• NiklzNDimz@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      It’s contagious as heck. I’ve never been to the South but somehow y’all fitted itself into my lexicon.

      • claycle@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        True story: in the early 00s, my company was acquired by a Large Silicon Valley Company. LSVC sent a “business integration” team across the country (to Dallas, Texas where we were at the time) to welcome us into the fold. At these meetings, these Perky Northern Californian Women - they were all Perky Northern California Women, for whatever reason - opened with the following sentence:

        “We’d like to welcome y…ya…y’y’y’y’y…YA UL(!) to LSVC.”

        Repeated throughout the meeting, the integration team kept stumbling over “y’all” instead of just saying “you” when talking to us. Clearly, someone thought that - being Texans - we wouldn’t understand them unless the did.

        At one point, one of us spoke up and said something like, “First, thank you for attempting to use our local dialect to talk to us. But, we can understand you perfectly well when you speak your native Northern Californian. Second, by way of correction, the word is just “y’all”. Also, if you want to use the plural second person, like vous in French, you may say “all’y’all”, but it is optional.”

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Repeated throughout the meeting, the integration team kept stumbling over “y’all” instead of just saying “you” when talking to us. Clearly, someone thought that - being Texans - we wouldn’t understand them unless the did.

          Absolute cringe.

          Also, remind me what the difference between y’all and all y’all is again.

          • claycle@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            all’y’all is the plural second person form.

            Sheriff, speaking to a number of bandits: All’y’all just put yer guns down and come out with yer hands up so we can end this all peaceful like.

          • Adramis [he/him]@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            All y’all is broader, but I’m not sure how to characterize it. Like if you’re talking to someone who is part of a team, saying y’all could ambiguously refer to the whole team, but all y’all unambiguously refers to the whole team.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        I’d guess it’s just not natural to have a missing pronoun like English has since the days of thou (which was the original singular).

      • Silverhand@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I grew up in the southeast US and while I don’t think I have a strong accent and have tried to cut other southern things out of my speech, I quite like “y’all”. In my opinion it’s the best gender neutral second person plural word. Most others are needlessly gendered or sound even weirder.

        • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I hear you on the needlessly gendered words. I also try not to use words like “guys.” Instead, I use words like “everyone” or just “you.” They work just fine in most instances. On rare occasions, I sneak in a “you all.” Same content without the southern sound.

          • TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            I’m pretty sure I sound like even more of a hick than usual if I try to say “you all” over just admitting defeat and saying “ya’ll”.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Politics has always held sway over the spread of dialects. You’ll be happy to know that the language lasts longer than any associations, most people don’t even know about Willie the Bastard anymore.