this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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Y'all itself seems to be spreading, though.
It's contagious as heck. I've never been to the South but somehow y'all fitted itself into my lexicon.
True story: in the early 00s, my company was acquired by a Large Silicon Valley Company. LSVC sent a "business integration" team across the country (to Dallas, Texas where we were at the time) to welcome us into the fold. At these meetings, these Perky Northern Californian Women - they were all Perky Northern California Women, for whatever reason - opened with the following sentence:
"We'd like to welcome y....ya.....y'y'y'y'y.....YA UL(!) to LSVC."
Repeated throughout the meeting, the integration team kept stumbling over "y'all" instead of just saying "you" when talking to us. Clearly, someone thought that - being Texans - we wouldn't understand them unless the did.
At one point, one of us spoke up and said something like, "First, thank you for attempting to use our local dialect to talk to us. But, we can understand you perfectly well when you speak your native Northern Californian. Second, by way of correction, the word is just "y'all". Also, if you want to use the plural second person, like vous in French, you may say "all'y'all", but it is optional."
Absolute cringe.
Also, remind me what the difference between y'all and all y'all is again.
all'y'all is the plural second person form.
Sheriff, speaking to a number of bandits: All'y'all just put yer guns down and come out with yer hands up so we can end this all peaceful like.
Doesn't y'all refer to a plural group as well though? You can't call just one person y'all.
It can do both. As indicated, all'y'all is optional and probably falling out of fashion. While I'll use y'all in almost any sentence, I'll only pop out an all'y'all when adopting speech patterns around other native speakers.
When we are in foreign Romance language countries and guesting with people, we always teach them how to say hello in Texan. Once, in a farmhouse in Burgundy, I was eating dinner with a farmer and his wife. A simple meal of eggs stewed in wine, bread, and cheese. The conversation, in French, turned to speaking some English, and we offered to teach them how to say "Bonjour" in Texan. We taught them "Howdy, y'all." The elderly farmer sat back in his chair stroking his chin, then in a perfect country drawl repeated it back to us, sounding like a native Texan. We decided all farmers must have the same accent worldwide. EDIT: In fact, what most surprised us was that he nailed the initial H sound, something most people in France we encountered had trouble with.
We continued the conversation and said that in Texan, like French, there's a plural second person form equivalent to vous that we sometimes use, and it's all'y'all.
All y'all is broader, but I'm not sure how to characterize it. Like if you're talking to someone who is part of a team, saying y'all could ambiguously refer to the whole team, but all y'all unambiguously refers to the whole team.
Oh, okay, so just like "all of you" in other dialects, then.
I'd guess it's just not natural to have a missing pronoun like English has since the days of thou (which was the original singular).
I try actively not to use it, because I associate it with a backward culture.
I grew up in the southeast US and while I don't think I have a strong accent and have tried to cut other southern things out of my speech, I quite like "y'all". In my opinion it's the best gender neutral second person plural word. Most others are needlessly gendered or sound even weirder.
Y'all been spreading for a long time. It's just easier to use.