Purely anecdotally and not at all rigorously surveyed, but my transcriptionists seem to prefer ya’ll to y’all roughly 2 to 1. Of course, many of them also think “should of,” “one a them,” and “two enchilada’s” are all correct as well.
I always figured ya’ll was chosen because other contracted words that end in ll end in 'll, like I’ll, we’ll, etc. I suppose that’s the same as ya + all, just from a different direction.
Just for the record, the equivlent Pittsburgh regionalism is spelled “you’ns”, since it’s a contraction of “you ones”. “Yinz” is just a phonetic rendition of how that ends up being pronounced in a Northern Appalachian accent (although it’s probably closer to “yïnz”, with an umlaut).
It’s not a word that I’ve ever had to write.
I guess i’ll add in as a Virginian and having grown up around quite a many who identified themselves as Southerners, that i’ve never seen the word as “ya’ll”.
It’s always been “y’all”, and “All y’all” in its two forms written out and spoken in my last 23 years around here.
I’m not familiar with an umlauted “i.” What’s that sound like?
I’ve lived in the South my entire life and had never seen “ya’ll” until I started reading the SD message board. Now, for the first time ever, I see “yall” in this thread. Merriam Webster Online says both ya’ll and yall are variants of y’all, a contraction of you all.
In my experience “all y’all” generally meant a subset of y’all. Since y’all means “all of you,” and there cannot be more than “all,” we’d use “all y’all” as follows:
“All y’all on the left, use that door; all y’all on the right, use the other door.”
And y’all was never used to refer to a single person. That simply would not make sense.
There are tons of people out there (North and South) who cannot spell, or correctly use, even simple words. Why would the word y’all be any different?
And us foreigners with native tongues that differentiate “singular you” and “plural you” hate that. So we love discovering things like “you all” and “y’all” and “you guys”, which may be grammer but come in real handy at expressing that important teeny weeny difference.
Just this week, a coworker had a three-hour whine meltdown which in the end can be tracked to him not having understood the difference between “we need you to take a look at this and give us feedback” and “we need the whole group of which you’re a part to take a look at this and give us feedback.” I’m thinking of teaching my Spanish teammates to use “you guys” (wouldn’t want to give the scousers heart attacks by y’alling them).
There’s a Yall County? Where is it, if I might ask?
[No snark intended – I’m genuinely curious.]
I’m familiar with Yell County, Arkansas, home of the heroine of the novel True Grit (and the subsequent John Wayne film), and also home county of Doper An Arky and namesake of his DC-based rock band. That county was named after Archibald Yell.
“Y’all” is a wonderful expression and we Northerners would do well to trade some maple syrup for the right to use it. (“Well, bless your heart” is kinda snazzy too.)
I was born and raised in Atlanta, GA. I’ve always spelled it “y’all” since as everyone has mentioned, it is a contraction of “you all”. This is the correct spelling of it among all my acquaintances.
However, during the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, when they spelled the word in question on the field at Olympic Stadium (Now Turner Field) they did spell it “ya’ll” Which I might add was the first time I remember seeing it spelled like that, and it provoked some negative comments about ACOG (Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games) among my friends.
As I type this, I notice the spell check in Firefox lists “ya’ll” as incorrectly spelled, while “y’all” is fine.
FWIW. One explanation for why “all y’all” (or “alla y’all”) isn’t redundant is that “y’all” is sometimes used with plural construction but meaning one non-specific or hypothetical individual, as in “If any of y’all got separated from the tour, y’all would want to give a holler.”
That’s right.
I can, however, imagine using “y’all” in a one-on-one conversation as follows: How have y’all been doing?
A person hearing that conversation might mistakenly think “y’all” is being used as a singular pronoun, when in fact, it’s meaning in this context is roughly “you and yours” or perhaps “you and your family.” (“How have you and your family been doing?”)
I suspect usage in this and similar contexts accounts for the confusion as to whether “y’all” is singular.
“Y’all” is always plural.
Interesting enough, the y’all vs ya’ll googlefight comes down on the ya’lls side.
(Preemptive note: I am not trying to hijack this thread with a Bible translation debate. Don’t start.)
This is something my stepfather explained about the King James Version of the English-language Bible. People today complain about the KJV’s use of “archaic” words like “ye”, without understanding why the translators chose those words. In this case, “ye” was used specifically in those places where the original Hebrew or Greek used the plural form of “you”, where correct understanding of the text requires knowing that the speaker or writer is addressing a group, not an individual. It’s similar to the familiar, “Hear ye, hear ye!” used by town criers when reading official public proclamations - it meant “Everybody listen up!” The word “you” was indeed in common use in King James’ day, perhaps even used as a plural in the common tongue, but for the purposes of the religious and legal texts, “ye” was used where necessary for clarity. Modern translations that replace all the ye’s with you’s remove that distinction.
I’ve always spelled it “y’all”, though I have spelled it in text messages as “yall”.
“Ya’ll” is messed up.
I saw that, but I have no idea where the numbers come from, because if you actually google “ya’ll” and “y’all” in quotes, you get almost twice as many hits as the latter.
That’s not quite right. “Ye” is the second person plural nominative. “You” is the second person plural accusative. Both are used liberally in the KJV of the bible, depending on which grammatical function they are fulfilling. For example:
“Thou” was the singular second person nominative, and “thee” was the accusative.
They sure is. They sure is…
(By the way, you spelled “y’all” wrong.)
This reference spells them you-uns and young-uns, not as contractions but as a variant of “ones”. However, they also act like that dropping of the w sound is the same as the contractions He’ll and He’d. Doesn’t seem like the same thing.
Thanks for the clarification 