Texans are smarter than ye think.
iamnotaparakeet
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06 May 2008, 12:51 pm
Comparing 2nd person plural nominative pronouns:
Formal: you (same as singular.)
"You are the best soldiers that I have ever trained"
Middle English: ye (almost phonetically ambiguous.)
"Ye have lost thy way, have ye not?"
Texan: y'all (one syllable and phonetically distinct.)
"Y'all don't know what you're talking about"
Minnesotan: youse guises or you guys (two words and considered by some idiots not to bePC.)
"Oh for cute! Youse guises are the best friends I have."
Other: you all (same as MN except gender neutral)
"You all may leave"
Other: all of you (prepositions are part of the deterioration of inflected languages, they must be killed!)
"All of you are expected to have your papers turned in by tomorrow."
2nd person plural nominative universal uniform:
Texan: all y'all (a pleonasm admittedly, but unique)
"All y'all are morons, so I don't care if you make fun of me!"
Yuppies in Texas don't say y'all, but the commonfolk seem to have a one word, one syllable, distinct pronoun which is no longer in existence in Modern Formal English or other dialects which are less ridiculed.
Last edited by iamnotaparakeet on 06 May 2008, 12:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
06 May 2008, 1:11 pm
English needs a second person plural pronoun distinct from the singular. I'm all for y'all, because I don't think I'm going to get too much support for bringing back the Old English thou-you distinction (although I think it sounds ugly post GEVS so we should say thu; bow to my aesthetic whims). And I really dislike "yous" for completely irrational reasons.
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iamnotaparakeet
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Age: 38
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06 May 2008, 2:11 pm
I thought that "thou" was familiar 2nd person singular and "you" was formal 2nd person singular. Is that not correct?
In Spanish we have:
2nd person nominative formal:
Usted (singular) and Ustedes (plural)
2nd person nominative familiar:
tu (singular) and vosotros (plural)
2nd person genitive singular:
te (familiar) or se (formal)
06 May 2008, 2:45 pm
I thought that "thou" was familiar 2nd person singular and "you" was formal 2nd person singular. Is that not correct?
I had thought the opposite - that thou was formal/plural and "you" was familiar. However, according to the dictionary:
pronoun [ second person singular ]
archaic or dialect form of you, as the singular subject of a verb: : thou art fair, o my beloved. Compare with thee.
ORIGIN Old English thu, of Germanic origin; related to German du, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin tu.
USAGE In modern English, the personal pronoun you (together with the possessives your and yours) covers a number of uses: it is both singular and plural, both objective and subjective, and both formal and familiar. This has not always been the case. In Old English and Middle English, some of these different functions of you were supplied by different words. Thus, thou was at one time the singular subjective case (thou art a beast), while thee was the singular objective case ( | he cares not for thee ). In addition, the form thy (modern equivalent your) was the singular possessive determiner, and thine (modern equivalent yours) the singular possessive pronoun, both corresponding to thee. The forms you and ye, on the other hand, were at one time reserved for plural uses. By the 19th century, these forms were universal in standard English for both singular and plural, polite and familiar. In present day use, thou, thee, thy, and thine survive in certain religious groups and in some traditional British dialects, but otherwise are found only in archaic contexts.
-Apple Computer Dictionary (not the best one, I know, but I doubt the information is inaccurate)
I enjoy learning about the history of language, how it has changed, and how it continues to change. My experiences with Romantic languages (French and Spanish) led me to believe that it is advantageous to have a second-person plural. I am in favor of using "y'all" because it is widely understood. I am not in favor of resurrecting "thou", "thee", "thy", etc. because I think this would interfere with the natural course of change in spoken and written language, and more importantly, few people understand the meaning and usage of these words.
06 May 2008, 7:56 pm
I thought that "thou" was familiar 2nd person singular and "you" was formal 2nd person singular. Is that not correct?
That became the case later on. In Old English "þu" /ðu:/was the singular second person, simply being the direct Grimm's Law transformation of PIE *tu.
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