Meditations on Y'all

In one of my comments to a post below I used the word y'all.

I was born and raised Pennsylvania but I am now a resident of Texas. And one of my very favorite things about Texas is its use of a plural form of the second-person pronoun: Y'all. A contraction of "you-all" it is pronounced variously as "yawl" or "you-awl." I like "yawl." As in, "How yawl doin'?"

I like y'all for three reasons. First, it makes me feel like a cowboy. Seriously. One of the joys of West Texas is the cowboy culture and its casual informality. I live in a place where people go to church in their "dress jeans." I like this style. I can't remember the last time I wore anything other than jeans. I lecture in jeans, go to weddings in jeans, funerals in jeans, important meetings in jeans. And you can do this in a place where medical doctors and lawyers go to work in jeans and cowboy boots. Y'all just fits in here. I like the informality of it. (I also am very fond of "Howdy!")

Second, I despise the fact that the second-person you doesn't have a plural form. I, the first-person, has its we. You, the second-person, has...what? You? In my misery I've tried, with mixed results, to bring back thou (second-person singular) and ye (second-person plural). But no one seems to want to go along with me. Even when I explain the necessity of a second-person plural. So, y'all it is. (Incidentally, "Howdy" might be a contraction of "How ye doing?")

Third, growing up in Western Pennsylvania I'd already grown up with a second-person plural. In the rolling hills of the Allegheny Mountains we used the word "yinz" for the second-person plural. Some believe yinz was the result of a clash between English and the Scots-Irish form of "you ones." Yinz is a marker of what has been called "Pittsburgh English." This was the dialect of my youth. (Yes, I cheer for Penn State, Pitt, the Pirates, Penguins and the Steelers. If I have to, I root for the other side of the state. I think Philadelphia is over there.) In short, having grown up with yinz it was very easy to switch to y'all.

So there it is. My linguistic confession. I have a Ph.D. and I'm in love with y'all.