A new one on me y'all guys

[Charles C Doyle]

We may have discussed this point too:  The spelling of the possessive form of "y'all."


I probably wouldn't have written any form of "y'all" in the olden and more formal days of paper epistles, but I do pretty regularly in emails.  And I've decided that--by analogy with the spelling of other possessive pronouns--there should be no second apostrophe.


What is y'alls opinion on the subject?


--Charlie

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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Jonathan Lighter [wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 9:44 AM
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Never have I heard "y'all guys."

Of irrelevant interest, and possibly mentioned years ago, I did encounter
the weird spelling "ya'll" in freshman papers surprisingly often.

The only explanation I ever got was that "it just looks right."

JL

On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 8:48 AM, Alice Faber <faber at haskins.yale.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>
> Organization: Haskins Laboratories
> Subject:      A new one on me y'all guys
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  From a caller to the XM baseball channel this morning.
>
> Pronouns accurate, the rest approximate: "They haven't been listening to
> y'all's show; y'all guys have been saying...."
>
> I don't remember where the caller is from, but the accent was vaguely
> upper southern/south midlands-ish.

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