The first person plural of we is we’uns.
Comment on The mist Texan of all expressions - Y'All - is ungendered and therefore woke
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Y’all was created to serve a completely artificial problem.
English has second person singular pronouns, but for some dumbfuck reason we’ve deprecated them. It’s still maintained in the standard for compatibility with legacy literature but not recommended for new works. If thou talk’st this way, thy speech comes off as archaic/shakesperian/biblical. So we use the second person plural for everything. But this removes the ability to encode context on how many thou art addressing. “You! Go put that fire out.” Are you talking to an individual in a group or the whole group?
So the American south turned “you” into the singular form and invented “you all” contracted to “y’all” for the plural form.
Now we just need to fix the first person plural problem, ie “We’ve just won the lottery!” Does “we” include the listener, or not? English doesn’t encode that information; “we” don’t have different words for “myself the speaker and the listener(s) and perhaps others” and “Myself the speaker, others, but not the listener.”
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 year ago
vivadanang@lemm.ee 1 year ago
heard many you-uns growing up around the south.
30mag@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Y’all was created to serve a completely artificial problem.
I don’t think it is likely that “y’all” was created by people who knew what grammar is, much less for the purpose of solving a problem with the English language.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Doesn’t matter if it was done intentionally or not.
30mag@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Now that I think about it a little, I agree.
swab148@lemm.ee 1 year ago
M’y’all and m’y’ain’t
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Ah, compound contractions. Yeah that’ll work. We’ve already got y’all’ve and y’all’d’a.
Claidheamh@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
Can’t forget about y’all’dnt’ve.