[mythtv-users] British vs. American English (was MythTV requires a better name)

Dewey Smolka dsmolka at gmail.com
Fri Sep 21 02:24:09 UTC 2007


On 9/20/07, Peter Schachte <schachte at csse.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Ryan Steffes wrote:
>
> > English lost the plural thou in the last few
> > centuries, and southerners just stuck it back with the convenient
> > y'all!
>
> AIUI, at least in Texas, "y'all" is singular.  The plural is "all y'all."
>

English has been <i>trying</i> to lose the second person plural for
centuries, but it keeps coming back out of necessity -- at least in
the plural sense rather than the formal sense.

In DC where I grew up, we use 'y'all' or 'you all' or 'you guys';
farther south it's 'y'all' or 'all y'all'. In the northeast (and from
most Scottish people I know) it's 'youse' And so on.

We may have abandoned the second person plural as far as the grammar
books are concerned, but it's still alive and well in the spoken
language.


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