• SGforce@lemmy.ca
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    6 days ago

    Is there an American first person plural for “y’all”?..“We’s”?

    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      Yes! And you’ve nailed one of the most common.

      Mind you, none of the ones I’ve run into reach the degree of usage y’all does.

      But, there’s we’s, we’ns, and us’ns

      This is all in my local area, or in areas close enough to have visited frequently.

      No idea what yankees use for dialect first person plural, but we’ns down hyuh have it figgered out right nice.

      However, if you want the dialect mind fuck of all mind fucks, wait until someone needs to address a large group of mixed sub groups and breaks out “all’a y’all’ns” which is said as a single unit all’a’y’all’ns. All of you all ones. It’s like a black hole of linguistics that sucks you in, and the closer you get, the more spaghettified your brain becomes.

      They ain’t nuthin much more sigogglin than suthren talkin, an if’n it’s in the hills (aka mountains), y’all gonna have ta step quick ta keep up. Shit far (fire) and save matches, y’all damn feriners done missed out on some got dayum good talkin!

      • Wilson@lemmy.today
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        5 days ago

        To the north (still solidly east coast) I would occasionally hear all’a’you’s and allyouse for a similar purpose.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      “Us” and “we” exist in the language already.

      y’all or you’ns or yinz or whatever evolved to fill a niche. English has an official second person singular, thee/thou/thy and the funny thing is thou canst still perfectly understand it, it makes perfect sense to thy ears, even my spell checker isn’t flagging any of this. But we don’t use it anymore because it sounds pompous and biblical, plus for some reason it comes with a bunch of fucky conjugations. Like “canst.”

      French does still use theirs, tu vs vous, tu is singular but also informal, you speak that way to individual friends and loved ones, vous is used for plural as well as in formal speak, even if singular you say vous to your boss. English deprecatedest thou entirely and went entirely “you” which leaves too big of a gap. So Americans took “you” to be the new singular and invented “you all” and “you ones” in parallel for plural, slanged to y’all and you’ns the latter has no consistent spelling.