Re: New Englishisms

At 04:45 AM 3/15/99 -0500, Don Blaheta wrote:
>This is actually something that I've been following for years now.  I'd
>say that use of "y'all" has made considerable gains just in the last
>twenty years or so; when I was young it was very stigmatised, but
>nowadays it's not so bad, and just (_maybe_) gets you a funny look.  I
>personally first picked it up in (of all things) my German class, where
>the teacher wanted us to be clear about whether it was "you plural" or
>"you singular"... I then proceeded to use it when I needed to make the
>distinction elsewhere, and it has since worked its way consistently into
>my speech.  A _lot_ of people I know (mostly fairly well educated) are
>in a similar boat.  Fun stuff, watching linguistic change as it occurs.  :)
Where I live (Albany, New York), "you guys" is used often, but not
consistently, in informal speech as a second-person plural by many people
(including me), regardless of gender of the addressees.  I also occasionally
hear "youse", mostly from older working-class people.  It seems to me that I
very seldom hear "y'all".

-------------------------------------------------
Tim Smith
timsmith@global2000.net

Get your facts first and then you can distort them as you please.
- Mark Twain