English lost its second person plural when we switched from Thou (second person singular formal + Thee=second person singular informal) and Ye (second person plural) to just "You", but Texans rightly have solved the problem and kept the clarity. (The more-modern "Yo" is delightfully brief but as ambiguous as "you".)

Now... if you want to tease a Texan back about all this, you can ask them whether that implies the proper phrase for when you enter Texas then should be "Abandon hope all y'all (was: ye) who enter here!"

It's like when people try to pronounce "New Orleans" as "nawlins" (to be clear, no one native says it this way, its tourist trap t-shirts that pronounce it this way), or some other such silly thing. Conversely there are many words that are said in unique ways in the region and part of being accepted as a transplant is people who learn to say those words with the regional dialect.

It may come as a shock, but I doubt anyone in the south (outside of the irish channel) really gives the New York Times opinion on southern language much of a second thought.

As with so many of English's warts we can blame the French for the situation we're in. Vous in French is used when addressing a single person formally and conveys respect for the addressee. When class and station were more important following the Norman conquest of England, English speakers adopted the use of "you" to address a single person of higher status following the French custom. It's use became more widespread over time lest the speaker offend someone by using "thou" when the addressee thought that "you" was warranted.

As a practical matter, I use y'all. I think thou is a lovely word in its own right and is deserving of consideration.

N.b. IANALinguist, and IANAHistorian either. TINLinguisticA.

I can't decide if I'm making a joke or not by saying that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/magazine/yall.html

I also always raise an eyebrow when a linguist is pining for a universal familiar third-person plural, which is noticeably absent from Spanish as well: "vosotros" vs "ustedes." I suspect that the regionalness and third-person familiar pronouns might simply go hand in hand, as they are an in-group signaling mechanism, and it's a bit rare to have large groups who you are close with who aren't part of your region.

I grew up in Austin. I use "y'all" and "howdy" regularly, even more so than when I was young. That said, I feel like Texas Monthly "defending" the use of y'all as a potential universal term is entirely unnecessary. Again, there really isn't a need for a third-person familiar pronoun that isn't a natural one to use, because the point of third person familiar is that everyone in the space is comfortable with each other. The only reason why a formal version of this would ever be necessary is to have some sort of formal version of an informality... which makes little to no sense at all.

Embrace the informality of colloquial third-person familiar pronouns. Embrace "y'all," "yinz," "you guys," "youse guys," and all the rest, because whenever you're on the receiving end of the pronoun, it means you're with someone who is trying to be friendly.

I personally think at this point y'all doesn't need to be defended, it is on it's way to winning regardless of what NYT Opinion pieces think.

Although reading the original NYT Opinion piece I do also agree with the premise that "you guys" has largely been drained of it's masculinity.

As an aside, I find it strange how many aspects of "the south" are labeled as "Texan" outside the south. I lived and visited all over the Deep South and y'all was standard vernacular pretty much everywhere. I'm not saying Texans don't say y'all, but they definitely don't have any unique claim to using it as second-person plural.

Spanish: "ustedes" (formal) and "vosotros" (informal in Spain) or "vos" in some regions

French: "vous" is the standard, but informally there's "vous autres" in Quebec French

Portuguese: "vocês" formally, but "cês" informally in Brazilian Portuguese

German: While "ihr" is standard, some dialects use "ihr alle" or regional variants

Italian: "voi" is standard, but some southern dialects use "vujatri" or similar variants

Greek: "εσείς" (eseis) formally, but informally "εσείς όλοι" (eseis oli)

Russian: "вы" (vy) is standard, but "вы все" (vy vse) is used for emphasis

Arabic: "أنتم" (antum) is standard, with "إنتو" (intu) in dialects

I am most fascinated by Y'alls', a double possessive or possessive plural contraction which is common in Southern American English and AAVE (African American Vernacular English) which would otherwise be constructed more awkwardly in common American English as "all of your" or "your all's."

Only a few words lack plural expression, like the words fish and sheep, or words that are inherently plural like pants, scissors or people.

Since thou has become severely archaic, invoked only in religious contexts or ironic contexts parodying religious speech, you has become a plural-free word like fish.

And that don't sit well with them Texans and other such folk.

NYT columnist is the definition of “yankee with a stick up their ass.” It’s possible to agree with them on politics and recognize they’re wet blankets.

Survivor, the US TV show, used to say "Come on in guys" until recently where they made a point to discuss the topic on camera with the contestants. There was a variety of opinions, but they ultimately settled on "Come on in." which conveys the point in a neutral tone.

For example:

you + all = y'all

are + not = aren't

y'all + aren't = y'aint

Now that's a beautiful thing.

As a non native speaker, I'm sometimes confused and wish to see a distinction between between singular and plural they (they-all?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence%2C_Kentucky#Arts_and_...

Soon after moving back to Texas I regained confidence in saying the word. I think these days the only people that draw any attention to the word are non americans, so maybe it's proliferated a bit more in the last 2 decades.

I think the cringe comes from two things:

1. r*ddit types (liberal, "bugman", "soy boy", etc.) typically use it when they're trying to be smug, "Yall just gonna pretend like...?" is a common r*dditor quip.

2. The phrases that the r*dditor typically uses with y'all are distinctly black American English phrases (like the example phrase in my first point) and it just seems like they're trying to adopt that language as a a way to signal their identification with "the black community". Seems forced and virtue-signaly.

Of course, I use it because I'm from the south eastern US, not because it's fast.

You can even get stickers from Dirty Coast that say "He/Him/She/Her/They/Them/Y'All/Cher". It's part of the vernacular here.

When British people start using "y'all" casually, as I suspect may start happening soon if it hasn't already happened, it's time to accept it as a part of the living English language.

https://www.waywordradio.org/

0. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/yall-youuns-yinz-youse...

Edit: In fact I use it so often at work that my very prim-and-proper British colleague now uses it often and unironically, which is kinda hilarious.

y'aint.

It's a bit too jarring for conversation aloud here in the northeast.

I picked up the habit in Massachusetts, in the mid 2000s, from an Ivy League humanities professor who also expressed support for a student debt strike. He used it very deliberately, in an effort to un-train our public school–addled brains from the inanity that we were somehow smarter than others for having fewer words in hand. In my bones, the thought of not using it as appropriate feels uneducated.

Using “y’all” in conversation shows incredible confidence, a way to flex command of formal language in an informal setting. It’s often used with emphasis. It leverages the listener’s discomfort, saying: I know precisely which register I’m speaking in. It’s an “elite” thing to do.

What you’ll never hear is one of these people using “y’all” as a formal address— especially as a singular, as in the rote “Y’all been served?” for a dining party of any number. There are a number of reasons for that, but number one is simple: It’s a high status signal.

Edit to add: Maybe importantly, this doesn’t extend to the casual use of “all y’all” . I think the colloquial academic equivalent would be “you [emphasized pause] all”. If you weren’t familiar you’d probably transcribe it as “you all”, but it’s closer to “you, all”. Looking at it now, I think that’s “intentional abuse” of the formal variant for intensifying, with just enough stress to make it visibly intentional?

But I should be clear I haven’t studied this dialect at all, I just learned to speak it :)

>Some have even suggested “y’all,” a word that reads as much too slangy, regional or what you might even call ethnic to ever gain universal acceptance.

Heaven forbid we embrace something that could be called "ethnic"! Something something must secure a future for our linguistic monoculture.

I wonder if this writer would've written the same thing, but with "bruh" or "fam" swapped in:

>Some have even suggested “bruh,” a word that reads as much too slangy, regional or what you might even call ethnic to ever gain universal acceptance.

Probably not, as that would've been immediately recognized as racist (because "bruh" is ethnic, despite its recent widespread adoption, in the sense that its roots are in black-culture slang – just like how "y'all" is ethnic, despite its recent widespread adoption, in the sense that its roots are in southern-culture slang).

I dunno why the NYT author feels the need to find ways to be linguistically xenophobic.

I say y'all all the time. Truly an excellent word.

1st person, ME, US

2nd person, YOU, Y'ALL

3rd person, HE/SHE/THEY, THEY

In spanish we have the distinction naturally: USTED, USTEDES

Another example of genuine language tools dismissed as "Incorrect" is African American Vernacular English's "you be", "he be" tense. I don't know the exact distinction, Steven Pinker explains it well.

On that note, "that there rooster" is perfecty valid English as well.

— Hannah Gadsby, Douglas

there was a heatmap published in the past (seemingly only saved by paywalled news organizations) that showed the prevalence of "y'all" in different areas.

Case in point: the NYT and its NYC-based journalists often[1] share political views with me, because we're both from major Northeastern cities. It's tempting for me to assume that the NYT is thinking reasonably, but then stuff like this comes up and...

"Y'all" is just clearly a simple, elegant solution to a linguistic problem. I don't have strong feelings against "yinz" or "youse" except to say that even though I'm from an area where people say "youse", I think both these are harder to say. But "y'all" is clearly better than "you guys".

Dismissing a linguistic solution as "slangy", "regional", or "ethnic", is frankly, idiotic, and I think it comes from one of the uglier parts of Northeastern big city thinking (and yes, this applies to West coast big cities too). The places city folks dismiss as "flyover states" have a lot of smart people in them with good ideas. Yes, people in these places are often limited by a lack of education--a problem for which coastal cities are in part to blame. But a lot of good ideas don't require a lot of prerequisite education, and "y'all" is one of them. It's not "smart" or "educated" to dismiss "y'all", it's bigoted.

I'm not from a place that says "y'all", and "y'all" is one of the first things I adopted when I moved to the south. John McWhorter should be embarrassed.

[1] Less often in recent years.