Nice editorial. Too bad intelligent, non-vitriolic voices like this don't get the same attention as the Ann Coulters and Michael Moores (to pick a wingnutty type from both ends of the spectrum). Thanks for pointing it out. I hear accusations that Christians are anti-intellectual, but I think the intellectual rigor of Christianity (or any belief system) partly begins when you try to work out what your faith means in every sphere of life-- including the political and the personal. Reading this blog, I sometimes think y'all's (English really needs a new word for 'you' plural) die-hard loyalty is to a particular party, but surely that can't be true? It seems to me that we should be loyal to a core set of beliefs/values/principles, and be free to make decisions that uphold the said; therefore, if our preferred political party violates our core, we must work to change it or look elsewhere. But I think I'm rambling.. what I'm saying is, for whatever it is or isn't worth, this Republican Christian is willing to listen to a good argument (and there are plenty on this site, despite the outpourings of bile; that's why I'm still reading).
No, I don't think anyone here is actually a partisan. But, at the same time, american politics has become so party-line that the functional difference between a partisan democrat and a liberal or a leftist is minimal to nonexistant. Same goes for the other side. But we like to tell ourselves anyway that it's important that we have arguments for our beliefs. Except for baa that is, he voted for Bush. [/tongue and cheek] I for one hope you stick around, for the value of your civil conservative christian input.
I hope you stick around, too, but equating Coulter, who wished McVeigh had killed everyone in the New York Times buillding, with Moore, who probably hasn't called for anyone to be killed (or we'd have heard, wouldn't we?) is a bit of a stretch.
English really needs a new word for 'you' plural
But we already have "y'all", which I think everyone should start using. I'd love to hear, for example, people with a John F. Kennedy / Mayor Quimby accent using "y'all" unselfconsciously.
I wholeheartedly agree that y'all is a perfectly good and grammatically sound construction, and I'm something of a grammar Nazi. But God, I hate when I hear people use it to refer to a single person. No, you don't sound southern, you sound retarded. This seems to happen pretty exclusively on television.
Even as y'all has gained wider usage, though, you can always tell the native Southerners because they understand the subtle difference in meaning between "y'all" and "all y'all".
There's also "youse," which is fairly common in the northeastern US and Canada. Yes, we do need a plural for "you."
Glad to find something on which we can all agree. There may be hope yet (though I'm still feeling utterly bleak and hopeless).
I think we should all start saying ustedes. It is much more dignified than ya'll. Even though I like ya'll, and use it, I never wince cringe in anticipation of ridicule when I say in Spanish, "Would you (all) like a beer?" Oo-sted-ess. Nice, right?
A guy from Georgia once explained, or tried to explain, the difference between y'all and all y'all to me, but it didn't take. Apostropher?
It's pretty damn subtle and hard to explain in words and I should probably add that any explanation I give may be specific to NC or the surrounding states. I don't have much experience in southern states west of the Appalachians (like, say, Texas).
You could almost say that y'all=vosotros and all y'all=Ustedes, but that's not quite right. Let's see...I can identify two very different usages here, and if I think on it for a while, I can probably come up with more.
The first: "Okay, y'all are gonna clean up the baseball field, while y'all are gonna clean around the barracks, and then I'll meet all y'all back here at 6 sharp." That's the easy one.
The second is more a matter of mood and emphasis. If it's time for a party to end because you want to go to bed, but everybody's had a good time, "Y'all need to leave now." If the party needs to end because fights are breaking out and stuff's getting broken, "All y'all need to leave now."
I'm actually okay about using y'all (the word I mean), but it felt really awkward to make it a possessive: y'all's. That's where it breaks down, in my book. Or is this okay in the South? How about youse's? I still think we could use an English equivalent of ustedes/vous/other language equivalent that I don't know. Anyway, I don't like sounding like I'm trying to sound Southern, but failing miserably.
dh, I haven't actually read Coulter or watched Farenheit 9/11 (yet; I promised a friend I would); I just chose those names based on their apparently polarizing effect on those who have.
I use "y'all's" occasionally in casual speech, but not in writing. Shrug.
Here in an area of the south that has pretty heavy in-migration, I've noticed that the first "southernism" to get picked up by most people isn't y'all, but big ol', as in "that's a big ol' boy you got there" or "that's a big ol' truck."
y'all - multiple people, together but not as a single mass
all y'all - multiple people together addressed as a single mass
This would have been a fine candidate in the most subtle distinction contest.
I don't feel much loss in English's lack of distiction between second person singular and plural, and in fact I often had problems with German having second person singular and plural in the informal only. (I kept using Sie when I should have used ihr.)
What we really need in English is a better indefinite third person singular than "one". "He or she" is awkward, "they" is just wrong. French has on and German has man. We need something like that far more than we need a second person plural.
I thought it was settled that "they" is proper.
"Youse" is Dublin slang too, FYI. The rougher part of Dublin too. Cracks me up to hear Americans use it.
My button has been pressed:
Singular "they" is most definitely not "wrong".
Centuries of linguistic evidence, as well as the intuitions of most native speakers, testify to its correctness. Uneducated native speakers and children use it naturally, and educated speakers find themselves wanting to use it but "correcting" themselves because of nonsense rules taught to them by prescriptivist pedants.
BTW, I'm a northerner who uses "y'all" unselfconsciously(though it took me a few years to overcome the self-consciousness).
"Big ol'" may originate in the South, but was in pretty standard use in elementary schools in Seattle when I was a kid, so it may have graduated from "southernism" to plain old "colloquialism".
What was this thread about again?
I hear "y'all" a lot here in NYC, but mostly from African Americans, or white dudes who listen to lots of hip-hop, or of course from my fellow transplanted southerners.
I can attest that "all y'all" is used in Texas. We also use "y'all all". I have this feeling they're not quite interchangeable, but am having a hard time thinking of examples that would show this.
And yes, using "y'all" to refer to a single person is something only done by posers, or maybe people from Dallas.