y'all

Clearly there's a perceived need for a separate second-person plural pronoun. Look at all the forms that have arisen in American speech: y’all, you guys, yous.

Yes - even though an separate second person plural pronoun has been lost in formal Late New English, within actual English dialects overall there seems to be a definite underlying tendency towards having a separate second person plural pronoun. This has resulted in the separate innovation of different second person plural pronouns in different dialect groups throughout English (and not just North American English either, as shown by "you lot" being used as a second person plural pronoun in practice in English English dialects).

Kef: ROFL! Sorry I did that, man; it was a slip of the pen.

Skippy: I'm going to look at this issue as a possible Dallas-ism. It's possible that there are small pockets of singular y'all usage in and around the Dallas area. So far, correspondents from Houston, Beaumont, and Austin have disagreed with the idea of singular y'all usage.

However, I know that sometimes individual cities have peculiarities of English usage. I've been told, for example, that Baltimore English has some features that are specific to just Baltimore.

We'll get to the bottom of this, yet!

Skippy:

I used your example with my Austin friend. Here was his response:

"When used in that context, it's most definately plural and not singular!

She may have been the only person that it was directed to, but it was directed at her AND her family."

Skippy, I take literary license for the feminine form, and apologize if you're male.

Skippy, the abovementioned acquaintance, whom I formerly thought was from Austin, is really from Dallas; no kidding.

I don't know how I made that mistake, but I thought he had told me he was from Austin quite some time ago. A slip of the memory, perhaps.

So we have two Dallas natives strongly disagreeing about singular "y'all" usage. <shrugs>

Is it possible that there is a racial divide? I know that African-American English has peculiarities specific to its tongue.

I'm not aware of any singular usage of "y'all" in African-American speech. I'd say a white Southerner is much more likely to use a singular "y'all" than an African-American -- but, of course, I'm saying this as somebody who isn't really a Southerner. But that is still only my perception... singular "y'all" sounds very Southern to me even though few agree that such a thing even exists!

- Kef

Not to overegg the pudding or anything, but using "y'all" in the singular really would seem odd to most Southerners because its usage is exactly the same as "you guys" in the North.

Picture this scenario--Mr. Travis walks into a room wearing a nice Brooks Brothers suit. Someone says to him,"I like that suit you guys are wearing".

You would get some puzzled looks, wouldn't you?

I find it odd that two Dallas natives are disagreeing so strongly on this issue, but I'd like to solve this intriguing linguistic mystery.

>>Picture this scenario--Mr. Travis walks into a room wearing a nice Brooks Brothers suit. Someone says to him,"I like that suit you guys are wearing".

You would get some puzzled looks, wouldn't you?<<

Yes, unless one were speaking to me not as an individual but rather as a member of a group, where then the use of "you guys" would very well be grammatical here. But in this example, that'd instead be "I like those suits you guys are wearing"; the sentence doesn't work with "that suit" being used alongside "you guys".

Anyways, I don't wear Brooks Brothers, but rather button downs and khakis (generally from Kohl's), but that's a minor detail here.

>>I find it odd that two Dallas natives are disagreeing so strongly on this issue, but I'd like to solve this intriguing linguistic mystery.<<

I myself would think that such is likely a local dialect feature which is relatively limited in distribution, hence why some individuals insist that "y'all" can be used in a singular fashion while others so strongly disagree with them.

My suspicion is that this is really due to a modification of the scheme of having "you" versus "y'all" versus "all y'all", with "y'all" taking the place of "you" and "all y'all" likely taking the place of "y'all". Of course that is just speculation on my part.

BTW, I'd like to note that Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff -- he's actually Ukrainian, but calls himself Russian -- wrote a book in 1987 called "America on Six Rubles a Day". It was basically a compilation of his normal schtick, which was telling anecdotes about what it was Russia was like and what it was like to be a foreigner in America. Some of these were probably real and some were obviously made up, though it's not always easy to tell which is which. Anyway, in one of the anecdotes, he was in a restaurant in the South, and he was asked, "What would y'all like to eat?", and he looked around him in confusion because he was alone. But, again, anything he says should be taken with a grain of salt. :)

- Kef

Travis:

Some insight on "all y'all" is probably in order. We used that term to mean "each and every one of you". It wasn't used very often.

You would have used that term in a situation such as this: Your Math teacher is urging you to take the SAT, or perhaps, apply for a certain college. She is speaking to the whole group.

She might say,"All y'all need to have your applications ready to mail by Friday"--meaning all students--each and every one, with no exceptions...