"Y'all" in Friday's New York Times

[Beverly Flanigan]

I don't disagree, but I guess I wasn't clear in my message.  What Guy was
referring to was the older distinction between thou/thee and ye/you.  The
interviewer clearly didn't get it and just moved on, but Guy was trying to
justify 'y'all' as plural by linking it to a time when 'you' was only plural.

And this reminds me of another puzzling comment from NPR last week:  The
interviewer of a country singer (can't recall her name, but she didn't
sound authentic to me; I've known people here who think they "talk
Appalachian," for example) said that if listeners wanted to hear her "sing
in Middle English" they could go to npr.org for that day.  I haven't looked
it up, but I wonder if he meant
mountain/Appalachian/Scots-flavored/hillbilly English?  Kinda like
Elizabethan, maybe?  These historical eras are hard to keep straight, you know.

At 03:21 PM 12/25/2003 -0500, you wrote:

>In a message dated 11/29/03 12:00:48 PM, flanigan at OHIO.EDU writes:
>
><< and it was clear he
>didn't know what Guy Bailey was talking about when he said "'you' was
>originally plural, you know" (or words to that effect). >>
>
>Most of us believe that Y'ALL still *IS* plural. Guy Bailey may have heard
>pseudo-y'all from displaced crypto-Yankees, but that don't make it rahht.