Friday, October 06, 2006

all y'all

I've been having fun learning more about the proper uses and pronunciation of "y'all" from my two American colleagues. The American pronouns go like this: I, you, he, she, it, we, y'all, they. For example, when talking with Blair the Texan about my husband and our apartment and such, he said "So, where do y'all live?" It took me awhile to figure out that he meant just two people: Aaron and me. When I was telling Mike from Cali about this, and that I had thought y'all meant a whole bunch of people, he said, "No, that's 'all y'all'!"

So, there is now a further distinction when it comes to the second person plural. "Y'all" refers to a few people, whereas "all y'all" refers to a whole bunch of people.

And by the way, don't pronounce the L's too strongly, it's best if you just leave your mouth somewhat slack and make it more of a "yaw."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

if you feel the need to put an 's' in there, it goes after the all, not the y'all:

alls y'all