“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”
All y’all’s “all y’all” for all and for y’all
What state is this?
North Carolina
Also known as the best Carolina or at least the less awful one. Seriously though, fuck South Carolina.
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.
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.
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
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: 😂
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.
Comrade
W’all
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.”
M’y’all and m’y’ain’t
Ah, compound contractions. Yeah that’ll work. We’ve already got y’all’ve and y’all’d’a.
Can’t forget about y’all’dnt’ve.
y’all’dn’t’ve forgotten an apostrophe if y’all’d de-contractify it: “you all would not have”
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
…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.
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.
