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From: clifto@indep1.chi.il.us (Clifton T. Sharp)
Subject: Re: You, Youse, ...All Y'all
Message-ID: <DMMDIE.Jw6@indep1.chi.il.us>
Organization: as little as possible
References: <4f8skj$ocg@ixnews7.ix.netcom.com> <4fau9u$14eb@hearst.cac.psu.edu> <4ffp18$2a7@curly.cc.emory.edu>
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 16:23:02 GMT
Lines: 21

In article <4ffp18$2a7@curly.cc.emory.edu> libmlm@curly.cc.emory.edu (Matthew L Miller) writes:
:Martin A. Mazur (mam@arlvax.arl.psu.edu) wrote:
:: >point.  The outcome of the thread was that some Southerners do indeed
:: >use "you all" and "y'all" in the singular even though many other
:: >Southerners will vehemently deny that that is so.
:
:Not necessarily...some of us are actually bright enough to realize that 
:"y'all" is a plural form.  I use it all the time, but I would never 
:use it to address a single person.  Maybe the people who are perceiving 
:(imagining?) this usage of "y'all" in the singular are the transplanted 
:yankees.  I can't remember ever having heard it used that way in 20 
:years of life in N. Carolina and Georgia.

Seems to me it's used in a "polite plural" fashion, a la several foreign
languages, quite commonly. "How are y'all doing today?" said to one
person seems to me to be standard usage.

-- 
   Cliff Sharp                  There are days when no matter which
     WA9PDM                      way you spit, it's upwind.
  clifto@indep1.chi.il.us       --The First Law of Reality
