Speaker 1: Welcome to brainstud a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Speaker 1: volbebam here. The term y'all is as ubiquitous in the
Speaker 1: American South as boiled peanuts, college football, and kudzu climbing
Speaker 1: the trees. If it were possible to hold a giant
Speaker 1: microphone over the entire region right this minute, y'all would
Speaker 1: probably be drowning out all the other words. It's as
Speaker 1: Southern as grits, and as smooth and sweet as soft
Speaker 1: butter on a warm biscuit. And it's inclusive. Y'all means
Speaker 1: you all, and thus doesn't exclude anyone based on their
Speaker 1: gender or class. Could this humble contraction turn out to
Speaker 1: be the efficient second person plural pronoun the English lexicon
Speaker 1: has long been waiting for. Of course, English has a
Speaker 1: second person singular pronoun you, useful for addressing a solitary person,
Speaker 1: but unlike other languages, modern English doesn't have a word
Speaker 1: you can use to address a group of people. Back
Speaker 1: in the day, ye was used as in hear ye,
Speaker 1: hear ye, meaning listen up, y'all, or come all, ye faithful,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue in these
Speaker 1: are modern times, hey ye who has the Wi Fi password?
Speaker 1: Sounds stilted. English speakers can colloquially bend the singular you
Speaker 1: to apply to groups. Let's say you're getting ready to
Speaker 1: leave a restaurant with your family or a few friends.
Speaker 1: You could say you ready to go to the table
Speaker 1: at large, and it would be understood that you were
Speaker 1: addressing them collectively. But that's not super precise. So a
Speaker 1: lot of speakers have adopted phrases or contractions to pluralize you,
Speaker 1: like you guys around America use in the Northeast, and
Speaker 1: Yann's in Pittsburgh specifically, then you lot around Britain and
Speaker 1: Ala in the Caribbean, and then there is y'all for
Speaker 1: the article. This episode is based on hast To Works
Speaker 1: spoke via email with linguist Paul E. Read, PhD. Of
Speaker 1: the University of Alabama. He explained that in the past
Speaker 1: you was actually plural the now archaic thou was the
Speaker 1: second person singular, but somewhere along the line, thou fell
Speaker 1: away and you became singular, thus forcing English speakers of
Speaker 1: different dialects to come up with their own ways of
Speaker 1: pluralizing it. For a long time, now you guys has
Speaker 1: been the dominant turn of phrase in most places when
Speaker 1: addressing two or more people, but because guys is inherently masculine,
Speaker 1: lots of people have been looking for an alternative that's
Speaker 1: more inclusive. Of course, some feminine and non binary humans
Speaker 1: don't mind guys, and that's cool too. How a person
Speaker 1: would prefer to be addressed is up to them, but
Speaker 1: it is a small easy thing to attempt to not
Speaker 1: exclude anyone with your language, and certainly to change your
Speaker 1: language if someone asks you to in that way. Y'all
Speaker 1: has mosied its way across America and around the globe
Speaker 1: as far as Australia. It's been picked up by everyone
Speaker 1: from CEOs to queer advocacy groups. Since I moved to Atlanta,
Speaker 1: I've certainly picked up the word and gotten ribbed by
Speaker 1: my northern family a bit for using it. But where
Speaker 1: did this jewel of a word that's easy to use
Speaker 1: and flat out fun to say come from? It turns
Speaker 1: out the exact origins of y'all are a tadhard to
Speaker 1: pin down. Reid said. Some of the earliest attestations of
Speaker 1: y'all come from English poetry in the eighteenth century, and
Speaker 1: there are some possible attestations in the seventeenth century. It
Speaker 1: doesn't appear very common, and it could have reflected certain
Speaker 1: usages and was available also to fit the poetic meter.
Speaker 1: There's about a century of distance between the English attestations
Speaker 1: and the first American attestations in the eighteen twenties. In
Speaker 1: the US, it was primarily a Southern US usage. Some
Speaker 1: have theorized that it had the English you all origin,
Speaker 1: and also was supported by the Scott's Irish term y'all,
Speaker 1: which basically means the same thing you all. Once it
Speaker 1: was in use, y'all has often been disparaged as it
Speaker 1: made its way to regions beyond the South via caricatures
Speaker 1: like the Beverly Hillbillies and musical genres like old school country,
Speaker 1: hip hop and R and B, spreading from the ground
Speaker 1: up for decades a Many linguists agree that y'all's current
Speaker 1: assent and acceptance is fruit born of the grassroots dialogue
Speaker 1: that's taken the word from social media into the mainstream.
Speaker 1: Reid said the current embracing has emerged from a desire
Speaker 1: to use non gendered and inclusive language. Since you guys
Speaker 1: literally started out to mean only a group of men
Speaker 1: even though many folks don't use it in a gendered way.
Speaker 1: Many people want to use a term that's non gendered
Speaker 1: in any way, y'all already had fairly wide usage and
Speaker 1: was there to spread. Depending on how you define the South.
Speaker 1: You're talking about tens of millions of users across roughly
Speaker 1: fifteen states, as well as folks from the South who
Speaker 1: moved and the great migrations African Americans and Appalachians, which
Speaker 1: took Southern language practices to many other places. So y'all
Speaker 1: was known further the South, and its language practices are
Speaker 1: often considered friendly and polite. And you can make slogans
Speaker 1: like y'all means all if you haven't heard that one.
Speaker 1: It's been picked up by groups like the Southern Poverty
Speaker 1: Law Center and the Human Rights Campaign since the early
Speaker 1: twenty twenties to indicate solidarity amongst different justice and equality
Speaker 1: movements in the South and beyond, and has even made
Speaker 1: its way into country pop songs. It's a good slogan.
Speaker 1: I dare say that y'all is for all y'all. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article y'all Isn't just for
Speaker 1: Southerners Anymore? On how stuffworks dot com, written by Kerry Tatrow.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with
Speaker 1: how stuffworks dot com and is produced by Tyler Plang.
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