Southern Advice

[Douglas Bigham]

>>And have you noticed that in the current ADS journal, there's an article consistently using ya'll?  Does that make any sense?  What is being substituted by the apostrophe?  Rima<<

I usually use "ya'll" when writing.  The apostrophe is replacing the "a" in "all".  Something like this:

you = ya
all = all

ya + all = ya'll

When the words are seperated for emphasis/clarity when speaking it comes out "ya all" not usually "you all".  That's why the "ya'll".  It's a debated I've been having with a prescriptiveist grammar teacher for over 8 years now.

-dsb
Douglas S. Bigham
Southern Illinois University - Carbondale