Comments on: On the Proper Use of ‘Y’all’

By: rbeard

rbeard — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:28:20 +0000

Reply to No. 7–As I have said many times many ways: We NEED the pronoun ‘yall’. Here is more reasons why.

By: Dr. Goodword’s Language Blog » Blog Archive » How’s ‘Yall’ Doing?

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:47:40 +0000

[...] When my family sat down at the table in ‘The Egg and I” cafe in Boulder last week, the waitress dropped off the menus and said, “I’ll come back to help yall in a minute.” As someone who has been tracking the spread of the new pronoun yall (2nd person plural personal) for some time now (see my article and blog entry), I was curious as to where our waitres had picked it up. [...]

By: friscodog

friscodog — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:08:36 +0000

While attending graduate school at a major Southern university, I worked as a security guard for a sorority house. (Sounds like the set-up for a sit-com, I know.) I quickly learned to get over my Yankee aversion to “y’all.”

If the ladies were going out on Friday night, primped and dressed up, and I said “you look lovely tonight,” whichever one I happened to be looking at would glare at me: she thought I was hitting on her. But if I said “y’all look lovely tonight,” my compliment was graciously accepted.

Or: if you ask a clerk at the store “do you have X,” he or she might answer, defensively, “no I don’t.” But if you ask “do y’all have X,” you’re not putting them personally on the spot.

By: rbeard

rbeard — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:30:10 +0000

I remain convinced that “yall” is a single pronoun now filling the empty space in the pronoun paradigm for a plural of “you”. I hear it throughout PA and other states all the way to California. Every day more and more people become comfortable with it and, so long as it serves a need, fills a lacuna in the grammar, I see no need to fear or resist it.

By: Lorena

Lorena — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:11:42 +0000

I’m a native Calfornian and after VERY short stay in Tampa, Florida, Y’all hurts to hear everytime it’s said to me. It just never sounds correct nor does it sound educated = sorry y’all. I also learned that “across” becomes “acrosst” and to “wait on someone” is actually not as a server in a restaurant, but instead, to “wait FOR someone”…. Anymore actually means nowadays — “Parking is so expensive anymore” … and the list goes on and on! In my humble opinion, it does not sound quaint, nor does it sound educated.

By: Tim Ward

Tim Ward — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 05:35:04 +0000

Your comments about inviting people to your home in the South are perfect. It really made me laugh to read them, and to be reminded of how subtle the cultural characteristics and charms can be in our various regions of the US.

I can’t imagine hearing some polite Southern lady say to a man, “You come see me sometime!” Obviously, that’s quite the improper gesture!

By: rbeard

rbeard — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 13:38:00 +0000

Chris,

Where I come from we also have possessives: yall’s, I’ve even heard yalls’s, as in, “Sombody just ran over yalls’s dog.”

Yall is spreading and in many areas it is already a fully fledged pronoun on a par with I, you, he, she, it.

–RB

By: Chris Saunders

Chris Saunders — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 21:05:04 +0000

One more thing – when I speak to my relatives in Tennessee or Mississippi — I hear them say “all y’all” quite a bit.

By: Chris Saunders

Chris Saunders — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 21:01:53 +0000

On a flight from San Diego to the East Coast a few years ago, a flight attendent struck up a conversation with me after she heard me say you all in a conversation. I grew up in Baltimore, where you all is fairly common, and y’all is less common.

Then my traveling companion said to flight attendent – “We don’t say y’all in California.” She incredulously replied: “Well, if y’all don’t say y’all. what do y’all say, anyway?” Classic.