If anyone can find more pixels for me i would appreciate it.
Thanks y’all.
Out here in the you guys zone making yall happen. 10 years and you guys will be nearly gone cause people get tired of having to ubsubltly tack on “and gals” or “gals and nonbinary pals”.
I thought y’all was just a gender neutral term combining you and all.
How would it be wrong or offensive to refer to refer to trans person as “y’all”? Genuine question.
How would it be wrong or offensive to refer to refer to trans person as “y’all”?
“Y’all not welcome in these parts”
You got me there.
“y’all” fills a legitimately useful gap the English language has. Other languages have a word like this.
Edit: also something cool I just found out, some languages have a way to disinguish “we” (you and I), and “we” (me and the rest of us, not you). It’s called clusivity and is missing from European languages. Many indigenous languages of the Americas and Oceania have this, as well as Vietnamese and northern dialects of Mandarin.
Any examples of an equivalent in other languages?
I speak a small amount of French but can’t think of one
“Vous” is the first one that comes to mind in french. But since it is also a more formal (and/or “respectful”) version of “tu/toi”, it can both designate a group of people or a single person, depending on the context (just like “you” in English). Sometimes people will use “vous tous” (literally “you all”) to make this clear.
It is a little better than the “you” situation in English since if you are speaking with someone that is not using the singular form of “vous” to speak about you (which is basically anyone you are familiar with unless they are your boss or In-laws and kind of oldschool), it is instantly clear what they mean at least.
In Portuguese (especially Brazilian), there are singular and plural forms of “you”: “você” (singular) and “vocês” (plural). In English, “you” behaves like a plural because it’s followed by “are” instead of “is”. The only exception I can see is “yourself” and “yourselves” that refer to both singular and plural forms.
However, In Portuguese, even though we have “vocês” as plural form, we also use “vocês todos” or “todos vocês” (“you all”/“all of you”) sometimes.
Spanish has “Ustedes” (except in Spain, they use “Vosotros/Vosotras”)
English used to be like other European languages too. We had thou/thee for singular, and you/ye for plural, and for respectful singular. Eventually, people began using it as respectful singular for everyone, and so it just became singular and plural, eclipsing thou/thee. Around this time, the you/ye accusative/nominative distinction was also lost, so now we just have you.
If you’re curious, the you/ye distinction worked like this: “you” was used for the subject (the doer) of the sentence, and “ye” was used for the object (the done to). you/ye are analogous to I/me.
“You come with me.” (plural you)
“I come with ye.” (plural ye)
As a result of the loss of thou, we also lost the conjugation of verbs related to it, like “art” instead of “are”, and “-st” or “-est” for other verbs (“goest”, “thinkst”, etc). It used to be that “are” was only for plural pronouns, but now both “you” and “they” can be singular.
And if you’re curious about what happened to “-eth”, evidence suggests this was for a long time a typographic feature, and it was pronounced “-s” as it is today. It was used exactly like “-s”. “He thinketh” would have been pronounced “he thinks”.
Not a gap in every dialect! “Ye” is another plural second person used in Ireland
Hear y’all hear y’all, Reggie King from o’er the holler brought pawpaw moonshine for the weddin’
And youse in Dublin.
Every dialect has a word for it. There’s no gap.
The worst is when a language formally has a disambiguating word but then speakers all just decide to not use it.
There is also “you lot”
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People where I am from call everyone “you guys” - men, women, trans, doesn’t matter, everyone is just “you guys” even when it’s a woman addressing a group of women.
The literal meaning isn’t gender neutral, but in actual practice, it 100% is.
As for “y’all” or “you all”, I don’t see how it could possibly be interpreted as offensive to any gender.
The literal meaning isn’t gender neutral, but in actual practice, it 100% is.
Unless you can ask a straight man how many guys he’s slept with, it isn’t gender neutral, no matter how resistant to this fact you are.
That’s how people use it, whether you like it or not. I did not invent the language, but that’s how people use it.
Saying “guys” on its own is also not the same thing as “you guys” in regions that do this.
You can shoot the messenger all you like but it is what it is and I have no power over how people in a region use a language, I am merely informing you of that fact.
I don’t see the issue with using the term “guys” in the plural when referring to a group regardless of sex. That would align with the definition of the word. I’m pretty sure that’s how they meant it.
Unless you can ask a straight man how many guys he’s slept with, it isn’t gender neutral, no matter how resistant to this fact you are.
E: the fact that neither of you give a shit about the people telling you the term isn’t gender neutral, doesn’t apply to us, and that we don’t feel comfortable with you using it to speak to or about us says it all. No matter how much mental gymnastics you do to convince yourself otherwise you are the ones choosing to be the problem instead of actually listening to others and showing some basic respect. It’s an easy fix, too - all you have to do is give a minimal fuck about others.
don’t feel comfortable with you using it to speak to or about us
This actually is relevant, but wasn’t part of your initial statement. If you don’t like people using the term to refer to you then people should absolutely make an effort to not use that term when referencing you.
Saying there’s some mental gymnastics on my part is a bit of stretch, it’s how the word is defined in the dictionary. All I needed was to read. There’s no disrespect here, if you don’t like it then using the term to refer to you would be disrespectful, but I haven’t done so.
“You People” is the one to be avoided
“howdy fuckers” is the opposite as it sounds bad on paper but in practice it goes over well (except with middle aged moms)
“G’day cunts” goes over either extremely well or extremely poorly, with no in-between
Ah the classic way to say hello in Australian.
What do you mean "you people"?
Yeah I don’t see that one going over well anywhere
Dude is also situationally gender neutral. Saying “Hey dude” to a trans woman is misgendering her but exclaiming “Yo dude check this out!” or “Duuuude no way” is perfectly acceptable.
As for “y’all” or “you all”, I don’t see how it could possibly be interpreted as offensive to any gender.
I think “we don’t take kindly to y’all” to a trans person would likely be offensive. Beyond that though, you’re probably okay.
“yall” is obviously not the problematic part of that sentence
I might as well double down while I’m here, “we don’t take kindly” was too aggressive wording.
I meant something more neutral like “I think y’all are weird”.
That way, the y’all is the problematic part. That was my point.
Nope, “y’all” is still not the problematic part
Okay, I’ll bite. How is y’all not the problematic part when it’s specifically referring to trans people in that case?
That certainly seems problematic to me.
Literally the entire rest of the sentence is the problematic part. “We don’t take kindly to you”, it doesn’t matter if they say “y’all”, “you all”, “you people”, “your kind”, take your pick, it’s not the problem with the sentence
I mean … Thats just an all out threat with y’all acting as an exclusionary statement.
All in all agree with your point tho.
Am I the only one who actually looked for more pixels for this guy?
Anywho, here you go my guy:
Edit: hmmm, Lemmy seems to be compressing it. Here’s a link.
as a trans person, I’m not offended by y’all in the slightest
This statement has strong Bilbo " I like less than half of you as well as you deserve" energy
(No hate, it just struck me as funny)
I lowkey always found that to be a southern type of insult, I could hear Steve Spurrier saying it
I’m from “you guys” but I’ve lived in “y’all” and now I’m forever team “y’all,” regardless of where I’m living.
It’s the best export from the south, except maybe Texas brisket and pecan pie.
…y’all roughly correlates with coke, although there are some deep pockets of soda-water in the back country…
I’m from New Jersey and have never heard anyone unironically say “youse guys”. Side note we also don’t call it “Joisey”.
I always thought youse guys was a new york city thing.
Youse guys wanna play stickball?
I’m from Maryland and I said “howdy” in New York and I got roasted by the CVS clerk for 2 full minutes. And then I said “do y’all have Tylenol” in hopes that she could point me in the direction. Another minute of her roasting me…
Roast her back
It was too late. I was hung over as fuck anyways.
People who don’t even live in the USA saying “y’all” is pure pain
Why? I am not living in the us but it’s a useful phrase.
I say “all of y’all” and make a point to really emphasize the “'”.
You say “of?”
I thought it was basically all y’all
Or all’o’y’all
We need a better second person plural in English. Y’all works but its a big language gap
I’ve heard people say “yous” before.
I know. I hate it. I don’t know why
Hey…
Folks
Friends
Comrades
Everyone
People
Pals
You motley crew
Weirdos
Siblings
Fuckers
…how you doing, wanna go to the movies?
(this is by no means exhaustive list, the point is there are plenty of existing and perfectly acceptable alternatives, pick one, or more, and get comfortable with it)
Can “y’all” be singular, since there is “all y’all” for plural?
When talking about a group but only one individual of the group is present you can still use y’all.
No, you is the singular; y’all is the plural.
All y’all works because you might say “All of you all”, I suppose.
I bought a shirt once in Pittsburgh that says, “Yinz is a gender-neutral p pronoun”
Maine I think loops back around to y’all territory…
As someone that grew up in y’all territory in Kansas, it’s wildly easy to connect to people from Maine!
