“You” is gender neutral, in its singular and plural form. “Y’all” is a useful plural form of “you” but as a New Zealand-English hybrid I do not have the accent to pull it off. If I could shift my accent further north perhaps I could get away with “thou” and “ye” for singular and plural forms, but only where they fit grammatically.
It is explicitly plural where ‘you’ is hard to pull off as plural because it leans heavily towards singular, just like ‘they’ leans heavily towards plural. At least in the US afaik the main competitor is ‘you guys’ for plural, which is one of those terms that is normally meant as gender neutral but the words clearly are not. So despite being from a place where that is the correct way to say it I’m in favor of y’all becoming the standard across the whole language, which it seems like it might be moving towards doing.
“ya’ll” is also American English’s answer to the problem of not have a plural form of “you” (see also: “you guys” or “you all” from which ya’ll is derived).
Due to English being heavily influenced by Romance languages, but not taking its grammatical structure purely from them, we really had no single-word version of “vous” (I don’t know other romance languages aside from French).
I’m an American who’s been lucky enough to travel to many other countries, and I’m currently living in the EU.
Blanket statements on praise-worthiness are stupid; one should only praise things, people, and nations when and where they deserve it. There’s a lot to admire and there’s a lot to be disgusted at when considering just about every country and government.
What I find in EU culture socially is that people are far more exclusionary, prone to isolationism, and prejudicial about my and my countrymen’s competence and intelligence than what I was told to expect. I expected some “haha, dumb American” memes, but I didn’t expect people here to honestly believe everyone thinks and acts like our worst people back in the US. It was very eye-opening in a negative way.
EU citizens need to stop treating outsiders as 1-dimensional caricatures, but regrettably, that’s been one of humanity’s greatest faults, and I doubt it will be rectified anytime soon. I try not to get too butt-hurt about it, as we say, but it is irksome after encountering that attitude in conversation after conversation.
I hate reading the Americans now typing “y’all”.
I’m a northerner and I still had to accept the unimpeachable logic that y’all is a versatile and useful word
The English language is sorely lacking gender neutral pronouns so it’s nice that one is getting added
It’s not new actually. Maybe revived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
I meant y’all
“You” is gender neutral, in its singular and plural form. “Y’all” is a useful plural form of “you” but as a New Zealand-English hybrid I do not have the accent to pull it off. If I could shift my accent further north perhaps I could get away with “thou” and “ye” for singular and plural forms, but only where they fit grammatically.
It is explicitly plural where ‘you’ is hard to pull off as plural because it leans heavily towards singular, just like ‘they’ leans heavily towards plural. At least in the US afaik the main competitor is ‘you guys’ for plural, which is one of those terms that is normally meant as gender neutral but the words clearly are not. So despite being from a place where that is the correct way to say it I’m in favor of y’all becoming the standard across the whole language, which it seems like it might be moving towards doing.
“ya’ll” is also American English’s answer to the problem of not have a plural form of “you” (see also: “you guys” or “you all” from which ya’ll is derived).
Due to English being heavily influenced by Romance languages, but not taking its grammatical structure purely from them, we really had no single-word version of “vous” (I don’t know other romance languages aside from French).
Easily America’s best contribution to civilization, after “right (turns) on red”.
And I’m glad it’s catching on instead of “you’uns”, “yuns”, or “yous”.
I’m not American and I will forever type y’all because it’s useful and I like it lol
Why?
It’s just a contraction that represents “you all”.
As in, “Ever since I moved to Europe, it seems [y’all/you all] seem to hate Americans to try to look cool in front of your friends.”
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Is it tho? I have to often times actually cool off people I know because they praise USA so hard without knowing shit.
I’m an American who’s been lucky enough to travel to many other countries, and I’m currently living in the EU.
Blanket statements on praise-worthiness are stupid; one should only praise things, people, and nations when and where they deserve it. There’s a lot to admire and there’s a lot to be disgusted at when considering just about every country and government.
What I find in EU culture socially is that people are far more exclusionary, prone to isolationism, and prejudicial about my and my countrymen’s competence and intelligence than what I was told to expect. I expected some “haha, dumb American” memes, but I didn’t expect people here to honestly believe everyone thinks and acts like our worst people back in the US. It was very eye-opening in a negative way.
EU citizens need to stop treating outsiders as 1-dimensional caricatures, but regrettably, that’s been one of humanity’s greatest faults, and I doubt it will be rectified anytime soon. I try not to get too butt-hurt about it, as we say, but it is irksome after encountering that attitude in conversation after conversation.
Y’all is just a useful word, other ways of referring to a group of people are ambiguous, esp. now that They doesn’t always mean multiple
y’all is a legitimate word and i’ll fight you over it.