Re: Y'all (was: Old Norse (was Re: New to the list))

nicole perrin wrote:

> Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> >
> > Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
> >
> > >  As regards English, the
> > > honorific pronoun has overtaken the normal 'thou' (I know you know that). I
> > > see this as the single most annoying, confusing, and intolerable part of the
> > > language: failure to make a singular-plural distinction in the second person
> > > pronouns. "You guys" can't always cover the plural, as it's very colloquial
> > > and often inappropriate. I've often heard English speakers say something
> > > like "you, and with you I mean all of you, as a nation, not you
> > > personally..." to me.
> >
> > That's really only true, though, for Standard English.  Nearly 100 million Southerners
> > in the US -- somewhere between a fifth and a fourth of all native English speakers
> > anywhere -- use "y'all", and "youse" is supposed to be used in various (mostly basilectal)
> > varieties in the Northern US and in the UK.  "y'all" has no class connotations
> <snip>
>
> "Y'all" may not have any class connotations within the geographic areas
> in which it's used, but outside those areas, it definitely has negative
> connotations, class or otherwise.  Northerners (at least,
> Northeasterners) tend to view it as quite hickish and uneducated, even
> though it's a word used by the president and plenty of other media
> figures (Katie Couric, famous New York news anchor, to name one).
That's certainly true.  After the Civil War, there were also many blacks from
the South that migrated to the North and formed their own communities, many of
which maintained their use of "y'all".  These tend to be basilectal and rather
isolated.  As far as I can tell, there is a greater stigma against the word in the
Northeast than in the West (though I haven't lived in either region before -- I
can't know for sure).

I suspect that the Standard Englishes of the future will have a second person
pluiral pronoun, although what exactly that may be might vary depending on dialect.
In America, "y'all" has a good chance.  I've heard that an epicene "you guys" is current
in the UK; if that grammaticalizes, as "y'all" has already done, it might become a
fullfledged pronoun.  I don't know enough about languages changes in the antipodes
to speculate on them.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: trwier
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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