"You all" usage in American English

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"You all" usage in American English

Postby mentecuerpo » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:06 am

I have been hearing a lot of "You all" when the speaker is addressing two or more people, it sounds a bit uneducated American English to me, but I am not sure about it. I am not a native American English speaker, but this is my observation.

My question, Is the "you all" a typical recent usage, or has it been there for a long time?

The interesting thing is that in English, the same pronoun "You" can be second person singular or second person plural, and the listener gets it depending on the context.

Also, contrary to Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and German, there is not formal or informal distinction in English in the second person. This concept may be difficult to grasp for a native English speaker learning other languages with a formal and informal form.

I hope you all get that this post is about the "you all" usage.

Thanks.

Singular
1. yo = (I)
2. tú = (you Informal); usted = you (formal)
3. él, ella, = (he, she)

Plural
1. nosotros, nosotras = (we)
2. vosotros (Spain), vosotras (Spain), ustedes (Latin American Spanish) = (you)
3. ellos, ellas = (they)

https://english.stackexchange.com/quest ... vs-you-all

“You-all”—also occurring as “y’all”—is a second-person plural pronoun that occurs in some regional versions of US English. It is used by some speakers to eliminate the ambiguity caused by the Standard English “you”, since “you” does not differentiate between singular and plural."
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby galaxyrocker » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:23 am

It is extremely common here in the South. I would almost never use 'you' for the second person plural, always going with 'y'all'. It does have a stigma attached to it, sadly, but it's super common even among highly educated people in the South and among speakers of African American Vernacular English. It's a solidly established dialectal feature in both those dialects, and, from what I've read, it's starting to overcome the stigma associated with it and spread throughout other parts of the States. There's even some hints that it might start becoming inclusive v. exclusive with "all y'all". There's certainly a distinction between them for me, and I've also heard "y'all" be used to refer to singular people, though I'd tend to interpret those instances as referring to family members as well (e.g. "Talk to y'all later", even if you're only talking to one person on the phone, but referencing the whole family)

Likewise, you'll hear other variant second person plural pronouns throughout the States as well, such as 'you guys' and 'yinz'. Then, of course, you've got 'ye' in Ireland for it.


That said, y'all is a fun word. It leads to some great contractions such as "y'all'd'n't've done that"
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby IronMike » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:35 am

mentecuerpo, you should visit Pennsylvania, New Jersey, those areas if you want an interesting 2nd person plural. I wish I had a video of my aunt Donna. Her accent when she says "Yous guys enjoy your trip?" is marvelous to listen to, especially her enunciated question mark (rising tone at the end of the sentence).

Despite that, at age 10 my family moved to Texas. I'm a 100% "y'all" speaker. When/if I think about it (during a professional meeting, perhaps) I might say "you all" instead of "y'all" but I don't think I ever simply say "you" for the plural even though that is standard. Alternatively I might say "you guys" but I always differentiate between 2nd person singular and plural.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby iguanamon » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:40 am

"You all" (contraction y'all) is more used in the South of the US. I do not consider the usage of the term "uneducated". In fact, I find referring to it as "uneducated" to be offensive. More commonly in the Midwest and West of the country you are most likely to hear the term "you guys". As someone from the Upper South of the US, I find "you all/y'all" to be an inclusive plural you as to gender. It is inclusive of all genders, non-binary, trans, and every other permutation of gender. The words "you all" are of course both Standard English words. Using those words together to mean a plural you may not be Standard English, but they certainly fill the bill.

"You guys", to my Southern ear, means "guys". Guys are generally male. Of course, the term is meant by its users to be generic/gender-less, even if the general definition of a guy is a male.

In the Appalachian Mountains, from the South up to at least Pittsburgh, one will also hear "you'uns/yinz" which is a contraction of "you ones" historically. I heard both growing up.

I have also heard "youse" and even "youse guys" from the Northeast of the country.

These terms are all an attempt by different English-speaking Americans to try to come up with a plural you that does not exist in Standard English. Readers may find this article informative as to the history of the plural you in English. I won't quote the whole article, but here's an excerpt:
“Why would we have one word for something as fundamental as singular and plural? That just screams ‘fix this,’” says Paul Reed, a linguist at the University of South Carolina who, as a native Southern linguist, spends a lot of time thinking about the second-person plural pronoun. “And dialect speakers have.” In place of any standardized second-person plural pronoun, English speakers around the world have been forced to scramble to make something up. You’ve heard the solutions: y’all, youse, you guys, yinz, you’uns.
These are widely seen as incorrect, or nonstandard. The most famous, of course, is y’all. So what’s the history of y’all? How did such an amateur linguistic fix become a pillar of everyday speech?
Ancestral varieties of English do, strangely, have words to distinguish between second-person singular and plural pronouns. Sara Malton, a professor at Canada’s Saint Mary’s University, has a great essay on the strange transition in pronouns from Old to Middle to Modern English. The basic history is thus: Old English, which would sound to modern ears more like German than English, did in fact have singular/plural distinctions. ...
Y'all, You'uns, Yinz, Youse: How Regional Dialects Are Fixing Standard English The real enemy? “You guys.”

I'm not saying Non-Southern Americans are wrong for saying "you guys" for plural you. Just accept that "you all/y'all" is just as valid a choice for plural you for those of us from the South of the US.

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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby kanewai » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:57 am

mentecuerpo wrote:I have been hearing a lot of "You all" when the speaker is addressing two or more people,
I say it quite a bit ...

mentecuerpo wrote:it sounds a bit uneducated American English to me, but I am not sure about it. I am not a native American English speaker, but this is my observation.
en garde!

I think it's regional, and it's definitely informal. I wouldn't use it in a work report, and probably not in a public speech. Y'all is very southern, and it would not sound natural if I tried to say it. You all, at least in the Great Lakes area where I grew up, was a way of saying the same thing without sounding southern.

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.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby Le Baron » Thu Jul 15, 2021 2:03 am

'Youse' has existed in British dialects for many generations. 'You all' is also used. even contracted at times, but not with that great Texas Twang.

See Esperanto (curse that word) left ambiguity between single and plural 'you' to make the language exciting so people could say 'vi ĉiuj' and feel like vaguely Latin-sounding cowboys.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby sirgregory » Thu Jul 15, 2021 2:08 am

mentecuerpo wrote:Singular
1. yo = (I)
2. tú = (you Informal); usted = you (formal)
3. él, ella, = (he, she)

Plural
1. nosotros, nosotras = (we)
2. vosotros (Spain), vosotras (Spain), ustedes (Latin American Spanish) = (you)
3. ellos, ellas = (they)


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."

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?
Last edited by sirgregory on Thu Jul 15, 2021 5:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby Dragon27 » Thu Jul 15, 2021 4:03 am

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'.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby kanewai » Thu Jul 15, 2021 5:23 am

Dragon27 wrote:'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'.
Yikes, my mistake. I overcorrected. We grew up thinking that the old thou, thee and thine were formal, because they sounded fancy and were in both Shakespeare and the Bible. I was genuinely surprised to learn as and adult that they were actually informal. In my mind I must have demoted ye along with them. Thanks for the correction.
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Re: "You all" usage in American English

Postby Lisa » Thu Jul 15, 2021 5:27 am

It does seem to be uncomfortable to use "you" to mean multiple people. It would be you guys, you all, or change to a passive construction e.g. "What does everyone want to do next". Specific choices, I think, would matter if it was two other people or a larger group. In Oregon or Massachusetts, if you say ya'll everyone will know what you mean, but make some joke about being from the south (I've tried this... I like the ya'll form). In Massachusetts there were those who said "youse", but it sounded coarse and uneducated even to the semi-native-local ear.

The formal vs. informal plural vs. singular you was easy enough (though I confess when I was young I didn't realize I did need to learn the second person plural - I didn't realize I'd be talking to more than one person I knew well... go figure.).

Recently I read that using third person form for polite second person is like the english construction "What does my lady want me to do next".
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