• Dharma Curious@startrek.website
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    1 year ago

    Texas does not have a monopoly on y’all. Y’all is collective, both as a noun, and as ownership. Y’all is Southern for Comrade.

  • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I refuse to accept Texas’ claim on y’all. Its a word collectively owned by everyone south of the mason-dixon line and I will fight to the death over this.

    Signed, floridaman

    • ilex@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Everyone gets y’all. It fills the dumb gap in English where the plural of you is you. Now if we could only get a singular neutral 3rd for people that isn’t also the plural.

      E: Or we could start pronouncing They singular like latchkey, for a thee sound. So we can get fun words like they’s (thees). It will also make English even more confusing for newbies. What’s not to love?

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It’s also second person plural (or singular), second person is always ungendered.

      First and second person, plural and singular are never gendered: I, you, we, you / y’all / all y’all. The only pronouns that are gendered are the third person singular: he / she / it. Third person plural (they) is also ungendered.

      • FunctionFn@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        The most common form (at least where I’m from) of second person plural behind “you all (y’all)” is gendered: “you guys”. It’s used in an ungendered way increasingly commonly, but “guy” is still gendered to plenty of English speakers.

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      As someone who grew up in North Carolina, I agree. Texas might be the first thing some people think of when it comes to “southern” states, but it doesn’t get exclusive claim to the quirks of the whole region

    • Intralexical@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      …Am I not allowed to use “y’all”, north of the 49th parallel? Do we have to bring back “thou” so “you” can be plural again? Or is this part of the Quebecois plot to force everyone to parler en français donc nous pouvons utiliser “vous”? C’est bien, anyway, j’suppose.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Fun fact:

        “Thou” and “you” were the same word.

        The “th” sound used to have its own character in written English called the thorn. When typefaces came along, it was excluded and sometimes replaced with a “y.”

        Also why “Ye” and “The” are the same.

  • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    “You” is also ungendered. There seems to be a common idea that English is missing a second person plural. We have one, it’s “you”. We just stopped using the second person singular. That’s what all those variations of “thee, thou, thy” etc were.

    “Y’all” would be a superpluralization. If that’s still not enough we also have the ultraplural form of, “all y’all”

    • pythonoob@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Y’all is exclusive. All y’all is inclusive.

      If I walk into a party in a house and a group of my friends are there and I say ‘what are y’all doing here?’, I’m only talking to my friends.

      If I walk into my own house and there’s a party there and I say ‘what are all y’all doing here?’ I’m addressing everyone of the hoodlums in my house.

      • Art35ian@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We’re very inclusive in Australia also.

        ‘G’day you bunch of cunts’ means hello to everyone male, female, known and unknown.

        We’re very polite over here.

      • gmtom@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Getting pressed enough about a single downvote to make an edit is cringe.

      • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Yeah. We mostly think of grammatical number as a simple choice of singular vs plural but that’s not what we do in real life.

        We generally have multiple labels that describe the concept of progressively expanding circles of what’s included when we think of ourselves.

        There’s the very narrow sense of I/me/myself. We have various expansions around us/all’y’all. Jamaicans have the phrase “I and I” which focuses on the individual but explicitly calls out the connection with others.

      • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Sounds right.
        Presumably “y’all’s” would be the second person superplural possessive.

      • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        We also have “Ya’” where we elide the entire ending and you need to determine plural vs singular from context. For example, “Ya’ can’t get thea, les’ ya been there befoa.”

  • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That’s why conservatives have started to say yim’all and yer’all in order needlessly gender the expression. Can’t believe these folks sometimes.

    Edit: 😂

          • jasondj@ttrpg.network
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            1 year ago

            I went to South Carolina once. For the eclipse a few years ago.

            We flew into Charlotte, stayed there for a night, then Greenville SC for a night (to be in totality), and back to Charlotte for a couple of days.

            Crossing the border from NC to SC was less like crossing state lines and more like crossing the DMZ or the Berlin Wall. Just…a totally different word on the other side of that line.

            Best part was that I got to try out cheer wine. Also there was a guy in front of me at the concession stand (we saw the eclipse from the Greenville Zoo) on the phone with someone. He was trying to tell that person he was in the “food line” but the other person kept hearing “Food Lion”, the name of a local grocery chain.

            Although a couple of different guys saw me sweating my ass off in the zoo and offered me a “cool rag”. I had no idea what that was and it sounded disgusting so I politely declined…but in retrospect I have to appreciate their hospitality.

            Next eclipse, I’m going to Austin.

          • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            North Carolina once outlawed State officials mentioning or acknowledging climate change exists, to the detriment of their own coastal cities. We could also discuss bathrooms if you want. I think NC ought not be pointing fingers about who is better.

            • SCB@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              North Carolina is only the way it is because of ridiculous gerrymandering so perhaps we shouldn’t be negative and discouraging of people who want it to be better

            • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Well I DID add “or at least the least awful one”. I know that NC is far from perfect, with some instances of truly horrid policies, but compared to SC it’s almost downright progressive lol

  • mycroft@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Y’all is the best pronoun.

    It’s second person can be used singular or plural, and the difference is all contextual.

    It’s ungendered and it’s makes almost anything feel “more fun.”

  • Vaginal_blood_fart@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    It’s actually a contraction from old English or Scots and has been around since 1631. The hicks are using socialist words that aren’t theirs.

  • gongonzabarfarbin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Y’all Texans can go to hell for trying to claim y’all.

    • Signed a Louisianan

    P.s. your El Paso 857 sign can go right to hell too.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Y’all was created to serve a completely artificial problem.

    English has second person singular pronouns, but for some dumbfuck reason we’ve deprecated them. It’s still maintained in the standard for compatibility with legacy literature but not recommended for new works. If thou talk’st this way, thy speech comes off as archaic/shakesperian/biblical. So we use the second person plural for everything. But this removes the ability to encode context on how many thou art addressing. “You! Go put that fire out.” Are you talking to an individual in a group or the whole group?

    So the American south turned “you” into the singular form and invented “you all” contracted to “y’all” for the plural form.

    Now we just need to fix the first person plural problem, ie “We’ve just won the lottery!” Does “we” include the listener, or not? English doesn’t encode that information; “we” don’t have different words for “myself the speaker and the listener(s) and perhaps others” and “Myself the speaker, others, but not the listener.”

  • ilex@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    y’all is second person plural. First and Second person aren’t gendered. Therefore, I is also woke

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      OMG yes! We must make this a thing, make the right speak in caveman to fit their troglodyte nature! Lol