The rules of y'all

[pensnest]

Could a kind person who knows and who isn't currently running around in small circles as a result of getting the SeSa assignment, take a moment to explain to me whether there are any subtleties this English ficwriter wouldn't know about regarding the use of "y'all"?

Is it, purely and simply, used anywhere that 'you' is plural? Are there times when Lance would say 'you' instead? Is it fairly informal, or absolutely standard? What about "yours" - does that always become, er, "y'all's"? And do all members of Nsync use it, or can that be variable? (I don't 'hear' Chris saying it, but maybe he does.)

Probably a silly question. But that little word (I wish we used it, or its equivalent) is so telling.

Comments

[rayne-y-daze.livejournal.com]

Y'all is either singular or plural. Y'all's is the possessive. All y'all is the accepted form for strictly plural. That way everyone knows you mean everyone. Y'all have a good'n, y'hear? :-D

hope I make sense....

[deliberatehips.livejournal.com]

As a linguist, and one who uses it all the time, here we go:

Y'all is a plural of you, which came about because we lost thou in our language. In the north people try to suppliment with "yous guys" or "yunz", but y'al has spread throughout the country, mostly by vurture of mobility and sheer amount of people moving into the south in recent years and then going back to their northern or western friends and using the language around them.

It's informal, very much so, and I suspect if Lance was talking to a business partner or someone official (who wasn't also from the South) he would use you. I don't hear it becoming y'all's very often, but it's not out of the question.

It's also a standard in hip-hop, so Justin would use it for sure. But it can be variable. I'd tend toward Lance and Justin using it and the rest maybe, maybe not. Nothing is ever a standard in language, everything is variable and depends on who the person is talking to.

Here's an article talking about y'all http://azbilingualed.org/News%202005/linguists_tracking_the_sprawl_of%20y'all.htm

Re: hope I make sense....

[deliberatehips.livejournal.com]

actually, let me amend myself. With further consideration I do hear y'all's quite a good deal, I just never pay attention to it. I've been in the south too long! ;)

Re: hope I make sense....

[rayne-y-daze.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess my answer really probably only applies to Virginia - I'm sure other parts of the south handle it differently :-)

[patchworkdragon.livejournal.com]

I lived in the South until I was nine, and then moved to California. I say y'all when I'm sleepy or emotional, but most of the time I don't use it. I don't hear it very often around here, and I dropped it from my own speech to avoid standing out.

A lot of my family is in Florida, and they use y'all very casually as a plural. I've rarely heard y'all's,

[glendaglamazon.livejournal.com]

Holy typo-rama! Trying again...

While I don't have the scholarly back-up that deliberatehips does, I am an informal student of regional language, and I'm from the same weird border part of the country that JC is. JC says y'all. I've heard him say it, everyone in the Maryland suburbs of DC says it. We only say it as a second-person plural. Never a second-person singular.

We do use the construction "all y'all" to encompass a whole group (if one guy says to the rest of the guys "are y'all gonna head to the club now?" It might not be clear that he means all four of them instead of just two or three. If he wanted to differentiate and specify that he meant all four of them, he would say, "are all y'all headin' to the club now?").

Sometimes people who say y'all try to fancify it into "you all." I do this. I'm clearly deluding myself, but there it is. Rarely will a southerner (or anyone who says "y'all," regardless of region) use "you" as a plural pronoun. "You all" is used as the "formal" version of y'all.

I have heard Chris say it, but I think it is more to do with being around Justin, Lance, and JC using it. Brooklynites don't say y'all (except me, but I'm special. Like, in the short-bus way). They say "you guys." (NO ONE says "yous guys" unless they are parodying Brooklynese). New Yorkers will occasionally say "yous" without the "guys" on the end, but never the both together. Far more common in NY is "you guys." So, Joey doesn't say y'all.

In my experience, the possessive of y'all is y'all's.

[stellamira]

Not being American myself, I can't say anything about the general use of "y'all" versus "you"; though the way I always understood it, it's indeed the plural of "you", but more used in the Southern states. I've read fiction where Lance is confused because Chris says "you", and he's not sure if he means Lance or all of them. Anyway, I have heard Lance use "y'all" quite frequently, and during his appearance at the Wayne Brady show, Justin says that they're all coming from different backgrounds, and that while he would say, "hey y'all, how's it going", Joey would rather say "yous" or something.

[pensnest]

I can just hear that! Thank you.

[carta.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I've never heard y'all as a singular outside of movies or television. Although "all y'all" is dead on the money. So I'm curious as to what part of the south uses y'all as a singular. . . the south is so varied, every city seems to have it's own quirk. *g*

(for the record, I lived in Charleston for my wonder years, then Atlanta for college, virginia for after that, and recently returned to Georgia.)

Re: hope I make sense....

[pensnest]

I wondered if it might change in a business setting, particularly when Lance is in California. (Not that it's relevant to what I'm writing at the moment, but language is a complex and slippery thing, very interesting.) Thanks for the info, and the link, which I shall keep.

[pensnest]

So it's an 'off-guard' thing for you, perhaps? I might even be able to use "y'all" as a subtle indicator of mood. Hmm. Thanks!

[pensnest]

Cool - thank you. I must admit, I'm beginning to wish we used the word, or at least an equivalent. (Also 'gotten', which sounds *so* much nicer than 'got') One of the fun things about trying to write in an American fandom is playing with new bits of language. OTOH, you seem to be lacking in readily-usable swearwords - can't tell you how often I've had to stop myself writing 'bloody' this or 'sodding' that!

[pensnest]

Yes, I've certainly read a story in which that happens (a very sweet story, too), and it struck me as a very clever use of their regional differences. And like you, I notice Lance uses "y'all", it's just that with these things there are so often cunning little subtleties in the usage which an outsider doesn't necessarily pick up.

A little Friday tuition session!

[glendaglamazon.livejournal.com]

For those intensifier adjectives, we use "goddamn" or "fucking." "Bloody" and "sodding" are far more colorful, but we just aren't that creative.

That's funny you say that about "gotten." My English grandmother, who's been an editor in America for 50 years, despises "gotten" with all her heart and soul. She maintains it isn't a word.

I give you full permission to use y'all whenever you wish. ;)

[rayne-y-daze.livejournal.com]

I heard it used as a singular in the Tidewater area of Virginia. On the other hand, that was 30-40 years ago, so that may have changed. :-) I know that it wasn't done heavily, though, 'cause when I heard someone do it in a movie, something like 5 times in a conversation, my teeth went on edge... Interestingly, even when it had been used as a singular noun, it was treated, in the sentence, as a plural. For example, if you arrived early for a lunch date, one might say "y'all are early", rather than "y'all is early. Truthfully, I think the word gets tweaked and twisted depending on when/where you are. It's pretty versatile. I've even known people who say y'all all the time and have never been south of Chicago :-)

[pensnest]

Grandmothers are allowed to be particular, bless them. (I bet my father-in-law would feel the same.)

I give you full permission to use y'all whenever you wish.
Ah, but who would understand me? :-(