If anyone can find more pixels for me i would appreciate it.
Thanks y’all.
I would have thought that “y’all” is even more so gender neutral and therefore less offensive/more accepted. It’s a contraction of “you all” right?
Honestly it’s just so useful. It should be the default.
I picked it up when I lived in Houston, but when I was bartending and stuff after returning to my home state, I’d use it heavily.
Interestingly, though, it made people think I was from another country entirely? Because in absolutely no other way do I sound even remotely southern. (I do use various non-American slang, but not with strangers) Was always a blast to have someone ask where I was from, and try to get them to pinpoint why they didn’t think I was local, when I was born 15 minutes from where the conversation was taking place :p
“y’all” fills a legitimately useful gap the English language has. Other languages have a word like this.
Edit: also something cool I just found out, some languages have a way to disinguish “we” (you and I), and “we” (me and the rest of us, not you). It’s called clusivity and is missing from European languages. Many indigenous languages of the Americas and Oceania have this, as well as Vietnamese and northern dialects of Mandarin.
Not a gap in every dialect! “Ye” is another plural second person used in Ireland
Any examples of an equivalent in other languages?
I speak a small amount of French but can’t think of one
In Portuguese (especially Brazilian), there are singular and plural forms of “you”: “você” (singular) and “vocês” (plural). In English, “you” behaves like a plural because it’s followed by “are” instead of “is”. The only exception I can see is “yourself” and “yourselves” that refer to both singular and plural forms.
However, In Portuguese, even though we have “vocês” as plural form, we also use “vocês todos” or “todos vocês” (“you all”/“all of you”) sometimes.
“Vous” is the first one that comes to mind in french. But since it is also a more formal (and/or “respectful”) version of “tu/toi”, it can both designate a group of people or a single person, depending on the context (just like “you” in English). Sometimes people will use “vous tous” (literally “you all”) to make this clear.
It is a little better than the “you” situation in English since if you are speaking with someone that is not using the singular form of “vous” to speak about you (which is basically anyone you are familiar with unless they are your boss or In-laws and kind of oldschool), it is instantly clear what they mean at least.
I’m from Australia and I’ve started calling all groups of people yall because it’s gender neutral… very unaustralian term, and I love so much the irony of iconic southern terms being used to support trans activism
Why bother with importing y’all when we already have yous (or youse depending on how you want to spell it)? Or you could just treat ‘you guys’ as gender neutral, it effectively is these days with how people use it.
As an Australian, why bother importing “y’all” when everyone is already “mate”?
I was going to say something similar, but thinking everyone is “cunt”.
Yes, it’s gender neutral.
A lot of trans femmes myself included cannot see ‘guys’ as gender neutral no matter how hard we try and so do not like it.
I have regularly called groups of females “you guys” since childhood. It’s extremely neutral in a lot of the country.
People who claim “guys” is gender neutral would most often only count men when asked the question “How many guys did you sleep with in your life?”
Until I find a single person who immediately thinks of people of any gender at that question, I will not fall for the internalized misogyny of “‘guys’ is gender neutral” meme. (Same with “dudes” and all the other ones I’ve seen over the years. I’ve even seen someone say “bro” is gender neutral.)
Do we have yous/youse? According to my understanding that’s technically not a real word yet, it’s slang.
I feel like y’all is the newer American version of 2nd person plural, while yous/youse/yinz are the non-American English counterparts.
I have always used you guys in a gender neutral manner historically, but people occasionally got offended by that. So I started using y’all several years ago and it’s been going pretty good. Although I did initially spell it like ya’ll until someone corrected me on reddit 😅
Yall is the genderless southern hospitality greeting.
No bullshit no hate. Only yall
I’ve used y’all intentionally as a gender neutral term for years in the south.
Lately I’ve even seen “y’all means all” used as a pride slogan in the south.
You forgot “Yinz”
That’s actually “you’uns” and despite being from the deep south I barely ever heard it growing up. Guessing you are from the south too
Genuine question. What is the “tucky” in pennsyltucky? Is it somehow tied to Kentucky?
