasingly commonly, but "guy" is still gendered to plenty of English speakers.
"Guys" is sometimes gendered, sometimes not. There really isn't a female-gendered equivalent to "you guys". You could say something like "you gals", but that's just not used. Most often you could say "could you guys follow me?" to a group of women and nobody would think twice about it.
As someone who grew up in North Carolina, I agree. Texas might be the first thing some people think of when it comes to "southern" states, but it doesn't get exclusive claim to the quirks of the whole region
I have never thought of Texas as southern (yes, I know they're the south-most state). Western movies were in Texas, so Texas is western (don't judge my very clearly faulty logic). South Carolina is south for sure. Georgia. Mississippi and Alabama are no brainers. But Texas? That's where western cowboys live... sorry.... cowyalls.