“Y’all” is the best contraction. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
@KimberlyHirsh In the Ohio River valley, people say "Y'uns" (usually pronounced "Yinz".) I won't argue whether it or "Y'all" is best.
@KimberlyHirsh As a southerner, I’ve said y’all all my life. But when I moved to Illinois as an elementary school kid, my classmates made fun of me for using it. I eventually stopped.
A couple of years ago, I decided it was time to fully embrace it again. So much better than saying “you all.”
@KimberlyHirsh To clarify: I meant the expression "thank you for coming to my TED talk." For this delightfully sarcastic expression, I am thankful
@JMaxB I had a student who used that in Western North Carolina. I think we can handily avoid any need for comparison by categorizing them differently. I perceive "y'all" to be a contraction of "you all" but because "y'uns" first requires the transformation of "ones" to "uns," I would consider it a colloquialism first and a contraction second. Hence, each can be the best in its primary category. Thank you for coming to my longer TED talk.
@bobwertz Other languages have a single word for the second person plural (e.g. vos, vous). Why not us?
@KimberlyHirsh "English used to have a more or less typical array of second person pronouns, with thou and thee for the singular — subject and object cases, respectively — and ye and you for the plural. So what happened? John explains." lexiconvalley.substack.com/p/the-pro... In the Māori language there's singular, dual and more than two, which in the case of 'we' also divides into 'us but not you the listener' and 'all of us'. Be careful what you wish for. 😈
@Miraz You used to hear "Youse" on the urban east coast of the US. I think it's dying out. It was considered low-class (in old movies you hear gangsters using it), whereas in some parts of the US I think "Y'all" is standard English.
@JMaxB Y’uns may be dying out here in southern Indiana also. I don’t hear it nearly as much as I did when I was a kid (a highly subjective measure, to be fair). I think the cultural dominance of y’all may be overwhelming it—particularly since country music is the subsuming cultural idiom at this point.
@jabel Yeah, you could do a whole dissertation on how country moved from being the vernacular music of the white rural south to a driver of American culture.