I have no problems reading English, but i know first that you have linked to a summary and are making up your own interpretations without knowing the text. You are making up naïve interpretations of the termes utilised. It is no evidence, particularlirly that you speak of my region and it makes no sense to me.
OK, I just listened to some examples of the Wolof language on youtube. It has beautiful, unpinched vowels, and the vowels sounds VERY similar to those of every other sub-Saharan African language I’ve heard. It has the singing vowels.
What on Earth? Where is your point?
How about you listen to some examples of Russian and German on youtube, and try to hear what I’m talking about?
Maybe I’m expecting too much of the ears of the average person, I don’t know.
And Chleuh appears to be an Arabic language. We’re talking about SUB-Saharan Africa. You know, jungles, not desert. LOL
Except when you hear someone use it in the singular. :smack:
In Houston, I have heard it employed thusly:
(At a restaurant) hostess: “Irishman, party of 1?”
me: “yes”
hostess: “Ya’ll follow me.”
I haven’t heard that much, and I’m a Southerner for sure.
It’s quite possible that she just says “y’all follow me” so many times daily at that point in the interaction that it’s just habit.
I have heard a couple of Southerners use it that way, but I was afraid to ask if they were too stupid to know how to use it correctly. ROFL
I think this is probably it. The only time I’ve ever had a singular “y’all” directed at me was by a waitress at a restaurant I go to regularly, and she said something like “Can I get y’all some drinks?” then shook her head and said “Sorry, you!” So I think she just said “y’all” because she’d been serving parties of more than one all day. I’ve had this same waitress many times and she’s never called me “y’all” on any other occasion.
That said, I have heard there is a small part of Texas where “y’all” is used in the singular, so it’s possible that a waitress in Houston could be from there.
This has occurred multiple times, in various restaurants. It is not one person’s one-off error. It could be a conditioned error, saying the same thing too many times.
Again, agree to disagree. I have never heard anyone use y’all to refer to only one person. You could very well be running into people who are simply ignorant of how it’s supposed to be used.
Or she could be saying “you’ll follow me” which is short for “if you will follow me please.”
FWIW I’ve just listened to a video of Outer Banks speakers on Youtube and it sounds nothing like any British accent that I’m familiar with. It sounds a lot like what we’d think of as a stereotypical southern accent in the UK with a few vowel sounds changed (e.g. loighthouse instead of lighthouse).
Texas comedian Kinky Friedmanhas a quote (I can find the quote, but not the source)
No, it’s clearly “Y’all” for “you all”.
I can theoretically see the use when talking to one person but meaning an unspecified group to which they are a part, like their family.
“How did y’all spend your holiday?”
But it seems just wrong when speaking to one person about doing something by himself.
I never encountered it until I moved to Houston.
I’ve heard this before, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a joke. “All y’all” is used for emphasis, or to clarify that one is referring to the entire group and not just some subset of the group. Although again, I have heard that there is a dialect spoken in some particular part of Texas (I don’t remember where, but it’s sure not the part my family’s from) where “y’all” is truly used in the singular, so maybe that’s what Friedman was referring to.
“Y’all” is used in just this way, which I think does lead to some confusion among outsiders on the singular vs. plural issue.
“Y’all” is always plural. Those people who report otherwise are mistaking it for the similar sounding “Yah”, which is singular. “Yah” is quite common in east Texas. We hear “Y’all” and “Yah” as different, but an outsider might confuse them.
Previous posters are correct that “all y’all” is a kind of logical quantifier.
And there’s another contraction I sometimes write as “ya’ll”, which means “y’all will”, as in “Ya’ll bring that, rah?”. “Rah” in this case should be read as “right”, and should not be taken to mean “rat”. We hear “rah” perfectly as “rat” or “right”, they have distinct pitch inflections.
Clearly, you need to move. Those people are crazy. (Uh, misguided…bless their hearts.)
You could quite possibly be mishearing it. I have been idiotically saying it out loud to myself and y’all and you’ll are quite similar the way I pronounce them.
Now I have heard “all y’all”. I also don’t know who Friedman is. I’m Georgian, not Texan.
“All y’all” from Memphis, Tennessee:
http://memphis.about.com/od/midsouthliving/qt/yall.htm
It’s understandable you’ve never heard of Kinky Friedman. I hadn’t either until I moved to Texas. Though a couple years ago he did run for governor, as a “conservative businessman Republican” no less.
Yes, but those vowel differences stick out like sore thumbs compared to the rest of the South. Trust me.
Chleuh is an Amazight language, not Arabic, and the Chleuh inhabit the Mediterranean climate and the mountains of the Atlases, not deserts, although some Chleuh inhabit the ouasis.
And whatever your stereotype of Africa, it is not jungles. The Sahel of West Africa has no jungles. This is merely ignorance and outdated stereotypes, Africa is not the Tarzan movies.
So you hear what you want. Ca va. This is only speculations naive then.
The claim wasn’t that vowel sounds stick out like a sore thumb, it was that the accent on those islands was “pure British”. It isn’t. It sounds nothing like a British accent whatsoever.
Actually, it does. Or rather, the Dick Van Dyke version from Mary Poppins.
Incidentally, I asked my husband (a transplant from Vegas) whether he’s ever heard, in his 10 years here, someone use “y’all” as a singular and he never has. He also orders Coke a lot and has never once been asked “what kind?”
No, I have a highly trained ear, and am an excellent mimic. I know when something sounds like something else, and when it doesn’t.
Being a well-trained musician and a good singer gives me a special insight into the way vowels are spoken/sung. People from hotter climates tend to speak their vowels more loudly, and give them full breath support, somewhat like an opera singer does. I can hear the difference easily.
Anybody who has much training in European classical music history can tell you that Italian is the language of choice for opera, because they “sing” their vowels, much the way sub-Saharan Africans do, with full breath support.
And stop acting like I’m stereotyping Africa. I know it’s not all jungle. However, I’m from the continental USA, where we have exactly zero tropical jungle. We have desert, mountains, temperate forests, rivers, great lakes, and pretty much every other terrain that Africa does, except jungles. That makes African jungles especially notable to me.