19 March 2007

All the y'alls

It's a good thing we are moving out of the South soon. Today I actually came across this referenced in one of my students' homework.

YA'LL/Y'ALL

"How y'all doin'?" If you are rendering this common Southernism in
print, be careful where you place the apostrophe, which stands for the
second and third letters in "you." Note that "y'all" stands for "you
all" and is properly a plural form, though many southern speakers treat
it as a singular form and resort to "all y'all" for the plural.

(from Common Errors in English by Paul Brians).

For the record, I do not, have never, and will never say "y'all." I am firmly in the "you guys" camp.

1 comment:

Michelle said...

Ahhh.. the You guys camp...

that's where I am... my kids have this year finally HEARD 'y'all' and wondered (loudly) about this common term in the Raleigh area... now they regularly 'hear' the term and point it out to me whereever we are!

hehehe

they still use 'you guys' like their mama! ;-)