"You all" usage in American English

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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby Deinonysus » Fri Jul 16, 2021 2:47 pm

Here is clip of Sokka from Avatar: the Last Airbender saying "your guys's": https://youtu.be/u4Pv_Y7Tge4?t=150

It jumped out at me as being a bit awkward. I personally use "you guys" as my second person plural pronoun but don't use "your guys's".
Last edited by Deinonysus on Fri Jul 16, 2021 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby Dragon27 » Fri Jul 16, 2021 4:36 pm

Lawyer&Mom wrote:I would absolutely say “your guys’s” but it sounds awkward. (I say awkward things all the time, even in my native language.) But I would never, ever write “your guys’s.” (Except I just did, twice… ugh.) There isn’t ever going to be a standard spelling for it. It’s just not used as written language.

Well, if it doesn't have standard spelling, then it shouldn't be a problem writing it as "your guys's" ;)
Anyway, English is notorious for its blatant disregard for orthography. Nevertheless, I think that we should try to preserve what little of it is left as the rules of the game allow us. Both spellings of this possessive pronoun exist on wiktionary:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/your_guys%27
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/your_guys%27s
with the same pronunciation. This creates inconsistency. Looking at the first spelling one may assume that it should be pronounced /ɡaɪz/ not /ɡaɪzəz/. Well, it may actually be pronounced that way. Here's even an article arguing for this pronunciation:
https://www.thecut.com/2016/11/your-guy ... -best.html
“Of course, one could differentiate it by treating guys as if it were a nonplural ending in s, adding an extra syllable, and saying ‘you guises,’ the way one would say ‘Jesusez’ (for ‘Jesus’s’) or ‘the Jonezez’ (for ‘the Jones’s’),” Yagoda writes. “But (in my admittedly small sample) I’ve never heard it pronounced this way, probably because it sounds childlike, if not childish.”

So one usage stands alone: your guys’, which sounds like “your guise” when you say it. It follows a beautiful, semi-syntactical logic: your guys’s sounds ridiculous, so don’t use that, and by moving you to your, all of sudden you’re signaling that you’re using the possessive, which makes the whole thing clear.

It argues for “your guys'” not just in spelling, but in pronunciation as well, because, apparently, "your guises" sound childish.
If we overcome this objection with increased usage so that it doesn't sound 'childlike' anymore, then it only make sense to accompany it with suitable spelling (which, apparently, appears in writing just fine). Otherwise we're creating another disconnect between the written and the spoken word of the kind that plague the English language since the dawn of printing. No reason to stop in the middle of the transition.

At the end of the day, of course, people pronounce it differently: “you guys'”, “your guys'”, “you guys's”, “your guys's”, and some other ways. Since there's no standard pronunciation, why should there be fixed spelling? If we intend to represent colloquial speech in writing, it makes sense to write it as it's pronounced.
Last edited by Dragon27 on Fri Jul 16, 2021 4:44 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby jmar257 » Fri Jul 16, 2021 4:41 pm

Lemus wrote:The real trick is figuring out the proper use of "all y'all" since it would seem logically that it is redundant.

In my experience it is used as a way to emphasize that there are no exceptions ("all y'all need to help" would imply that there are perhaps some in the group that might try to get out of it). I have heard that there are some people, in the south generally, who use y'all as a singular though and then all y'all as the second person plural although I personally don't run into many people who would use y'all as a singular.

I'm a Southerner and I have never heard anyone use y'all as a singular that I can remember. Typically all y'all used is either used to emphasize you mean the whole group or to speak about the wider group vs. a specific subset ("y'all are going first, but all y'all still have to do it"). Where I grew up everyone uses y'all, and I've even heard non-Southerners use it, but I've also met some yankees who dislike it (like a coworker, who insisted "you guys" was the correct plural--uh, no, it's "you" if we're talking formal English).

mick33 wrote: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.

It's funny, y'all is perfectly acceptable in all but really formal situations down here (i.e., I use it at work all the time unless it's something really important) and have zero qualms using it around non-Southerners even if they look down on it. It annoys me that people do but I think context is always king--it doesn't show a lack of intelligence to speak informally/with slang in informal situations, but if you can't turn it off when needed, that may be a clue. I would never walk into an important presentation throwing around "y'all" and "ain't".
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby IronMike » Fri Jul 16, 2021 11:51 pm

y'all's
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby thevagrant88 » Thu Jul 22, 2021 4:28 pm

We say, “yous” around here. Pronounced the same as “use”. Commonly combined with “guys” to say “yous guys”.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby IronMike » Fri Jul 23, 2021 12:31 am

thevagrant88 wrote:We say, “yous” around here. Pronounced the same as “use”. Commonly combined with “guys” to say “yous guys”.

This is my Aunt Donna! Do you also inflect the end of a question-sentence? When I was young, I would say that Aunt Donna "says" her question mark.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby sfuqua » Fri Jul 23, 2021 3:42 am

I've been amused at my own "you all" usage over the years. When I lived in Kentucky and Virgina, I used "you all" as my regular 2nd person plural pronoun. When I moved to San Diego to finish my undergraduate degree, I don't think I used it at all for years. After college, on my way back driving across the United States to Virginia from California, I first heard a "you all" come out of my mouth in Texas. Somthing about the accent... I've never lived in Texas, and I don't actually know if people use "you all" there... :lol:
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby thevagrant88 » Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:46 pm

IronMike wrote:
thevagrant88 wrote:We say, “yous” around here. Pronounced the same as “use”. Commonly combined with “guys” to say “yous guys”.

This is my Aunt Donna! Do you also inflect the end of a question-sentence? When I was young, I would say that Aunt Donna "says" her question mark.


For sure. Didn’t realize that was a dialectal thing lol.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby kanewai » Thu Aug 05, 2021 8:55 pm

As if on cue, from Lexicon Valley: Hey, Youse Guys!

Lexicon Valley wrote:Take youse as the plural you. English is odd in having one pronoun for you in both the singular and plural — “normal” English would have thou in the singular and you in the plural, and that’s how things began. Today, we leave the difference to context, and that indeed can make things a little muddy sometimes.

No wonder then, that Philly English tries to fix it with youse, and so diligently that youse has long since been sanded down to the shorter, faster “yiz” in casual speech.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby luke » Fri Aug 06, 2021 1:03 am

It has finally come together that "you guys" is similar to romance languages where hermanos (brothers and sisters), muchachos (boys and girls) is:

masculine(s) + feminine(s) = masculine(s)

"Youse guys" etymology may go back to Italian?

More peculiar when I hear a female addressing other females as "you guys". That never sounds quite right to me.

What about in spoken language when "mens" does not mean "men's"?

For the record, I'm a firm believer in y'all, although it took some years for me to catch on.

Tangentially, under what circumstances is it okay to give someone a coffee mug that says, "Don't be as stupid as I was"? :)

mentecuerpo wrote: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.


And I don't want to offend anyone either, but curious if you would find it as humorous as I do if your daughter got you a coffee cup as a stocking stuffer for Christmas this year.

(just for posterity, I was reading the thread backwards and it jumped out that ASICS anecdote brought together a heart warming gift giving situation that the family could enjoy for years).

And for completeness, the coffee cup was referring to my opening line in this post. The idea that it has broader applicability seemed apparent to me, but I'm usually wrong about this sort of thing. Maybe it's only a coffee cup that one can buy themselves. It does seem funnier if you find it in someone else's cupboard or on someone else's desk though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asics
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