LL-L "Pronouns" 2012.11.18 (02) [EN]

[Lowlands-L]

Hi, David!

I got this as a response but cannot find any text written by you.

Ron Hahn
LL-L Founder and Administrator

On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 9:32 PM, Lowlands-L <lowlands.list at gmail.com> wrote:

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>  L O W L A N D S - L - 18 November 2012 - Volume 01
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> From: Montgomery Michael ullans at yahoo.com <pbarrett at cox.net>
> Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2012.11.17 (01) [EN]
>
> Dear David
>
> Historically *you'uns* and *y'all*/*you all* are both common
> second-person-plural pronouns in vernacular West Virginia, according to
> research done by the Linguistic Atlas project in the 1930s.  It's no doubt
> accurate to say that there has always been some variation socially in
> Appalachia as well.  I've been studying the English of Appalachia for 30+
> years, and the only comment I recall seeing is in Joseph Hall's 1942
> monograph onGreat Smoky Mountain speech of Tennessee/North Carolina.  There
> he says that *you'uns* was being replaced by the social more prestigious
> form *you'uns* .  It would be easy to oversimplify the situation, which
> has both many sub-regional and social dimensions.  Growing up in East
> Tennessee in the 1950s/60s, I rarely heard *you'uns*, so I was surprised
> a few months ago when a colleague at Carson-Newman College, just outside
> Knoxville, told me that he hears undergraduates use it every week.  What I
> heard growing up was usually *you all*; *y'all* was associated with the
> Deep South.  This assessment is consistent with where I live now, in the
> Deep South of South Carolina, where *y'all* is certainly dominant.
>
> While there are many who consider *you'uns* old-fashioned or rural, the
> term is quite trendy in some places, especially southwestern Pennsylvania.
> It has become a trademark Pittsburghese expression, or rather the
> one-syllable pronunciation *yiuz* has.  The latter form is easy to find
> on the internet.  West Virginia is barely an hour from Pittsburgh, so
> perhaps West Virginians who use that form are trendily old-fashioned!
>
> All this means that an author from West Virginia has three choices: to use
> only *you'uns*; to use only *y'all*; or to use both, one for some
> characters and situations and the other for elsewhere.  Each choice has its
> advantages and disadvantages.  Most writers opt for one of the first two,
> simply because they're simpler to employ.
>
> All the best
>
> Michael Montgomery
> University of South Carolina
>
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