Morrison’s essay was not viewed kindly below the Mason-Dixon line, and a consensus grew that the singular form was an invention of Hollywood screenwriters and other Yankees who were too lazy to investigate how Southerners really talk.Įventually this became, as H.L. That was when Estelle Rees Morrison, a Northerner, wrote a note in American Speech contending that singular y’all was quite common in the South, representing a polite or formal form of address, comparable to the French vous. In other words, would any self-respecting Southerner ever say to a friend, referring to the friend and the friend alone, “How y’all doing?”? A 2006 article in the scholarly journal American Speech tallies 30 previous investigations of the issue, dating back to 1928. Seemingly an innocuous, even potentially charming, Southern solution to the English language’s lack of a distinct word to indicate the second-person plural (it sure beats such alternatives as youse, yiz, yins, you lot, you guys and the Sopranos-esque youse guys), it has generated a remarkable amount of heat.Īlmost all of the controversy has centered around a single point: whether or not y’all is ever knowingly employed by natives to indicate second-person singular. This issue is available for purchase on this site Yagoda on Y’allĬonsider y’all. The following piece is from Issue 31: Ode to the South.
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