| ??? 09/17/07 22:47 Read: times |
#144722 - re: not a plural Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Joseph Hebert said:
"Y'all's" is not the plural of a contraction. It's a doubly contracted form of an improperly conjugated phrase. Specifically, it's "You all is."
"Y'all" is explicitely plural. It was coined for the purpose of making the plural tense of "you" explicit. It should never be used to address an individual. To address an individual one would use "you're," as in "You're welcome anytime." It's usually a dead giveaway that someone's from up North when they try to use "y'all" to address an individual (well, usually anyway). A South-uh-nuhr once taught me that y'all is singular and all y'all is plural. The added s is just the drawl. It's kinda like how you get grits with everything, even if you tell the waitress that you do NOT want grits. Even "You's" (contracted "You is") is improperly conjugated since "you" should always use "are" as the state of being verb, even in the singular. Besides, "you's" is a Northern dialect anyway. The proper spelling of the word is youse, as in, "Hey, is youse guys goin' to the Yankee game?" Note that subject-verb agreement isn't relevant in the Noo Yawk goombah dialect. -a |
