Carrion Luggage

Y'all-Inclusive

I know I've written about this word before, but not about this particular article, which is pretty new as I write this. From NPR (apparently, a transcript of a broadcast piece):

    Y'all, we need to talk about 'y'all'  

Sorry, yinz. Fuhgeddaboudit, you guys: In the past 20 years or so, "y'all" has gone from being a Southernism to become America's favorite way to use the second person plural, according to linguists.

Huh. So the South did, indeed, rise again, only this time without shots being fired or people being enslaved.

"Y'all has won," says Paul E. Reed, a linguist at the University of Alabama who studies Southern American English and Appalachian English.

I'm not sure a Southerner declaring victory is any sort of proof of anything.

I'd also like to note the construction of his sentence. By saying "Y'all has won," it's clear that he means that the word "y'all" has become victorious, and it does not violate subject/verb number agreement.

Admirers appreciate y'all's tidiness and utility. In particular, Reed says, young people across the U.S. seem to love y'all.

Young people create and/or latch on to new words all the time, in part to rebel against their stodgy elders. Most of such words are dumb and eventually fall out of favor. Occasionally, one will worm its way into the general lexicon. "Cool," used to describe something or someone that doesn't suck, is one such word. I fully support that same trajectory for "y'all." (I'm also quite fond of "yeet.")

Long-term migration patterns have also helped y'all spread, from Black Americans who brought it with them out of the South during the Great Migration, to Northerners and others who have more recently adopted the term after moving to the South.

Whatever its origin (still somewhat disputed), the lack of a defined second-person plural pronoun in standard modern English is a linguistic oversight just begging to be filled by something. As the article notes:

The word has thrived because it's utilitarian, filling a gap in standard English. We use y'all — and relatives like yinz (for those in Pittsburgh) and youse — because the language has long lacked a satisfying plural pronoun for "you."

"Basically, all of the non-mainstream varieties are better than the mainstream variety, because 'you' being for plural is confusing," Reed says.

I would argue that "y'all" is mainstream, but then, I've always lived in the South.

The article goes into some of the origin debate, which I don't have much to say about.

Another theory notes that written instances of y'all date to 17th century England, as far back as a 1631 poem. But Reed and other linguists say it's not clear whether those examples exactly mirror the meaning and usage of the modern y'all.

Why that matters is beyond me. It's well-established that, in the absence of language fascism, word meaning and usage changes over time. It's an example I've used before, but the word "nice" has changed meaning more than once since 1631, and yet no one seems to care about its changes as opposed to the ones associated with "y'all."

Y'all is on a popularity streak. It's been springing up as far away as Australia, and executives are being trained to adopt "y'all" to be more inclusive.

I have yet to see it in a formal context, though (except, of course, formal reports about the use of "y'all.") It's hard to imagine, but lots of stuff that used to be hard to imagine has happened, like the first time I heard a Star Trek character say "fuck." (I cheered.)

Wright says y'all is benefiting from a process called diffusion, as it grows beyond its former geographic boundaries — a process that's very difficult to predict.

"So being able to watch this happen in real time, it's like a celestial event or something for an astrophysicist, it's like this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

Okay, I'm not trying to downplay the impact for a linguist of watching language change in real time, but let's not go overboard, here. Watching a nearby (but not too nearby) supernova go off would be way more awesome. Until that happens, though, I'm happy for y'all.