"Y'all redux"

[Dennis R. Preston]

I stayed out of SW Ohio a lot when I was a kid (we were Cards fans,
not Reds fans), but I reckon they would have sounded a bit like me,
although the SE Ohio folk probably sounded more like me (cept for
that feesh & poosh stuff).

I wouldn't pay too much attention to items in the phrase "Y'all come
back, now, y'hear?," which has such formulaic status as to make the
internal elements suspect. Even Michiganders offer this phase when
asked what Southerners sound like.

dInIs



>I wonder if "y'all" addressed to an individual may not sometimes simply be
>a kind of formal, shy politesse, functioning rather like the tu/vous
>distinction in French. A way of not being too pointed or familiar with
>another person.  I think, in particular, of a store clerk in southwestern
>Ohio (whose accent would probably be familiar to dInIs) who routinely said
>to individual customers: "Y'all come back, now, y'hear?"
>In any case, unless a dogmatic definition of "southern" as /not using
>"y'all" except as a plural/, it is absurd to go on saying "no true
>southerner ever, &c.", when there have been numerous attestations of such
>usage in this and previous discussions of "y'all."
>Just the two-cents' worth of a bystander who has never lived south of the
>34th parallel.
>A. Murie
>
>A&M Murie
>N. Bangor NY
>sagehen at westelcom.com


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu