Re: CHAT: ...y'know

I find it fascinating that so many English dialects have attempted to
create a 2nd singular - 2nd plural distinction in English, after we
lost ours with the disappearance of "thee/thou".

I can think of Southern "Y'all," colloquial "you guys;" some of my
older Michigan relatives used "youse;" and I recently read something
from the sixties in which someone inveighed against his employees
using "you'uns."


+ Ed Heil ---------------------- edheil@postmark.net +
|    "What matter that you understood no word!       |
|    Doubtless I spoke or sang what I had heard      |
|           In broken sentences."  --Yeats           |
+----------------------------------------------------+

Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Mon, 28 Jun 1999 06:52:56 +0100 "Raymond A. Brown"
> <raybrown@...> writes:
>
> >Ray.
> >
> >PS - in SW London, this use of 'man' has become epicene among the
> >younger
> >generation; female students even use this mode of address when
> >speaking
> >among themselves.  Does this occur elsewhere?
>
>
> Here the use of "guy", "you guys", etc. has become genderless.  "you
> guys" is used as a plural second-person pronoun, probably because "you
> all" or "y'all" sounds "hickish".
>
>
> -Stephen (Steg)
>
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