{"id":204,"date":"2009-06-17T17:15:02","date_gmt":"2009-06-17T17:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=204"},"modified":"2025-03-23T13:26:17","modified_gmt":"2025-03-23T13:26:17","slug":"hey-yall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/17\/hey-yall\/","title":{"rendered":"“Hey y’all!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Y'all\"<\/a>Spending a lot of time talking to an American man from the South, the word “y’all” has struck me as very interesting, although probably unusable if you don\u2019t have a Southern accent. It has, however, spread to the extent that it\u2019s included in the Merriam-Webster, so maybe it\u2019ll catch on across the Atlantic eventually. <\/p>\n

“Y’all” is short for “you all”, and is pronounced something like \u201cyawl\u201d. “Y’all” is commonly incorrectly spelled “ya’ll”, but think of the two words it’s made up of and it’s simple: “you” and “all”. When saying or writing “y’all”, you’re merely taking out the “ou” in “you” and replacing it with an apostrophe. “All” is one word that you cannot break up. <\/p>\n

So when and how do you use it? As David Parker explains<\/a> on Another History Blog:<\/p>\n

\n

…the word serves an important function in English. We have separate singular and plural first person pronouns (“I” and “we”) and third person pronouns (“he”\/”she” and “they”), but there is no distinction in the second person; “you” is both singular and plural. The distinction between the French “tu” (singular) and “vous” (plural) doesn’t exist in English. It did until a few centuries ago: “thou” was singular, “you” plural. (www.belotero.com<\/a>) But by the time the American colonies won their independence, “thou” had practically disappeared and “you” was serving a double function. It’s almost as if we’re missing a pronoun now, and “y\u2019all” admirably fills the second person plural position.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In other words: it’s OK to say “how are y’all doing?” if you’re referring to a group of people, but if you’re just talking to the one person, it’s best to stick to “how are you doing?”<\/p>\n

And some further usage examples from my American friend:<\/p>\n

\u201cY\u2019all gon be around later?\u201d
\n\u201cWhere y\u2019all from?\u201d
\n\u201cWho won between y\u2019all and em?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spending a lot of time talking to an American man from the South, the word “y’all” has struck me as very interesting, although probably unusable if you don\u2019t have a Southern accent. It has, however, spread to the extent that it\u2019s included in the Merriam-Webster, so maybe it\u2019ll catch on across the Atlantic eventually. “Y’all” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,44],"tags":[41,51,80,81],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-uk-vs-us-english","category-words","tag-america","tag-language","tag-southern-english","tag-yall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}