Yo, Have You All Heard 'We All'?

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Yeah, it sounds weird because of the case error, not because "we all" is some kind of risable' stupid ghetto pronoun (as the original poster implied). I suspect that the speaker's hypercorrection stemmed from the fact that "we/us all" is not only the superficial object of "wants"; it is also the deeper subject of "to think." The presence of "all" probably added confusion for the speaker. But it has nothing to do with the Southern pronoun "y'all"! The speaker may well not be a "y'all" speaker (she IS in New York).. ALL varieties of American English use "we all" and "us all."
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Velasco <marcjvelasco at GMAIL.COM>

Date:         Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:16:56
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] Yo, Have You All Heard 'We All'?


I've heard we all, similar to y'all (which I hear frequently), but only as a
one-off sort of usage (nonced?).

But I've never heard 'we all' as an object of a verb "so and so wants we all
to...".  I believe I heard the _we all_ as a straight subject.  At any rate,
when I heard _we all_ it was rare enough to perk my ears up.


On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Yo, Have You All Heard 'We All'?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Well, just between you and I, that may be a hypercorrection. I'm
> positive that I've never heard "WE-all," though I have, of course,
> heard "YOU-all" as well as "we ALL" and "you ALL."
>
> Naturally, I don't pretend to speak for the entire English-speaking
> community.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 2:55 PM,  <RonButters at aol.com> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       RonButters at AOL.COM
> > Subject:      Yo, Have You All Heard 'We All'?
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > As the Beatles put it years aga, "We all live in a yellow submarine." The
> > only thing odd about the sentence in question is that it doesn't say "us
> all"!
> >
> > In a message dated 8/13/08 2:15:02 PM, cats22 at FRONTIERNET.NET writes:
> >
> >
> >> Harlem's Congressman Charlie Rangel was near his
> >> rent-subsidized home yesterday to brag how he
> >> helped preserve nearly 400 other subsidized
> >> apartments in his neighborhood. Some onlookers,
> >> egged on by the NYT, were more interested in
> >> criticizing him for hogging three way-below-
> >> market-value apartments when, without a doubt,
> >> he could afford to pay full-whack rents.
> >> One paragraph of today's NYT story put it thusly:
> >> One 58-year-old woman, who has lived at Canaan IV for 12 years, called
> the
> >> situation "an injustice." Another, who is 50 and has been in the
> building
> >> since 1994, said that the congressman "wants we all to think that he's
> there
> >> for the people, but deep down inside, he doesn't care."
> >> ---
> >> "We all"? Is that the way Vern Ackular usually puts it? Or is that
> simply
> >> one of Les Common's peculiarities?
> >> dh
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > **************
> > Looking for a car that's sporty, fun and fits in your budget?
> > Read reviews on AOL Autos.
> >
> > (
> http://autos.aol.com/cars-BMW-128-2008/expert-review?ncid=aolaut00050000000017)
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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