Re: Word use that drives you up the wall!
Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 1:37 pm
"Yea, no."
It's "ya'll", not "y'all". Actually, both can be correct, but I need to defend "ya'll" as it has been under attack - mostly be an over-simplistic reasoning that "it's a contraction of 'you' and 'all'." Oh, is it? This is something I've been interested in since elementary school. Please bear with me.
1. Ya'll, when punctuated with the apostrophe between the "a" and "l" is at least two derivations from "proper English". It is a contraction of "ya" and "all". If you read a book from the 19th Century southern U.S., you rarely hear dialogue with "you". Southerners (and Texans) had distinct attributes to their speech, including:
- dropping the "g" in gerunds e.g. askin', tellin', yellin', etc.
- concatenating words without a forming a "proper" contraction e.g. whatcha, gonna, fixin', etc.
Almost every time you see a second person pronoun used in dialogue, it would be "ya", not "you", unless it gets added to another word as in the previously mentioned "whatcha" example.
So, from proper English, we might see the progression iteratively proceed like this:
"When did you get into town?"
"When did ya get into town?"
"When'd ya get into town?"
"When'd ya git into town?"
"When'd ya git in town?"
"Whentcha git in town?"
You can see these portrayals of the phrasing and depictions of pronunciation in the works of Mark Twain, Louis L'Amour, John Steinbeck and countless others.
2. Because of this, many words or phrases common to the southern U.S. and Texas are NOT simply slang words, nor do they follow proper grammatical conventions and rules.
The culture actually developed a dialect of the English language.
The language has been assimilating back towards proper English in recent generations, especially in the cities and suburbs, but historically, it is probably more accurately viewed as a sister language with rules and words that do not necessarily come straight from the Queen's English.
3. I've seen the push to do away with "ya'll" come from transplanted northerners who are beginning to embrace some of the Southern or Texan culture (read: carpetbaggers and reconstructionists), college professors (and, in turn, the students they influence), and others who are trying to simplify the justification for where the apostrophe should go by appealing to rules that apply to proper English - but not necessarily true regional dialects.
In any case, I will agree that these non-native cake-eaters probably are rightly using "y'all" because they are simply contracting "you" and "all", which, ironically leaves them sort of in a no-man's-land in relation to their language as contractions are reviled in most forms of formal English speech. So, I will leave them alone with their usage of "y'all" and view their gaudy Christmas decorations using this version of the word as a tacit sign that "they ain't from around here".
I raise my objections when they begin to correct and condescend to those of us using "ya'll" as a word from a dialect more than one derivation removed from proper English. That's mostly what this is about. The "y'all" devotees have no standing to correct the "ya'll" users.
4. Ya'll is symmetrical and more aesthetically pleasing to look at. You'd think this point is subjective, but surprisingly, it's not.
5. Ain't. If you insist that "y'all" is the ONLY correct way because it MUST be a contraction of "you" and "all", then I implore you to explain what two straightforward words are being joined in "ain't".
I hope ya'll enjoyed this.
