Now, that’s a Family Feud!
But you’re still using y’all in the plural sense!
The exterminator’s meaning is still plural, not single, no matter what his reasoning is.
Your previous example uses the same logic - implying plural so as not to put the coworker on the spot.
Exactly - When leaving an establishment, and I wish to bid a good evening, I’ll often tell the receptionist, “Y’all have a good night.” The implication being the receptionist is a representative of the establishment as a whole, therefore the second person plural pronoun is used.
Don’t even have to be conservative. I 100% prefer female pronouns and I’m pretty strident about the idea of anyone imposing gender neutral pronouns on me. As long as my life experience is significantly influenced by my gender and female biology, I am a woman, dammit.
Yep, that usage is both semantically and grammatically plural. But it’s a useful example. This is similar to the mechanism that led to the displacement of “thou” by “you”–the singular second-person pronoun was considered to be too direct.
When visiting Georgia some years ago, my wife was shopping in a clothing store. I was doing the duty of “waiting by the change room so I could say how lovely she looks”. A sales assistant came by and said “Y’all waitin’ on your sweetie?” (I found it quite endearing)
There was only me there. Just me, referred to as “Y’all” There’s one data point for y’all. (plural)
Postle Bliefnick? A name like that should have been Executive Producer on *Rocky and Bullwinkle".
Not to make light of her death; my condolences to her family and friends.
y’all is the major accomplishment of the south. the other option of “ye”, does not work as well.
i also agree that the use of they as a singular pronoun is a bit grating. it is one of those things that the irritation to me is far less, than the disrespect and hurt to a fellow person. hopefully at some point, some region of english speaking humans will come up with a singular gender neutral pronoun.
“You’uns.”
“All y’all sumbitches.”
Yes. “You” was once the formal way to address a higher ranking person - a person who would use the plural to discuss themselves (You said “you” to someone who could say (or you wished to imply could say) “We are not amused”). But the informal second-person died out (becoming associated with a disfavored religious sect might have had something to do with it), and so we were left only with the formal, which is still used with plural verbs (“You are”) for that reason.
They have. They didn’t come up with the one you or I might have liked (I was a fan of the Spivak pronouns), but language will march on with or without us.
Indefinite singular “they” is very old. Definite singular “they” is new. But then, there’s a lot in the language that is new to me, and just when I start catching on to any of it, my students are ready to mock me for using old slang.
And as for “all y’all”, multiple pluralization isn’t anything new to English, either. “Children” was originally the plural of “childer”, and “childer” was originally the plural of “child”. And now some dialects take it a step further, with “childrens”. Or take those Polish potato dumplings: In English, one of those is usually called a “pierogi”, while more than one are “pierogis”. But in Polish, “pierogi” is the plural of “pierog”.
Like panini is really plural, but it’s used in US English as a singular item.
never mind
It’s nice to occasionally be reminded that I am not alone in this world…
Her name was given as Rebecca Postle Bliefnick, the “Postle”, I think, being her maiden name. Journalists seem to be very strict about identifying subjects by their untitled surnames, so the estranged husband was called “Bliefnick” and she was distinguished from him by using her paired surnames.
The Canonese are way ahead of us in that respect, using “佢” as a gender-neutral pronoun all the time. In Mandarin, the word is “他”, which I suspect is used much the same way but has “她” as a valid feminine form; the corresponding character is missing from contemporary Cantonese orthography.
Of course, our rat-wingers view China as evil, so they must be doing it wrong.
Tell me you’re Ponsonby Britt.
Utah has also done so, which is slightly more believable. There are parts that elementary kids probably shouldn’t read IMHO. I don’t agree with banning books, but I get their reasoning in this very specific instance.
You know, banning the Bible for sex and violence might be just the thing to get kids reading it. I remember reading a book in Spanish class that we were told had three small segments taken out, to make it suitable for young readers. First chance I got I was at the city library to see what I was missing.