newspaper article on "y'all"

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, back in the '50's or '60's, a white member of the  FDNY wrote a
book about the life of white firemen in a minority - in this case,
Puerto-Rican - neighborhood. In the book, the author wondered why it
was that Puerto-Ricans preferred to model their English on the dialect
of blacks instead of on the dialect of whites. IOW, the use of
Black-colored <har! har!> English by Newyoricans has been a well-known
fact, even to non-linguists, for at least 40 years. That being the
case, the use of Black-English - *not* Southern-English - "y'all" by a
Newyorican is indicative of nothing.

-Wilson Gray

On Feb 26, 2005, at 11:39 PM, Paul Frank wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
> Subject:      newspaper article on "y'all"
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> The sprawl of y'all
> AZ Central.com, AZ - Feb 25, 2005
> http://www.azcentral.com/ent/pop/articles/0225yall25.html
>
> Paul
> __________________________
> Paul Frank
> Chinese-English translator
> Huemoz, Vaud, Switzerland
> phone +41 (0)24 495 2493
> paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
>