Singular "yez"?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Don't know if you're hallucinating, but singular "yez" appeared frequently in working-class Anglo-Irish speech in the 1920s (and presumably much earlier) if one can believe the late Stan Hugill's "Shanties from the Seven Seas" (1961). Hugill was a Liverpool man who'd worked on merchant ships in the last days of commercial sail (1920s & '30s).

JL

Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Alice Faber
Subject: Singular "yez"?
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>>From a posting in alt.folklore.urban:

> In the Philly area (I am a recent immigrant) I swear that
> there is a singular pronoun "yez". My family thinks I'm
> hallucinating, or that maybe it's the Brooklynese "youse".
> Neither is true. "Youse" is plural and is quite distinct
> from what I'm hearing, e.g. "would yez like some coffee?"
> AM I hallucinating?

--
Alice Faber
Haskins Labs, 270 Crown St, New Haven, CT, 06511
T: (203) 865-6163 x258 F: (203) 865-8963
faber at haskins.yale.edu


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