Uneasy Rhetoric

This article from the Houston Chronicle illuminates the fact that the phrase “y’all,” once firmly entrenched in Southern American English and parodies thereof, has expanded beyond the boundaries of the South.

The article cites several reasons for this expansion, including increasing mobility of the population as a whole and the fact that “y’all” fills a hole in English left when we lost the second-person singular “thou” and replaced it with the catch-all “you.” Various regions of the US have different ways to differentiate between the second person singular and plural, but, outside of “y’all,” they seem to be variations on “you guys.” As the article points out:

…”you guys” feels awkward to certain segments of the population, says Joan Houston Hall, chief editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English. A term that gained popularity in the 1960s, it still sounds inappropriately familiar to some elderly ears, she says, and some women are uncomfortable with the masculine gender implied by “guys.” “Y’all” elegantly resolves all these concerns.

My grandmother and my mother both have commented that “you guys” doesn’t sound right to their ears; in fact, they find it a little insulting. I once used it to refer to two women who where significantly younger than me and was given a cold stare.

Despite being a west-coaster, I’ve adopted use of y’all (with the occasional slip into “you guys”), but I did so consciously. Early on in my French studies, I learned that the second-person plural “vous” could be translated as “you all.” I realized that “y’all” filled an appropriate conversational niche. It helped that I have friends and relatives from the South, but my adaptation of the phrase was in spite of and not because of them.

The Houston Chronicle would like to think that adaptation of y’all is due to a Southern ascendancy, but I think it simply fills a void.

(article found via The Language Feed)