Y’all Does Not Mean You, Rick
Rick Santorum, yeah, yeah, I thought he’d gone away, too, has made a pronouncement that the use of the perfectly good word “y’all” is Barack Obama’s attempt to divide America.
He’s right, y’all. It’s meant to divide the good folks from the crap folks.
It’s Biblical.
Matthew 25:31-33
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Yep, the sheeple are on the right. You knew that all along – you just didn’t know it was a sign of the end times.
He ain't like y'all.
Santorum also claims the use of “y’all” is “class warfare.” Good Heavens, people in Pennsylvania are real touchy, aren’t they? They do know that the rest of America calls them “idiots” instead of “y’all,” right?
Dude, I do not know, nor do I care to know, what people in Pennsylvania call a large crowd of people to get them to come gather for the annual Thanksgiving picture, but I’ll bet you a pair of pink boots that it takes more time and energy than hollering “Come on, y’all.”
Rick, you’re messing with our religion, you’re messing with our bodies, you’re messing with our reproductive rights, you’re messing with our constitution, you’re messing with health care, you’re messing with our education, you’re messing with our family structure and the last damn thing you hadn’t mess with was our language. So, you fix that. Next time, you’ll want to decry our cooking.
And that’s liable to get me mad, y’all.
Thanks to Norma for the heads up.
Is it still all right to say “fixin’ to”?
1Y’all in the south is translated in the north as “You guys”
not a class distinction, a regional one.
2After twenty years in New England, I still say “y’all,” and I’m not giving it up, dammit. The English language needs a second person plural, and “y’all” falls a lot less harshly on my ear than “you guys,” which is widespread, or “youse,” which you still hear in pockets of Boston. Wonder if Santorum is smart enough to realize that southerners in general say “y’all,” whether they’re plumbers or professors. And what the hell does HE say?
3The reason that idjit dropped out before the PA primary was because he knew he’d lose. He was dropped kicked out of office by a wide margin because he was a nutcase – card carrying – he was mouthing off all those things JJ said and then some and then there was the money issues…
4My rural PA friends say “yins,” which is diff, but hey, I got no problem with it, ya’ll.
5Actually, in Pennsylvania it’s Yinz as in ‘Yinz stand next to the turkey for the picture”.
6I grew up in Texas, but purged regionalisms from my speech when I moved to the Northeast and parts beyond 40 years ago. My Yankee son went to Rice and has adopted “y’all” as a useful pronoun: 2nd-person plural, he says.
7Ya’ll just crack me up!
8I’m with Elizabeth. I grew up saying “you guys”. When I moved south, I discovered the inclusiveness of y’all. I kept it. You guys is history. Thanks, All Y’all!
9In Chicago it’s “you guys” but the “guys” is pronounced to rhyme with “ice.”
Sometimes, it’s also “yuz” usually combined with “did” to produce “didjuz” (plural of “didja.”)
“You guice already went by da McDonaldse? I waited for yuz!
Didjuz eat widout me?”
We never “go” anywhere, we “go by” someplace. If we’re going to be there awhile, we go “over by” someplace.
The “e” is at the end of “McDonaldse” in the above example because we rarely use the “z” sound of “s” at the end of a word. “My cat, he purse all da time,” is the proper way to discuss a pet who won’t stop purring. Also, you see that sentence structure often begins with the subject, immediately followed by a redundant pronoun. “My cat, he…” “My girlfriend, she…” “Me, I…”
Of course, “th” is rarely used. Hence “da” Chipster.
New topics are indicated by the word “So…”
“So, I went by my cousince, but he was over by his girlfriend’se house. Me, I never tie myself down like dat. I date a couple, two tree nice girlse adda time, ya know? Didja eat? Let’s go over by my ma’s and get some Italian beef left over from da wake.”
10Or there’s the Elitist Snob’s second-minion plural: “You people.”
Maybe Santorum hasn’t slipped up enough to SAY it, but by golly you know he’s THINKING it!
11Santorum says “You people” and thinks that perfectly fine.
12Chipster – Chicago? Really?
Cubs or White Sox?
13Ya’ll…… I said it ……….a long time ago.
Invest in tin foil.
Santorum is bat sh** nuts.
Sorry Momma. But he is.
14It’s a big country Mr Santorum, and claiming region dialects are divisive, is, well, divisive.
15If he said “Yountz”, Santorum might understand since that’s the southwestern Pennsyltucky version of “y’all”. Unlike “y’all” which has a separate plural form (“y’alls”) and a group plural (“all y’alls”), “yountz” follows the general trend in Pennsyltucky to not make up a new word when there’s an existing one that will do and is used in all similar places.
[As an example of name reuse there was once a man who was named Mifflin and he became governor way off in the dim ages before television. There are towns named Mifflintown, Mifflinburg, Mifflinville, West Mifflin, and Mifflin none of which are in Mifflin County but there are numerous counties which have a Mifflin Township.]
16I moved from Houston to Ronald Reagan’s hometown (Dixon, IL — northwestern IL 90 miles from Chicago) when I was in Junior High. I became acutely aware that y’all wasn’t part of the local patois…but was made less fun of than the boy from southern IL (Ozarks) who said you’uns all (did you’uns all go to the store?). After I returned to Texas and gained a little maturity I decided y’all was a useful construction that was part of my background and I’d say it proudly. Which I did when living in New York and Los Angeles. It’s a regionalism, and is only part of “class warfare” if someone wants to assume people using it are less educated, less articulate, less white and therefore lower class…
17I grew up in NE Ohio, my mother was from central Florida. So, in my house my father used “you guys” and my mother said “ya’ll”. I mostly used you guys out in the world (I was a kid trying to fit in, after all). But as soon as I moved to Texas ya’ll came very naturally. My mother said it made more sense than you guys, you might be trying to include a female.
daChipster, I’m rolling! How you make me “hear” what I am readying is pure genius!
18Well y’all just tump me over, I thought I was just being
19friendly when I used the term y’all! I hope y’all will forgive me.
Y’all know it would never work here, but in Ireland, I’ve heard “ye” used instead of y’all.
My favorite tortured form of y’all is the second person plural possessive. Years ago, I heard Carole Keaton Rylander, then Mayor of the Fair City of Austin, say something like, “Have y’all got yer’all’s presentation ready?”
Dang, I thought the correct form for yer’all’s was urine. That’s mine and that’s urine.
20When I attended geology field camp, there were two groups – kids from the South (USMississippi, Georgia, Sewanee, UTexas) and kids from the Northeast (Boston College, UNH, UVT, UMaine). By the time the month-long camp was over, the Northeast kids were saying “y’all”, and we (the Southern ones) were all “youse guys”.
It was fun. 🙂
21Y’all is a happy inclusive term which is why Santorum hates it.
22Sam I think you nailed it. Chip, you are more than fun (my Chi town cousins all said “youse guys” and made fun of “y’all” by telling me it was a boat, and talking about me “chewing my Texas cud’ and then singing songs at me about a famous Johnny come lately Texas forbear of mine, whose family name I refuse to eschew.
Is there another baseball team in Illinois? I thought the next nearest team was the Brewers or the Cards?!
23I heard John Lennon using y’all in an interview. It’s such a wonderful, inclusive, useful word, even if you happen to be from Liverpool!
24Poop Rick, he does not know how to congegate Y’all and all of it’s complexities.
25So, tokkin’ about baseball in Chicago is likely to end up wid a cupla teet missin from yer mout. Me, I was born on da Nort’ Side, an’ as we all know Cub fans’re born, not made. My pop, he was a Cub fan, and his pop before him. My ma, she was from da Sout’ Side, dey moved dere from San Antonio. So dey had a mixed marriage: Yankee-Texan, Anglo-Mexican, Cub-Sox.
No wonder I’m a mess.
26Hee hee hee, and when I aksed my Daddy if Mama was a Cubs fan too, he looked amazingly offended and said he’d have married a Protestant before he married a Sox fan! He was from the West side but Mama was from a Polish borough on the SE side, where the steel mills are, or were. And she’s still a Cubs fan, but of late has adopted the stupid cowboys n Yankees just to nark the rest of us off…thinkin it worked 😀
27I shudder to think what he would think of the second person global plural – “all y’all.” And just to pile on…is there a more respectful, inclusive way to address your grandmother’s bridge club?
28“Yinz” etc. are western PA. In my neighborhood south of Philly, it would be more like, “Yo, yous wanna be in da pitchur or whut?”
But my family was from VA so I know the use of y’all. The most common mistake is to use it as a singular. And, by the way, the Second Person Plural Emphatic is “all y’all”.
29This is about the silliest argument they have going. I grew up in eastern Colorado, and had my children in Tucson before I moved to Seattle and later eastern Washington. Every part of the country has its own dialect. Our youngest daughter got caught in her high tech job in Seattle saying to a lost co-worker, “Oh, it’s just a skip and a jump down the road. We’ll walk there at lunch,” and then called me to say she was humiliated by just blurting it out (“MO-O-MMM!!”). My husband grew up in eastern Nebraska, and we still disagree if the expression is “a hoop and a hollar,” or a “whoop and a holler.” (I still say it’s the latter.) And by the way, that’s closer than a far piece down the road. I love to hear “y’all.” Works for me.
30Come on Santo, let’s hear you opine on CHICKEN FRIED STEAK with CREAM GRAVY~I dare you, I double-dawg dare you~
31people trying to pander – badly – to the South:
Santorum
Josh Mandel
Mitt
are all cheesy twits
32