by Pa Rock
Wordsmith
I recently saw a posting somewhere on the internet, though I cannot remember where, which posed the question: What is the plural of "y'all"?
My own question in response was "What sort of person has enough time on their hands to worry about crap like this?," but then I thought about all of the people who spend their wretched days watching soap operas or seeking companionship by going to Walmart - and decided the least I could do to make their pitiful lives a little brighter would be to show some respect for the things that matter to them. So I chose to ponder their question as well.
The first thought that popped into my mind was "y'all" is already plural. It is a contraction of "you all," with "all" being a clear indication that it is inclusive of more than one person. But, in fairness, I have heard people use it in a singular sense: "Y'all can't be chaining that bicycle up to this here streetlight." Maybe it was like the word "deer" and could be both singular and plural.
I checked the internet - Google's AI Overview - and found that, in essence, it concurred with my thinking on the matter:
"Y'all is a colloquial contraction of 'you all' functioning as a plural form of 'you' in southern American English. It is used to address or refer to two or more people, similar to 'you guys' in other regions. While 'y'all' is primarily understood as plural, it can also be used in a singular context when referring to a single person within an implied group."
The person who posed the question originally could have taken the same route that I did and simply asked what George W. Bush used to (and possibly still does) refer to as "the Google," but that would have eliminated the human touch of kicking it around cyberspace with other depressed souls.
My next thought was that if the person wanted to make absolutely certain that the use of that contraction would be seen as plural by anyone other than one of the current White House staffers or occupants, he (or she) could expand it to "all y'all." It would be ding-damned difficult to confuse that with a reference to just one person.
I also mentally drifted back to my earliest childhood recollections while living in a remote corner of the Missouri Ozarks, and remembered that at one time the contraction "you'ens" was also fairly common, but I haven heard "you'ens" since Hector was a pup. Have y'all?
2 comments:
I have lived in several southern states including Virginia, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. One of my fellow employees had spent some time in Missouri and quickly made fun of the Missourian use of “you all” as two words instead of the one syllable pronunciation of the contracted y’all. I never made any effort to speak like they did (meaning use of grammar, slang, or accent) except to pronounce the subject pronoun as one syllable. Don’t go to a Texas bar and say “You all talk funny down here.”
I frequently heard “all y’all”. Sometimes it was said with a slight smile, but it was mostly said with a straight face.
Concerning your use of AI to answer the question, my southern friends would argue:
-y’all is not “Southern American English“, it’s American English
-you all is used in Northern American English
-since you have to ask, you are engaging in cultural misappropriation
- there is an office somewhere in Massachusetts where some damned Yankee types in answers to the AI questions
-Hector is still alive and well at a research facility in South Carolina where they are studying the aging process.
After reading this post, one of my cousins emailed to say that she remembers the word "yuns" being used in our extended family when we were young. That's probably a variant on "you'ens." "You all" sounds more natural to me, and "y'all" puts me in mind of Blanche Devereaux on "The Golden Girls."
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