"You all" usage in American English

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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Thu Jul 15, 2021 5:43 am

sirgregory wrote:One curiosity though is why they added the otros to nos. Again, in French they get by just fine with nous. And there would be no ambiguity if nos were used by itself in Spanish. So why was it added? Was it just to have that catchy nosotros/vosotros rhyme?


I know that Catalan has nosaltres / vosaltres, Italian noi-altri / voi-altri.

Some googling tells me French seems to have nous autres / vous autres as well.

I can imagine that nosotros etc. was originally an inclusive distinction.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby tractor » Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:45 am

sirgregory wrote: Thinking about the Spanish pronouns for a minute, the tú and vosotros are of course similar to the tu and vous in French. Spanish adds "others" to the vos. This seems unnecessary but I guess it makes sense ("you others"). I'm pretty sure this was because at one point vos also functioned as the polite singular (before being supplanted by usted), so presumably they added the otros to distinguish the singular and plural vos forms. It's actually very similar to what's going on with "you all."

It even got to the point where vos was not only used as the polite form, but also started to be used as the familiar form in the singular. This gave rise to the voseo phenomenon in Latin American Spanish.

sirgregory wrote:One curiosity though is why they added the otros to nos. Again, in French they get by just fine with nous. And there would be no ambiguity if nos were used by itself in Spanish. So why was it added? Was it just to have that catchy nosotros/vosotros rhyme?

Yes, most likely by analogy, between nos and vos, nosotros and vosotros. There was some room for ambiguity with nos too though, the "royal we": Nos, rey de España.

For those who don't know it, usted is historically a contraction of vuestra merced. That's why it grammatically functions as a third person pronoun.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby chove » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:06 pm

Dragon27 wrote:
kanewai wrote:Interestingly, "you" was once plural, and "ye" singular. English actually kept the formal version, and lost the informal version. Now we are recreating the plural with y'all & its variations.

'Ye' was plural, though, and in some forms of old English it was also used as a polite form (honorific) for singular person (and 'thou' was a familiar form). 'You' originated as an inflected form of 'ye' (like 'us' is an inflected form of 'we'), but somehow replaced both plural/formal 'ye' and singular/familiar 'thou/thee'.


The way I heard is that the Normans started using the plural "you" as a formal/respectful you, following the French example of vous, which stuck in a rigidly stratified feudal society. And then as the class barriers started to become blurrier with urbanisation, people started to use you instead of thou to err on the side of politeness and that ended up replacing thee (almost) entirely.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby tungemål » Thu Jul 15, 2021 2:04 pm

chove wrote:The way I heard is that the Normans started using the plural "you" as a formal/respectful you, following the French example of vous, which stuck in a rigidly stratified feudal society. And then as the class barriers started to become blurrier with urbanisation, people started to use you instead of thou to err on the side of politeness and that ended up replacing thee (almost) entirely.


That is interesting, and explains why English used the 2nd person plural as a formal address, while other Germanic languages use the 3rd person pronoun as the polite pronoun ("they"). In German you'd say "Könnten Sie mir helfen" - "they" meaning you.

It seems there is a shift towards needing a plural "you" in English. The question is why does it happen now and how did they manage fine without the plural you before?
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby sirgregory » Thu Jul 15, 2021 2:57 pm

tungemål wrote:
chove wrote:The way I heard is that the Normans started using the plural "you" as a formal/respectful you, following the French example of vous, which stuck in a rigidly stratified feudal society. And then as the class barriers started to become blurrier with urbanisation, people started to use you instead of thou to err on the side of politeness and that ended up replacing thee (almost) entirely.


That is interesting, and explains why English used the 2nd person plural as a formal address, while other Germanic languages use the 3rd person pronoun as the polite pronoun ("they"). In German you'd say "Könnten Sie mir helfen" - "they" meaning you.

It seems there is a shift towards needing a plural "you" in English. The question is why does it happen now and how did they manage fine without the plural you before?


In some older German writing I have seen Ihr (second person plural) used as the polite singular.

For example, from Snow White,

"Frau Königin, Ihr seid die Schönste hier,
Aber Schneewittchen ist tausendmal schöner als Ihr."
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby mentecuerpo » Thu Jul 15, 2021 3:42 pm

Thank you. I have learned about "You all" American usage.

My daughter, who is 11-yo uses it daily; we live in Phoenix.
I will not correct my daughter when she talks to my wife and me, and she says "you all." (there is nothing to fix here).

One more thing: The following does not contribute much to the discussion. I will say a disclaimer: I did not write that users of "you all" are uneducated. I wrote that in my opinion, "you all" usage sounded uneducated to my ears.

I did not wish to offend anyone with my post, and if someone takes offense or was offended, it was not my intent. If an apology makes you feel better for taking offense, I apologize to you all who took offense.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Thu Jul 15, 2021 4:02 pm

I’m from the west coast and I have never, not once, said y’all in my life. But that’s just regionalism, I have absolutely no problem with the term. I would like the same respect extended to “you guys” which is 100% gender neutral in my mind. Yes, I know “guys” isn’t gender neutral, but “you guys” is. Languages are funny like that.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby garyb » Thu Jul 15, 2021 6:38 pm

I'm sure I've seen "y'all" become much more common, at least online, in the last five years or so. It seems to be something of a fashion, and (and unfortunately continuing the negative stereotype) it appears to be particularly popular with "pseudo-intellectual" types (i.e. who think they're much smarter than they are) these days. Anyway in Scotland we say yous and that might also be considered uneducated. I tend to avoid it when writing or aiming for a high register, but use it quite commonly in everyday conversation.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby tractor » Thu Jul 15, 2021 7:01 pm

tungemål wrote:
chove wrote:The way I heard is that the Normans started using the plural "you" as a formal/respectful you, following the French example of vous, which stuck in a rigidly stratified feudal society. And then as the class barriers started to become blurrier with urbanisation, people started to use you instead of thou to err on the side of politeness and that ended up replacing thee (almost) entirely.


That is interesting, and explains why English used the 2nd person plural as a formal address, while other Germanic languages use the 3rd person pronoun as the polite pronoun ("they").

In Swedish the polite form (Ni) is the same as the 2nd person plural (ni), and that's also how it is in Norwegian Nynorsk (De and de).
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby mick33 » Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:09 pm

I've lived in Washington state most of my life and I haven't used "you all" or "y'all" in many years. These words are somewhat tolerated in casual conversations if the speaker has a noticeable Southern accent, but many people here really do not like them being used in any semi-formal or formal setting. I've actually heard people say that such usage proves the speaker is uneducated, ignorant or just too lazy speak the language properly.

I think these opinions are actually unhelpful at best and possibly even wrong since there are no other widely used 2nd person plural pronouns in English, but that's the common perception where I live.
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