..and I’m not a sir.
I beg your pardon, Ma’am.
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I’ve heard “Ya’ll” used as both a singular and a plural term.
Didn’t have too much problem with a co-worker saying things like, “That storm prednear scared me half to death”- until I noticed she spelled it that way, too.
The rest of the article is pretty interesting.
I certainly haven’t noticed people using y’all as singular, and I don’t think I do. Consider two different things I might say to a waiter:
“Can y’all bring the appetizer with the entree?”
“Do you know Jake?”
In the first case, I’m asking the waiter if he and the rest of the restaurant employees can work together to comply with this request. In the second case, I’m asking the waiter whether he and he alone knows Jake. In both cases, it might look to a casual observer as though I were using the singular, but it’d only really be true in the second case.
“All y’all” is an intensifier. I might ask my class two questions:
- “Do y’all want to go to the park for recess?”
- “Do all y’all want to go to the park for recess?”
In the first case, if the majority of the class wants to go, the answer is “yes.” In the second case, the answer is only “yes” if it’s unanimous.
Edit: That said, the apostrophe NEVER appears after the “a.” That’s just wrong, Elendil’s Heir.
Oops. I knew that. I hope y’all’ll forgive me.
My grandfather always told us “that’ll learn you”. Yikes!!
Notice that all the constructions where “anymore” sounds right are negatives, or somehow subtractive. (I am not sure what the actual grammatical term is.) For instance:
Gasoline is so expensive anymore = weird.
Gasoline isn’t so expensive anymore = fine.
Pizza is my entire diet anymore = weird.
Pizza is all I eat anymore (i.e., it’s the only thing I eat anymore; I don’t eat anything else anymore) = fine.
I believe that I may very well have been geeky about everything of any possible interest except English grammar. It is why I did so badly in the German class.
Ich habe es in der schule gelearnt.
Hote abend, or something.
More properly, “Jive ass fools gon’t got no brains nohow.”
The double negatives (the “don’t got no” naturally elide into “gon’t” ) cancel each other, making the statement positive, thereby leaving room for the “nohow” to make the required negative.
Golly!