y'all

[Beverly Flanigan]

You-all is used in much of southern Ohio too (never y'all), moreso, I
think, than you-uns/yuns (though that may be more common on the eastern
border with PA).

At 11:28 AM 8/6/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>You-all (not y'all) is the definite construction preference from my
>Louisville youth.
>
>dInIs
>
>My understanding, from recent discussion with some Kentuckians (for some
>of the same reasons that brought me to this list), is that there are a
>number of variations within the state for the "you" formation: "you'all"
>is the standard in Louisville (as it is in much of Texas, or was when I
>was growing up); "y'all" prevails in the rest of the state, with at
>least one exception; (and thank you for this spelling; I had always
>envisioned it "ya'll," and now I'll have to decide what to use!); and
>"you'uns" (or, as Aubrey Gruber spells it in *Mountain-ese: Basic Grammar
>for Appalachia*, "youens," which she (he?) declares to be plural).  I am
>told that "you'uns" is also used in Ohio and Indiana, though not by all,
>or everywhere.
>
>Julia Niebuhr Eulenberg <eulenbrg at u.washington.edu>
>
>On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, James A. Landau wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Re: y'all
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  My father, who lived in Louisville his entire life, except for Army service
>>  from 1943-6, said "you-all" rather than "y'all" and used it only for the
>>  plural.
>>
>>        - James A. Landau
>
>--
>Dennis R. Preston
>Professor of Linguistics
>Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic,
>      Asian & African Languages
>Michigan State University
>East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
>e-mail: preston at msu.edu
>phone: (517) 353-9290