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.
Was this post designed to offend all non Texan southerners
Ya’ll better watch out now y’hear? We don take kindly to that kind’a hate speech ‘round these parts. Equal weight beans and beef, you skimp out either and yain’t fixin’ chili; you might’ina even be inclined to leave for everyone’s sake.
Where in the world do you not put beans in chili? That’s literally the point of chili. Is this an American thing I’m too European to understand?
I’m southern with family from Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas and chili is all about the beans. I call chili with chiles, beans and tomatoes “Chili” and if I make it with beans, chiles, tomatoes and meat (stew meat never hamburger) “Meat Chili”. Would take chili with beans & corn over chili without beans any day of the week.
Chili with hamburger without beans is something to put on a hot dog or bun. Not a meal, it’s like hamburger helper nonsense.
ETA: this is not to say I’ve never made stew meat in Chile sauce. Cubed brisket finished in sauce of anchos and tomatillos is heavenly. I just never call that chili.
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.
Is it bad that I’m more bothered by “j’suppose” than the inclusion of “anyway”?
C’est un trait quebecois, je pense… les cowboys fringants la dit (“anyway”), donc je ne sais, c’est probablement ok… J’ai entendu “j’suppose” avant aussi, vraiment, je pense…? Est-ce que ça n’est pas comme “I’spose” en anglais? Reverso a beaucoup des examples pour “j’suppose”, quand même. (Je ne suis pas quebecois ou francophone, si tu ne peut pas voir pour quelque raison; je suis un idiot anglophone.)
Everyone gets y’all. It fills the dumb gap in English where the plural of you is you. Now if we could only get a singular neutral 3rd for people that isn’t also the plural.
E: Or we could start pronouncing They singular like latchkey, for a thee sound. So we can get fun words like they’s (thees). It will also make English even more confusing for newbies. What’s not to love?
So long as we can still claim “Y’all’d’nt’ve”
It’s our greatest contribution to the lexicon and extremely efficient.
It’s also second person plural (or singular), second person is always ungendered.
First and second person, plural and singular are never gendered: I, you, we, you / y’all / all y’all. The only pronouns that are gendered are the third person singular: he / she / it. Third person plural (they) is also ungendered.
The most common form (at least where I’m from) of second person plural behind “you all (y’all)” is gendered: “you guys”. It’s used in an ungendered way increasingly commonly, but “guy” is still gendered to plenty of English speakers.
“Guys” is sometimes gendered, sometimes not. There really isn’t a female-gendered equivalent to “you guys”. You could say something like “you gals”, but that’s just not used. Most often you could say “could you guys follow me?” to a group of women and nobody would think twice about it.
As someone who grew up in North Carolina, I agree. Texas might be the first thing some people think of when it comes to “southern” states, but it doesn’t get exclusive claim to the quirks of the whole region
I have never thought of Texas as southern (yes, I know they’re the south-most state). Western movies were in Texas, so Texas is western (don’t judge my very clearly faulty logic). South Carolina is south for sure. Georgia. Mississippi and Alabama are no brainers. But Texas? That’s where western cowboys live… sorry… cowyalls.
“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”
Y’all is exclusive. All y’all is inclusive.
If I walk into a party in a house and a group of my friends are there and I say ‘what are y’all doing here?’, I’m only talking to my friends.
If I walk into my own house and there’s a party there and I say ‘what are all y’all doing here?’ I’m addressing everyone of the hoodlums in my house.
Edit: To the person who down voted yet contributed nothing to the convo, please feel obliged to read up on clusivity in linguistics.
I was one of the downvotes. Clusivity, as described in your article does not apply to y’all. It’s You All…it will never include the speaker.
It’d have to be something like w’all to apply.
We’re very inclusive in Australia also.
‘G’day you bunch of cunts’ means hello to everyone male, female, known and unknown.
We’re very polite over here.
Getting pressed enough about a single downvote to make an edit is cringe.
Yeah. We mostly think of grammatical number as a simple choice of singular vs plural but that’s not what we do in real life.
We generally have multiple labels that describe the concept of progressively expanding circles of what’s included when we think of ourselves.
There’s the very narrow sense of I/me/myself. We have various expansions around us/all’y’all. Jamaicans have the phrase “I and I” which focuses on the individual but explicitly calls out the connection with others.
Y’all is not Texan. Y’all is Southern and Texas is Southern wannabe.
Florida is so redneck that they crossed a threshold into its own category. Florida Man.
Seriously, I can’t believe people try to say its not really the south. Like its literally the furthest south you can go in the US.
As a Texan we are not southern ;)
We are sort of western. But yea too late to the party to be southern imo.
Depends. Texas exists as a state in part because southern US farmers ran out of land to grow cotton in. A good chunk of Texas is just an extension of the south. Then again, a good chunk is an extension of Mexico. Tejanos don’t get the credit they are due for the formation of the Republic.
You mean it has a several well developed left wing voting cities between the huge stretches of backwater redneck hellscapes? I’d love to know what makes Texas not southern…
By that logic Pennsylvania is Southern… And Washington State… And probably most of the country.
I mean, it’s certainly disgusting white trash enough. It’s got a lot of similar characteristics. Although I think eating horse turds to celebrate a championship is pretty unique. So they’ve got that and the throwing batteries at Santa thing to separate themselves. Fuck Philly.
