“Y’all.” It’s a contraction of the words “you” and “all” that will immediately out you as a Southerner, a Texan or someone from below the Mason-Dixon Line.
It’s an informal expression – a linguistic calling card and a cultural marker all at once. It’s also a word that’s sure to spark a lively discussion when it’s brought up.
Is “y’all” too informal, too regional? Does it belong in the English language at all?
Dan Solomon is a reporter and longtime contributor to Texas Monthly. He has been writing about this beloved word recently and its place in our vocabulary. He joined the Standard to discuss. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: This article, the genesis of it, was because of something that you read in The New York Times, right?
Dan Solomon: Yeah, that’s correct. They had a column about why it’s time for everyone to embrace “you guys” and just consider it gender neutral, because we need a second-person plural.
I guess if you think of other languages, there are other examples of this, right?
Yeah. Most languages have a second-person plural. English is kind of unique in not having one.
Sophomore year, my French class – this is how my French teacher explained the word “vu.” “Vu” is “y’all.” It’s you and multiple people.
The impetus behind this discussion, this column by John McWhorter, he writes that the word reads “too slangy, regional or what you might even call ethnic to ever gain universal acceptance.” How do you personally feel about that assessment of the word?
I think it’s weird. I don’t know. I don’t know why “you guys” would be better. “Y’all” – it’s kind of friendly. It’s kind of a musical. So I think that it makes a lot of sense.
There’s no doubt that “y’all” has originated in the South, but I get the sense that the South can no longer only lay claim to it – that other parts of the country use “y’all” pretty commonly. Is that your sense, as well?
Not just other parts of the country, other parts of the world. I was in Australia recently and Australians use “y’all.”
But certainly, around the country, it’s too useful and too many people have moved around the country. The country is not regional in the same way that it was. A lot of this dates back many decades to the period of the Great Migration, where African American Southerners started moving north and west and brought the dialect of the South with them.
And, as you know, time has gone on. It’s been more common among all demographics. Everyone kind of uses “y’all” now. It’s very useful. That’s the main point to me, is that it’s just a really useful word. And if you don’t have it, you need it.
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It’s a very elegant solution for that particular linguistic problem.
A lot of people who moved to Texas as adults – you know, maybe they’re coming from a northern state – they haven’t said “y’all” in their life. They’re having a hard time adapting it into their vocabulary. How would you pitch the word to newcomers?
So that’s my story. I moved to Texas when I was 18 from the suburbs of Chicago. I had never dreamed of using the word “y’all.” It would have felt weird. And then you start meeting people and using it.
Texas, I think distinct from Southern, has a sort of confidence to it. And if you fake that confidence when incorporating a new word and you decide, you know what, “I can do this, I can pull this off.” Then after like the third time, you’re like, “All right, well, what’s up, y’all?”
Do you remember making conscious decisions to use “y’all,” or did it slip out one day and you thought, “my gosh, what was that?”
It was a little bit more conscious. It was, frankly, the need of a word. And the fact that, you know, “you guys” is gendered and there are people who don’t like being in a “you guys.”
And you’ll find that especially if you’re talking to older people, you know, if you call a woman under 70 “you guys”…
Right. You may not like the result.
Exactly. Yeah. You know, at least the reaction on their face is like, “that was tacky.”
Are there other distinctly Texan words that you think the rest of the country could do well to incorporate into their vocabulary?
Some that I’ve found useful, personally: I like “might could” a lot as a sort of double conditional.
“Fixin’ to” is another kind of conditional Texas phrase that I think solves an English language problem. I don’t think we’re great at having that sort of conditional language and “fixin’ to,” you know, suggests that it’s about to happen. But you never know what’s going to happen between now and the moment when you would do it. And I appreciate that.
